Pellet useage. At a loss....

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kglassner

New Member
Nov 14, 2022
16
Pennsylvania
Hey, everybody. Ok. My brother in law gave me an englander 25pvdc stove. He used his on the 1st floor of his house. He set it on 5-5and heated both floors of his house by use of an open stairway. He went through just under a half bag of pellets overnight. We installed it in my basement. I added the recommended 3" OAK. If I set the stove at 3-5, I use a complete hopper of pellets over night. I filled it this morning around 7 am and it was almost empty by 3 pm. He gave it a good cleaning before he brought it to me. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance
 
it depends on how much space you're heating, the set temperature, insulation values for the space, and outside air temperature to name a few factors. When the outside temps drop below freezing I burn a bag per day and I occasionally have 2 bag days. YMMV.
 
As above. Your basement is insulated or not? Most of that hot air is going to get stuck in the basement. If it isn't or is poorly insulated you are losing a lot of heat. Also, what pellets was he using and are you using? Pellets may be longer/shorter which will feed through at a different rate etc. Finally, I assume your flue install is completely different to his? It may need some tweaking to get an optimal fire. However, I'm guessing the issue is it is in a basement.
 
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I know a guy put a maybe 24" fan mounted in the top half of his basement door which is at the top of the stairwell, it plugs into a wall outlet near the hinges, nice grate on hallway side of door, a pull chain switch on hall side of door too. Fan is mounted to the door, just rides along as the door is used. He runs the fan when running a wood stove in the basement, make use of warm air coming up the stairwell. He has floor grates in a couple places immediately over the stove, they have shutters he can open/shut too.
 
Photos of your set up would help as well
This is set at 1-3. And LFF set to 4. I understand about basement not being insulated. But with it not being set on a thermostat I wouldn't think it would use so many pellets.. thanks. Ken.

20221120_103422.jpg
 
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Even without a t-stat the stove operates on stove temp which means that as the stove cools down, it feeds pellets…so with bare concrete…big heat sinks….it’ll use more pellets.
 
Actually, on an Englander, that isn't the case. Th OP is correct, when not on a t-stat, it feeds at a constant rate, depending on the feed rate and then tweaked by the LFF. That said, has an auger motor been replaced? Is the restriction plate in place at the bottom of the hopper?

I might try to do a board reset. You can search on here how to do it. Make sure its set back to the correct mode (D I think?) upon the reset. You could even just check you're in the correct mode before trying a reset.

Eric