newbie 6041 question, wont heat enough

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fastmike22

Member
Dec 21, 2010
30
western pa
I have just purchased my first multi fuel burner, a 6041. Now my question is i have it turned all the way up setting 5 using pellets for fuel. It has been running full throttle for 3 days using about 2 bags of pellets a day and i cant get my basement above 62- 65*. I really dont know much about them but from what i have read in reviews i kind of expected more heat out of it. My basement is about 1200 sqft. I have tried 3 different brands of pellets and played with the draft and blowers. Right now i have the draft half open and it has a pretty strong flame but just not enough heat to make a difference. Before the pellet burner i would say my basement temp was arout 60* I bought it for an additional heat source to keep the basement warm and make my electric furnace not run so much but its not doin anything but eating pellets. Also i noticed the auger quit turning today. Any help would be much much appreciated. This is a brand new stove also. Thanks again
 
Seems like it should heat your basement a little more than it did. Im not an expert but my guess is if you have a lot of concrete, such as an unfinished basement the concrete and cinder block will absorb a lot of the heat like a sponge. But it still seems to me that it should go above 65 . Im sure some of our experts here at the forum will give you some idea of why your not getting the heat you wanted. As far as the auger, since the stove is new I would contact your dealer, Im sure the dealer would have to fix it under warranty. Why the auger stopped can be something as simple as a pellet jam up, Im not familiar with your particular stove so I'm no help there.

You can try unplug the stove for a few minutes and plug it back in, and if you have a reset button try resetting it and then see if the auger starts up again.

Good Luck ,
 
That stove should run you out of a 1200 sq ft room on 5. I heat most all of my 2000 sq ft 100+ year old hose with the same stove on 3 most of the time. The air coming out of the front of the stove is 180 degrees on 3 it should be over 200 on 5? As said above a unfinished basement can be like a sponge and suck the heat right out of the room i have my stove on the main floor so i don't have any experience with heating a basement? As for the auger if it stopped feeding pellets check the switch under the hopper door you may have to tweak the arm to make sure it trips the switch when the door is closed.
 
I'm baffled, how do you figure if the temperature is 5 degrees above what it was before that it isn't having any effect on the furnace?

Now could you provide dimensions for the basement and a guess at how much of the basement walls are above ground, the thickness of those walls, their height, and what they are made of?

Uninsulated concrete is an excellent heat conductor, you put heat on one side of it and if the temperature is lower on the other side, your heat is going to go through the wall rather fast. How fast depends upon a number of factors.

You give me the information and I'll run a heat loss calculation for the basement walls using 72 degrees inside and 32 degrees outside above ground and 45 degrees below ground (I'm not going to look up the frost line for your area). So this caclulation will be on the low side. You are likely to be shocked.
 
Ok i went down stairs and did some measuring. My sqft numbers where off a little.
My basement is 51L x 24w=1224 sqft
My garage in the basement is 32L x 11w= 352 sqft
Total for basement is 1576 sqft
The one side of the house has a man door and a garage door on it. It is totally exposed. It measures 34w x 8h=272sqft
The rest of the house has one block out of the ground all the way around.
Also this is an unfinished block basement. Heres my numbers see what you can come up with. Thanks again
 
Could you provide a sketch as to how it is laid out.

Is the garage to one side of or is it inside the 51 x 25 basement.

Making an assumption isn't what I really want to do. This affects the total exposed wall area and the volume of air that must be heated and the air infiltration calculation.

As it stands at the moment if I assume the garage is inside of the 51 x 24 and the design temperature is 32 degrees and you are in a 6000 heating degree day zone then the heat loss of the basement portion of your house is at least 23,276 BTU/hr. At zero degrees it is at least 42877 BTU/hr. Both of these assume that your basement is tight.

Remember this is for the basement only.
 
The 51L x 24w is one part and the 32L x 11w is attached to it on the side. think of it as two squares atached to each other side by side but one is just longer than the other.Hope this helps.
 
