Pellet Stove Fart...

[BoerBoelAmari]

Anyone has this situation happen to them.

This morning I was woken up by my fiancee because of an odor of smoke in the house. It was right around 445am when this happened. I went down to the pellet stove and found a light haze of smoke in the house. There was smoke coming out of the hopper of the pellet stove and out of where the vent tubes are. The stove was shut off and was cold to the touch. We opened the windows in the house and disconnect the pellet stove and carried it outside. I didn't want to open the hopper in the house in case it was a hopper fire. Outside I opened everything up and found that the burn pot was completely full of pellets and the area around where the igniter is was smoldering away. We called the FD just as a peace of mind to check the house for CO. Which they didnt even end up doing. I asked them about the smoke detectors as none of them sounded. They believe that the smoke was not heavy enough to trip them. I have 2 smoke detectors, one is just a regular smoke/CO combo. The other is just a smoke detector that is integrated with my alarm system.

The stove is hooked to a thermostat and is set to On/Off. What I am thinking occurred was the stove attempted to start and began to fill the burn pot of with pellets. For whatever reason, the pellets didnt ignite as they usually do and the stove kept dumping pellets until the stove entered it shutdown phase for not sensing any heat. The stove went through its shutdown phase and then turned off. This left the burnpot smoldering with the smoke not having any place to go but into my house.

 

[dlehneman]

Does your burnpot have any "lumpy" welds on the bottom? I have a PAH which uses basically the same burnpot setup and I had a similar thing happen this year. I heard the stove start up from the other room (also on a t-stat/ on/off mode) but after a while realized I hadn't heard the room blower kick on so I went to check on it. Pellets had completely overflowed the burnpot and there was no fire but the igniter was hot. In my case there was no smoke in the house but what had happened was that when I quickly cleaned it earlier in a dark room (I was in a hurry) I put the burnpot in a bit crooked and it hung up on one of the "lumpy" welds so that it wasn't sitting flat (the side with the igniter was tilted up, causing it not to ignite). After that I realized that it had never really sat flush so I ground off the excess welds. Since then I have experience cleaner burning and can run the stove on lower settings.

Aside from that, do you have 4ft or more of vertical rise in your exhaust? I'm wondering because it sounds like it wasn't drafting correctly.

 

[BoerBoelAmari]

I have 10' of vertical 4" rise. There was no heat, hence no draft. The stove doesnt sense smoke, it senses heat. Since there was only a smoldering pile of pellets, the stove shut down. After 20 minutes the stove shut off, leaving the pellets to sit there and smolder with no exhaust component running. The smoke had no where else to go. Im 99% certain this is the case. I will be leaving the stove set to High/Low. This way, I know for certain that the stove has started. It should only stop should it run out of pellets.

This is my second year with this stove. Havent had this happen before. Bottom of the burn pot is fine, no large weld areas.

 

[dlehneman]

I didn't think of it not drafting without the heat. I knew the stove wouldn't run without heat and that it would just go into shutdown.

Just to be clear on the burnpot: I don't mean the bottom (where all the holes are), I mean the corners at the top where it meets the mounting flange. You may not have anything on yours, but I just want to be sure you looked at the spot I was referring to. Mine ran fine all last year despite them being there, since I never put it in crooked before, but it does run more cleanly now.

 

[briansol]

do you have an OAK? sounds like you don't. when vac is lost, the exhaust ends up back feeding out the intake port.... an oak will send all that smoky air outside.

otherwise, make sure your stove is clean. these mis-fires on re-start are common with clinkers and other pot collectives that shouldn't be there.

 

[Stevekng]

I have 10' of vertical 4" rise. There was no heat, hence no draft. The stove doesnt sense smoke, it senses heat. Since there was only a smoldering pile of pellets, the stove shut down. After 20 minutes the stove shut off, leaving the pellets to sit there and smolder with no exhaust component running. The smoke had no where else to go. Im 99% certain this is the case. I will be leaving the stove set to High/Low. This way, I know for certain that the stove has started. It should only stop should it run out of pellets.

This is my second year with this stove. Havent had this happen before. Bottom of the burn pot is fine, no large weld areas.

Did you lose power? If you did lose power during a start up, then it might happen.

 

[BoerBoelAmari]

I have an OAK. And I dont know if we lost power since it occurred during the night. None of the clocks reset and the stove is hooked to a UPS.

 

[johnny1720]

This can happen if the wind hits the vent pipe just right. If we have high winds on occasion it will happen in my home.