Pretty much the same components that are in the average condensing furnace. My experience with a pellet stove showed me that there were two vulnerabilities on the system. Surge protection of the electronics and poor snap switch quality. I put surge protection in for the unit and replaced the failing snap switches with better ones and that ended service issues. All pellet stoves are not created equal. There are some poor designs and there are some good ones. Breakdowns happen, but remember, folks come here mostly to deal with questions and problems. We rarely hear from the many thousands that have good working units.
Manly I hear you. I put in the pellet stove to help with heating. The timing couldn't have been better as my shoulder froze up the next year and chopping wood was out of the question. Even hauling wood was difficult and loading it into the stove right-handed was painful. The pellet stove was a godsend during this period of recovery. Now in retirement I have the time for more work outdoors, but the body becomes a little less willing every year. I can no longer load jumbo rounds of scavenged into the truck, same with getting them split. My back has gone out too many times. I can hire help, but that kind of defeats the process, so we are buying more wood than scavenging. I still split, but no longer 3 cords a year. Fortunately I had the foresight to change the house's primary heating in 2006. The pellet stove was sold and a high efficiency heat pump was installed. This takes the stress out of heating for us during milder weather and frees us up to travel, gardening, writing and other creative activities. It has the added benefit of being far less expensive than either pellet or purchased wood heating and has been very reliable. The only servicing has been filter changes.
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