That brings the heat loss at 32 degrees to 31231 BTU/hr and at 0 to 57531 BTU/hr

The infiltration rate I'm using is 0.5 air exchanges per/hour which is basically for new tight construction if I use the default exchange rate those figures go to 35543 and 65474 BTU/hr respectively.
 
Ok i see your numbers and you are much more educated in the heating department than i am, so what does all that mean. Is the stove to small for what im trying to do? Im pretty much out in the dark when it comes to heating. Thanks again!
 
I would say according to smokey"s numbers yes. The type of area you are trying to heat i would say is your biggest enemy. Concrete walls and floor are a killer.
 
Well I took a look at some information on your stove and it is marginal for heating that area because of the lack of insulation.

It supposedly maxes out at 53,300 BTUs/hr output now I have no way of verifying that figure and I also don't know how good a pellet you are burning.

But in any event the stove operating flat out won't be able to maintain temperature much below 10 degrees if the construction is tight nor below 15 degrees if it is "normal".

I did quite a bit of research into the requirements for sizing a system to be able to heat my house at 0 degrees at the midpoint in the stoves firing range. I don't like surprises if they can be avoided by a little research.
 
I seen it said it would heat up to 2000sqft and knew i was less then that so i bought it. I guess maybe its just to small for what im after. If i could get the temp up to 70 in the basement i would be happy. But using 2 bags a day at 5.50 each it just isnt worth the money if i cant get past 64. I was using ligoneer and clean energy pellets that seem to burn pretty hot, so i dont think its a pellet issue.
 
I have a Harman P38 in my 1850 square foot basement / family room. Mostly concrete. It's a walk-out so one side is insulated and dry-walled. I also spray-foamed the rim-joist area. In winter the temp is around 62 with the the stove not running. A setting of 3 will bring the temp to 67-68. Last weekend we were downstairs all day Sunday and I set the P38 to 3.5-4.0. Temp was 70 and very toasty.
 
fastmike22 said:
I seen it said it would heat up to 2000sqft and knew i was less then that so i bought it. I guess maybe its just to small for what im after. If i could get the temp up to 70 in the basement i would be happy. But using 2 bags a day at 5.50 each it just isnt worth the money if i cant get past 64. I was using ligoneer and clean energy pellets that seem to burn pretty hot, so i dont think its a pellet issue.

The back of the envelope calculations use about 35 BTUs/ hr to do a quick estimation on what a heater can heat, using that your stove is in the 1500 square foot range.

These are frequently not in the ball park.

Fastmike I sent you a PM.
 
I'm no expert but it seems that fastmike is avoiding the fact that he MUST insulate his walls if he expects to heat his ice box. Sure you can get a bigger stove but then expect to feed it even more pellets to heat the ground around your house! Stud the walls and insulate the heck out of them is the only logical thing to do. Insulate the garage doors too. Maybe even insulate the floor and put laminate flooring over it.
 
Well thanks for all the help, i have one garage door and its insulated but studding and insulating the walls isnt gonna happen for a while. Guess it is what it is. Thanks again.
 
fastmike22,

I heat from my basement. 1st year we froze and didn't get it second year still froze and notice the snow was melted a foot from my foundation. I insulated the cement walls that summer. It was like adding a ton of pellets into my basement I didn't have to purchase every season.

Don't get a larger stove, Just add a ton of permanent pellets down there. It makes a world of a difference.
 
It's like every project I ever start. IT NEVER ENDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! %-P Didn't mean to be snippy but unfortunately that's what it will take. I myself am looking at having to replace all the insulation under my floor that has fallen down in the crawl space because the redneck SOB'S that built this place didn't block it up there. Maybe, just maybe I can talk my son into doing it. That's just one project. My pool out back has sunk down in one corner about a foot and apparently broken the pipe that feeds it under the concrete. You think YOU have problems!!!!!
 
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