Pellet Stove Insert for a newbie

[wilburg]

I have had my stove for one month, so I figured I would give an update:

I love the accentra So far so good, nothing unexpected.

The fan is a bit more noisier than I thought when it is in medium settings, I haven't had to turn it to high YET, the fan is much like an air conditioner, but if I find myself hearing it, I turn it to low, and I can't hear it at all.

The only thing I hear besides the fan is a very very faint tinkle as pellets are being dropped, and quite honestly, I almost never hear that. Once, I heard a pellet being crushed by the auger.

The flame is huge, so big in fact, that sometimes I wish there was a cover for the glass for nighttime. I call it my "blazing sun".

I have tested about a dozen different brands in it, and had no trouble with any particular pellet brand. Right now I burn cheap HD firesides during the day and Okies (soon to be Cubix) at night.

I burn 1 bag every 19-24 hours .. 19 hours when is is below 20 degrees and windy.

The accentra heats my entire first floor, I have a ranch with a very large kitchen addition, and I don't think the electric has come on yet.. but I am having trouble trying to heat the upstairs.

I fill the hopper twice a day, not because it is small, but because I use two 15 pound coal buckets to help me deal with bags. I find it very easy to fill the hopper. The hopper lid is large for an insert and locks in an upright position.

I scrape daily, and I clean the stove once a week, but feel very comfortable that if I don't get to it, it can wait another week. The glass stays very clean. All I do to clean it is wipe with a wet papertowel. once a month or so, I think I will be cleaning the glass with something better, because I am getting a dark brown spot that doesnt clean easily. However I find the weekly cleaning process to be easy and takes about 15-20 minutes.

The theromstat option works great, on warmer days the stove just shuts itself off and turns its self on (no button to hit) and adjusts the fan speed

I'm not knocking the other brand, All I can say is I am happy

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Lots of luck Fred.

Let me translate using Enviro's published figures for the Empress insert.

• 83% efficient

• 34,000 BTU input

That means if you keep that stove's heat exchanger spotless at most you'll get 28220 BTUs of output into your 700 square foot room and in average house you need around 35 BTUs per square foot to maintain 72 at 32 degrees you need almost 24,500 BTU/hour just to hold that temperature.

That's assuming an average house.

I hope your HVAC person has lots of thermometers and has them in more places than just in the room with the stove.

 

[nh1234]

Hummmm...I think lots of people think that these "space heaters" are by default whole house heaters??..while lots of times depending on layout they can do a reasonable job with "some" houses there are WAY to many variables here to compute. Since EVERY setup is different it is VERY hard to make a accurate determination without a lot of trial and error. To sell a stove I guess
the dealer has to tell the buyer it is great for their application (and in lots of cases it is relatively predictable) however in all honesty it is hard to tell until the stove is run in the intended application. Those with experience here understand what to expect
but those without experience wind up frustrated in some cases. Just my thoughts..probably not worth much. Pellet stoves can be GREAT if you understand their limitations and have the ability and desire to take care of them. I do not think for the most part they are a "set it and forget it" device. I do not mean to say they need to be nutured constantly but they do require care and cleaning beyond what the inexperienced realize when starting out. The ideal for me is "I WANT FREE HEAT" with no effort...hummm good luck with that right??

 

[Freddyp]

[quote author="SmokeyTheBear" date="1294217243"]Lots of luck Fred.

Let me translate using Enviro's published figures for the Empress insert.

• 83% efficient

• 34,000 BTU input

That means if you keep that stove's heat exchanger spotless at most you'll get 28220 BTUs of output into your 700 square foot room and in average house you need around 35 BTUs per square foot to maintain 72 at 32 degrees you need almost 24,500 BTU/hour just to hold that temperature.

That's assuming an average house.

