Hi everyone,
I've been lurking on here trying to search up some ideas on my issue with a Harmon pellet stove, but so far, it seems to be stumping my best efforts. Hoping someone has some ideas where to look before I throw in the towel and call the local Harmon dealer to come look at it!
I'll apologize now for the ridiculously long post, but I'll try to capture all that I can about the issue to give a complete picture of where I'm at with this thing.
We bought our home in August, and it has a Harmon PP-38+.
We started using it, not knowing much about them, in the fall as temps began to dip. It worked pretty well, and I cleaned the burn pot regularly. I bought 2 tons of Lignetics pellets in the summer to avoid any potential winter price hikes, and we've gone through about a ton (not quite). It's in an addition to the house, so it's not a primary heat source, but it does make quite a dent in how much the furnace runs if I run the pellet stove.
This model doesn't have a lot of the controls/indicators I see frequently referenced on here. No status lights, and no room temp settings. It's got a feed rate setting, a blower speed setting, and that's it.
It would stay lit at 2, be fairly warm at 3, and you'd be sweatin' at 5 (goes up to 6 before you hit the "turbo" mode). As time went by, these numbers started creeping. Meaning, 3 to stay lit, 4 to be warm, but on really cold days, 5-6 to get enough heat to help with the rest of the house.
It also feeds weird. By this, I mean that sometimes it'll feed a lot, continuously, to the point where I turn the burn rate dial down to stop it before it pushes burning pellets over the edge of the burn pot. This doesn't happen often, but it does occur. If it's gonna happen, it's usually at start up.
More common is it just won't feed often, and when it does, it stops sooner than I think it should. Like, the fire is down to the auger practically, the feed kicks on, and it feeds for maybe 5 seconds and then stops. If I turn the dial up a setting, then back down to where it had been, it'll feed more. Usually.
When it is feeding, the pellets seem to be moving properly and I don't see and mechanical hold-ups to the pellets moving from the hopper to the burn pot when it feeds. It just seems to not know when or how much to feed.
So, trying to solve this, I came upon the instructions for cleaning a pellet stove that I should have done. And I embarked on it. I cleaned the burn pot, scraped off the black carbon build up (that was fun, but now I know to do it more often), dumped the ash bin, cleaned the heat exchanger fins, cleaned the blower motor and the exhaust fan, and vacuumed off the ESP. I was extremely careful around the ESP and didn't get the back of it (have to get a flue brush), but I got it looking like an ESP instead of a fly ash covered stick.
Still not much improvement.
The latch on the hopper wasn't fastened with a nut on the threads, and while I'd been meaning to do that, like all good intentions, it never happened. My wife filled the hopper, and the washer/gasket for around the latch threads fell into the pellets and was burned up. Oops.
Doing some research, I thought maybe the opening in the hopper lid was messing up the draft, so I put a piece of packing tape over it to test the theory. It doesn't get more than warm there, so I'm not worried about the tape melting. I just wanted to see if closing that hole helped.
I think it burns stronger on 4/5/6 now, but it'll go out if it's set below 4, as it just won't feed enough pellets to keep burning. Big, bright flames at 4, dies anywhere below 4.
Any suggestions on where else to look? I'm sure I've missed a lot, so any suggestions are appreciated. We love the stove, just need to get myself tuned up on how to maintain it properly. If I set it to 4 or higher, it's warm and works well. Just seems weird that the setting required to keep it lit keeps creeping higher.
Thanks in advance, and thanks for reading all of my ramblings!
I've been lurking on here trying to search up some ideas on my issue with a Harmon pellet stove, but so far, it seems to be stumping my best efforts. Hoping someone has some ideas where to look before I throw in the towel and call the local Harmon dealer to come look at it!
I'll apologize now for the ridiculously long post, but I'll try to capture all that I can about the issue to give a complete picture of where I'm at with this thing.
We bought our home in August, and it has a Harmon PP-38+.
We started using it, not knowing much about them, in the fall as temps began to dip. It worked pretty well, and I cleaned the burn pot regularly. I bought 2 tons of Lignetics pellets in the summer to avoid any potential winter price hikes, and we've gone through about a ton (not quite). It's in an addition to the house, so it's not a primary heat source, but it does make quite a dent in how much the furnace runs if I run the pellet stove.
This model doesn't have a lot of the controls/indicators I see frequently referenced on here. No status lights, and no room temp settings. It's got a feed rate setting, a blower speed setting, and that's it.
It would stay lit at 2, be fairly warm at 3, and you'd be sweatin' at 5 (goes up to 6 before you hit the "turbo" mode). As time went by, these numbers started creeping. Meaning, 3 to stay lit, 4 to be warm, but on really cold days, 5-6 to get enough heat to help with the rest of the house.
It also feeds weird. By this, I mean that sometimes it'll feed a lot, continuously, to the point where I turn the burn rate dial down to stop it before it pushes burning pellets over the edge of the burn pot. This doesn't happen often, but it does occur. If it's gonna happen, it's usually at start up.
More common is it just won't feed often, and when it does, it stops sooner than I think it should. Like, the fire is down to the auger practically, the feed kicks on, and it feeds for maybe 5 seconds and then stops. If I turn the dial up a setting, then back down to where it had been, it'll feed more. Usually.
When it is feeding, the pellets seem to be moving properly and I don't see and mechanical hold-ups to the pellets moving from the hopper to the burn pot when it feeds. It just seems to not know when or how much to feed.
So, trying to solve this, I came upon the instructions for cleaning a pellet stove that I should have done. And I embarked on it. I cleaned the burn pot, scraped off the black carbon build up (that was fun, but now I know to do it more often), dumped the ash bin, cleaned the heat exchanger fins, cleaned the blower motor and the exhaust fan, and vacuumed off the ESP. I was extremely careful around the ESP and didn't get the back of it (have to get a flue brush), but I got it looking like an ESP instead of a fly ash covered stick.
Still not much improvement.
The latch on the hopper wasn't fastened with a nut on the threads, and while I'd been meaning to do that, like all good intentions, it never happened. My wife filled the hopper, and the washer/gasket for around the latch threads fell into the pellets and was burned up. Oops.
Doing some research, I thought maybe the opening in the hopper lid was messing up the draft, so I put a piece of packing tape over it to test the theory. It doesn't get more than warm there, so I'm not worried about the tape melting. I just wanted to see if closing that hole helped.
I think it burns stronger on 4/5/6 now, but it'll go out if it's set below 4, as it just won't feed enough pellets to keep burning. Big, bright flames at 4, dies anywhere below 4.
Any suggestions on where else to look? I'm sure I've missed a lot, so any suggestions are appreciated. We love the stove, just need to get myself tuned up on how to maintain it properly. If I set it to 4 or higher, it's warm and works well. Just seems weird that the setting required to keep it lit keeps creeping higher.
Thanks in advance, and thanks for reading all of my ramblings!
