No stirrer in the firebox?

[GearheadGrrrl]

Looking for a new pellet stove and I've noticed most of them have no stirrer in the firebox. I've run my US Stove 6039 and AES Magnum 3500 without a stirrer with both the standard shallow firebox and the deeper AES "biomass" firebox which worked pretty well. However, you had to manually "stir" the residual pellets in the firebox at least a couple times a day and preferably every couple hours. Usually at least once a day you shut the stove down and dumped the "clinkers" out of the firebox or at least pushed the burning pellets to one side while you cleaned out the other.

So how the heck do these new pellet stoves with no stirrers manage to run through a whole bin of pellets or more without at least manual stirring?

 

[Mt Bob]

Well, "pusher" stoves-Harman- the pot continually self cleans. Other stoves may have a "drop bottom" in the bottom of the burn pot, that cleans every time it shuts down,relights. Now getting to basic top feed regular burn pot models, many(but not all) have self cleaning mode. As an example, my old Integra, top feed, round burn pot, not self lighting. You "should" stir the pot 1-2 times a day, depending on how high the burn setting is. Quite some years ago, actually the last programming chip they made for these old units, a "self clean" mode was programmed in. About once an hour, (I think), the auger motor would slow down the pellets dropping in, and the combustion blower would revert to high. This effectively cleans the pot, but not totally. As there are minerals in wood, I will still get a "clinker" in the bottom. I can go 3 days or more, constant burn, without removing the clinker, but after 3 it affects the heat output, so I will reach in and flip the clinker out, then all pot holes are uncovered. Don't have to shut off to do this. A constant stirrer is not really required for pellets, as my BIL found out when the stir motor died in his St Croix. Hope this helps.

 

[johneh]

My enviro stove does not have a stirrer. The burn pot cleans itself (ash blows out)

 

[tbear853]

Mine has a level rotating auger from under the pellet drop that pushes pellets horizontaly into the burn box from the rear, never thought of a stirrer.

 

[Jeremy6500]

I have a stirrer/agitator in my USSC 6500, but it is a multi fuel stove so it says it is there for clinkers caused by corn. With that said I have noticed that the fire pot will fill up with ash while burning pellets if the agitator isn’t running at all. I have made a number of adjustments to the USSC setting, one of which is to turn the agitator frequency down when burning pellets.

My PP130 doesn’t have any kind of agitator. The fire pot doesn’t overflow or have any issues as long as the exhaust is clean. I do usually shut it down every few days and dump the ash out of the fire pot. Not because it overflows, but because if the ash builds up too much it interferes with the electric igniter which is located at the back bottom of the burn pot.