I hope your HVAC person has lots of thermometers and has them in more places than just in the room with the stove.[/quote

Hey thanks for the post back, I wish I had spoken to you before making this purchase. I am convinced that I am not getting anywhere near 28K BTU's at this point. I keep the stove very clean and vacuum it sometimes twice a week. If I run it on the highest setting I can stand directly in-front of it, literally 1 foot in front of it without any consequence. If I try that on my wood stove I get burned. I have tried multiple premium grade all hard wood pellets including the expensive Lignetics and see no difference in performance. My burn seems fairly clean, since my ashes are like talcum powder with no clinkers. My window does get covered in soot very quickly which I am sure means something. Overall I am trying to do everything right, but am not getting enough heat to heat even a 300 sq foot area I can run this stove for 12 hours on high and never break 72 degrees, BTW my house without heat on an average 32 degrees never goes below 62 degrees. The installer came to my house before the sale and told me I would be "blown out of the room" and would probably have to open a door or window on occasion. NOT EVEN CLOSE. I don't mean to ramble on, however if the tech can not fine tune this one last time, then I will be requesting my money back and going out to look at Harmon or the Quad.
Will keep you posted.

 

[tjnamtiw]

bad post. sorry

 

[Freddyp]

Hi all I just wanted to give an update on my situation with the Enviro Empress Pellet Insert.
Last I posted, I was waiting for the installer to come back out to my home so that he could try to fine tune my stove. Well that happened on this past Friday and I ended up in a "good news - bad news" situation. First off the tech did a great job!
He did fine tune the stove and for anyone that has the Empress insert the settings this is what he ended up with;

For all heating settings, 1 thru 5 he ended up with Trim/Feed set to 4 & Combustion set to 1. The damper is almost completely closed.
This produced consistent Magnehelic setting of .09 to .11. He had the techs from Vancouver BC at the factory on the phone while he was doing this.
Overall I have seen a difference in the performance of the stove, however I am still not getting enough heat to heat a 300 Sq/Ft room.

So you have all the facts, I am using either Green Team or Lignetics pellets which are premium 100% hardwood with a all the right specs. Stove is vacuumed multiple times a week and is spotless and I get no clinkers.
My home is 25+ years old, and is worth close to a million dollars in todays market,,, meaning it is pretty well built and insulated and we don't exit or enter this room where the stove is located from the outside, (use garage entrance)
Since he tuned it, I am getting a very large flame and easily fill the entire fire box on almost all setting and am wondering if there is such a thing of over-firing the stove??? I can observe the flame dancing completely into the heat exchanger.
On Saturday I was able to run the stove for close to 20 hours and was only able to raise my internal temp from 62 to 71 degrees for an 8 foot radius (btw - my house maintains 62 with no other heat sources). If you walk 10 feet in any direction from the stove, the temp drops down to around 65/66 degrees. The tech confirmed this with his heat meter. He also measured the heat exchange at around 440 degrees after a few hours of run time. (I don't know what it should be or if this is good or bad).
At this point, since it has only been two days, I have decided to continue the monitor the stove and temperature both in my home as well as outside my home for the next week or so.
Other than that I must say I am more confused now than I was before. He seems to have it running pretty good and all motors, fans and mother boards appear to be in good running order. Bottom line is this stove does not seem to be capable of heating anything more than 300 sq feet,,,something that I could have achieved with a quartz electric heater for $50.
For anyone thinking of buying an Enviro Empress Pellet Insert, I would recommend that you do your homework and have the salesperson come to you home and do an accurate assessment. (I did that by the way) For a stove that is only 2.5 months old and in perfect running order, I would caution you to think twice before you buy this stove. I do not feel that any consumer should be allowed to spend close to $4K for the stove and pro install and then have to go through all this. I think Enviro - Sherwood Industries knows that they have a dog on their hands with this particular model. It looks good,,,, but does not perform. I will continue to monitor it for this week and if the performance does not improve, then I will be requesting my money back or going to court.
I will keep you posted.
Thanks for listening.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

It is possible to have a really nice fire in the stove and have a large amount of the heat exit the flue.

Now that the stove is "tuned" maybe you care to tell us how much insulation is in the walls of that room you are trying to heat?

While you contemplate that would you please provide the length, width, and ceiling height in that room?

I'll see if I can locate the blower size of that stove.

Do you have an OAK installed?

