Piazzetta Sabrina 2.0 Smoke Out + Occasional No Ignite issue

[woodyak]

I have a Piazzetta Sabrina 2.0 stove that I picked up used a couple years back. Overall it runs pretty solid but from time to time I'll get a "No Ignite" issue where the pellets fill up the hopper to a point of overflowing and then the stove shuts off with a no ignite message. When I remove the hopper it's hot to the touch and you can see some of the pellets were almost lit. Once I clean everything up and scrape the hopper clean it seems to start right up. I figured I just needed to clean it more but I've had this happen even after a fresh cleaning. This happens about once a month or so. Usually, this is not a big deal but I think it caused a recent smoke out.

I was away for the weekend and I got a call from my daughter. The pellet stove had massive amounts of white smoke coming out of the exhaust. Enough to where the neighbors called the fire department, while my daughter was blissfully unaware upstairs. She came down and the room had some smoke in it but the stove was still going. Instead of powering it down to let the exhaust fan do it's work she unplugged it which filled the house with smoke (she knows better now). In any case my theory is that the hopper filled with pellets and wasn't starting then all of a sudden ignited with an overflow of pellets causing a small explosion which put the fire out leaving a full hopper of smoking pellets. I've actually seen this happen once before awhile back and turning the stove off let the exhaust fan take care of things. I did a full cleaning thinking after that and things seemed fine.

I'd like this to never happen again. I took the stove and chimney apart and cleaned EVERYTHING. The only thing that stood out was the exhaust fan chamber had more ash than expected. I missed that when doing my annual cleaning. I started the stove up and it's working as expected. I'm thinking I should replace the igniter. Anything else I should consider doing? For reference I only use Douglass Fir pellets, mostly the Northern Warmth variety.

 

[gmac0518]

I know this is an old thread. Might help someone. I have the Monia, the baby sister to the Sabrina. It is about 5 yrs old. I started noticing random, like every few weeks flame outs just like you, big pile of unburned pellets. And recently flame outs after just 3 or 4 days of cleaning, and within hours of cleaning the stove was burning poorly.

I finally checked the door gasket seal. The gasket itself is fine but the seal is such that a dollar bill can move about at will with zero resistance, up, down, in out on the whole right side of the door. Turns out the two screws holding the bar to latch the door were loose. This made the door latch seemingly fine when closing but not sealed. Tightened those screws and so far no more issues.

Note the dollar bill test is just use a bill or thin paper to shut in the door and test the resistance to move it about and out. On the Monia since it is a flat face and a padded gasket, some limited resistance seems normal. other stoves have a rope and edge to make the seal, so the bill will be in a sort of s shape and in that case much more resistance to pulling out.