 

[Freddyp]

hey thanks for the post.
For the sake of this post let me try to give you a verbal tour of my home.
The house is just over 25 years old and was originally an all electric house. The construction at that time frame was called envelope construction meaning that each room was independently insulated. Floors, ceiling, all internal walls including 2X6 outer walls. All insulation is owns corning 6 inch pink fiberglass (no blown in stuff) all interior walls are insulated and use double 3/4 Sheetrock then plastered. All windows are Anderson and in this room were the stove is at are only 2 yrs old. The house is extremely tight and quiet.
The room were the insert is located, is a combination kitchen and family room with a total of 475 sq/ft,, ceilings are 7 ft 8 inches.
This great room only has 3 windows in it, a slider, a kitchen sink window and a bay window,,, all thermal pane Anderson. The slider then has a thermal,heavy grade curtain on it. The stove is insert into a 7 ft wide,floor to ceiling cobblestone fireplace,located on an internal wall. Digital temp of the stonework was 65'.
The flue is a 4 inch stainless liner that runs 13 ft from stove to chimney, again within the center of the home, not exposed to outside temps.
Assuming you walking into my home, you would first walk into the family room which is were the stove is located. There are no walls and the family room flows into the u-shaped kitchen area with little or no upper cabinets as you walk further you are now in a eat in kitchen area. In total all three rooms can be seen from one end to the other and have under 500 sq/ ft of living space.
During the winter months we enter and exit the home via the garage,,,,not through this room.
If I sit in the family room say watching tv or something, I can get that immediate room up to 72, but if you walk 7 ft or so into the kitchen for a glass of water, the temp drops to 66 or so, sit at the kitchen table and it drops to 64 or so. The installers digitally measured this last week after tuning the stove.
BTW - the stove recycles the air from the room to function not from an external feed.I talked about this with the installer but do not want to go down that road at this point, since I think the stove is either defective or not meeting the advertised 34K btu's they say it is capable of.
That's everything. Let me know what you think and BTW is there a way to measure what the actual BTU that the stove is creating at that source.
Thanks for your time

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Let me be certain I have this correct, you have a large thermal mass surrounding an insert that reached 65 degrees after having started at an ambient temperature of 62 degrees.

This unit is in an open area of 475 square feet with a height of 7 and 2/3 feet or comprising a volume of approximately 3644 cubic feet, that all other areas of the house are closed off and insulated from the area to be heated, and that you are not using outside combustion air?

I just want to line up the ducks so to speak.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

I didn't want this to get passed up you asked "Let me know what you think and BTW is there a way to measure what the actual BTU that the stove is creating at that source."

The answer is yes there is, however you aren't likely going to want to spend that kind of money to do it with instrumentation.

The closest proxy is to use a lab test report for the pellets you are burning and use that and the amount of pellets in pounds burned over several hours. You need to understand that this now places you in the fuel quality specific area. Pellets are not the same. Not even close.

There can be a 20% difference in heat output between two different pellets in the same stove.

There can also be a huge difference in heat output between the same stove with and without an OAK installed.

There is nothing like sending air you just heated up the flue only to have the same amount of much colder air get sucked in from outside. That stove is going to get its combustion air from outside one way or another.

As for your house being particularly tight it may not be as tight as you think it is.

Have you done a blower test on the house? Folks have come away with all kinds of surprises when those tests are done.

 

[gpcollen1]

Great feedback, thanks Wilburg.

And none of it based on experience, yet...

 

[Freddyp]

sorry I should have mentioned something about the pellets.
I originally bought a few tons of Green Team pellets from my local Loews. As for specs they are considered a premium 100% hard wood with less than 1 percent ash and rated at around 8K btu per pound. I also sift every load of pellets into a 12 pound container for ease of use. I have found these to be very clean and very consistent. Since I was having this problem I did more research and was told that two other manufacturers pellets were considered the best - Lignetics & Cubix.

I went out and purchased approx. 10 bags of each of these and then conducted more burning test. Prior to the stove being tuned neither of these other two manufacturers pellets produced any different results.
I actually saved a Plastic baggy of each of of these two manufacture pellets and showed them to the tech last Friday - he could not see a difference from the green team that I use most often.
I still have 2 bags each left of the Lignetics and cubix and plan on testing them out again this week end.
All pellets are stored in doors.
Since this past Saturday I have been tracking hous run, setting and how many pellets burned and internal temperature of house. At this point I don't have enough data to confirm what my gut is telling me - this stove can not put out the btu's that they are saying.
BTW I meant to mention in my earlier post,,, Although the glass never really stayed clean, it would get whitish or opaque,,,I am now getting brown cresote on the window - not sure what that means but assume since the flame is so large now that it is a bi- product.
I also vacuum the stove twice a week with a professional hepa 5hp vac - not a crappy fireplace vac that others may be using.
There is one theory that I don't know how to prove out, but it has to do with my house being so tight,,,,maybe there is not enough air in my house to feed the stove and thereof I am sucking in the heated air as quick as it is making it and then reburning it.????? does that make any sense????

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Here is how it works FredfromBoston.

A fire needs so much oxygen (read air in order to burn properly) it will get that air via the air intake on the stove, the stove doesn't care if that air is air you have already heated or not, if by chance it is inside air, the air that gets sucked into the stove for combustion must be replaced by air from somewhere else, that replacement air will come from outside of the house, it must by the laws of physics. Otherwise the fire will slowly die out and anyone inside the house will have major problems due to lack of oxygen.

If your house is that tight (you are assuming that for which you have given no real evidence for) you likely would have already looked into heat recovery venting because of health problems brought on by poor indoor air quality.

You are overlooking improper installation of that insert as being a possible cause of your lack of heat.

The reason why fireplaces were so bad at heating was that the heat they produced went up the flue and the air that replaced what went up the flue was replaced by air from outside.

If that insert install didn't get the fireplace flue properly sealed you will also send heated room air up the chimney to go along with that which you are sending up the flue.

I've still got to look up some information on your particular stove. I was away from the house this afternoon and didn't get to it.

Also for your information my house is of 2x6 wall construction, 4 years old, very well insulated, and sealed (this doesn't mean it doesn't have air infiltration, which just happens to be the biggest heat loss I have), the heat loss for this house is slightly more than 20,000 BTU/hr at 0 degrees. My stove heats 1800+ square feet of the house usually without going above the midpoint on the stove firing rate that is 3 of 5. I have no desire to waste my pellets sending already heated air up the pellet stove flue I have used an OAK since first fire.

ETA: I still haven't found the information I'm looking for namely the air flow through the combustion system in CFM at each of the firing rates for your stove.

It appears that Enviro has at least two convection blowers that they have used on the Empress one is 105 CFM and the other is 160 CFM. I'm still looking for information.

I've also done a bit of looking at other insert installs and am beginning to think that a very large fraction of your heat is going into the cobblestone fireplace and up the flue.

Using a gross black box heat loss calculation that stove should have no trouble heating that area unless the heated air is escaping up the flue and around the flue heating up chimney and cobblestone fireplace. This gross calculation doesn't take into account the combustion air situation or possible install issues. It also assumes that your walls are uniformly insulated which is rarely the case and there are no windows. Even doing it this way your single largest heat loss is due to infiltration.

 

[Nevada]

I put in my Accentra in Nov 2010 and could not be happier. Here is a link with some pics.
https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/65571/

I grouped my brand choices as
Enviro - Quad - Harmann and I would have bought any of these three brands given style, price and dealer availability in my area.

I have had the Accentra cranked up nearly 24/7 since installation and it is superb. I set the thermostat on 70 and walk away, she simmers down when needed and cranks back on when needed, all hands free. Its hard to beat the appearance of the accentra compared to some of the competitors and that makes the difference in price in my mind. The accentra looks like a quality cast iron beast and it heats my 1800 foot home with sub zero temps, no problems.

Good luck !

 

[Countryboymo]

If the insert isn't really sealed in very good a large amount of room air could be going up the chimney and the air replacing it would be frigid. The outside air kit would seem to have a more positive impact on a smaller area.