Q about burning fire with the Accentra

[Hammerjoe]

Hi,

I've had my stove running for a couple days now and I've noticed something that worries me a little.

It is very cold yet, so the stove does not need to run at full speed.
I have it set up with feed rate 3, room temp and temp 70F.

What happens is that the stove does not fill the burn pot with pellets and as such the fire is deep inside the pot.
Sometimes it kinda seems that it shutting down so the fire gets inside the feeding system (just barely).

This is what worries me, the fire is basically inside the burn pot and because of the blower, it also blows embers out of the pot.

Anyway, is this someting to worry about, having the fire buring at the bottom of the burning pot?

 

[GVA]

It shouldn't be a problem as long as the hopper gasket is kept clean and sealed tight as well as access door to the slide plate is sealed.. You need air for fire, and the feed mech (and attached areas) if sealed will prevent the stove from burning back

 

[smirnov3]

It seems to me that having the fire deep in the pot is a good thing - it keeps the flames closer to the heat exchanger.

 

[HarryBack]

you shouldnt really ever get a full burn pot filled with burning pellets...would be a huge fire....again...embers are fines igniting and becoming airborn, normal.
Anton, in the Accentra, the heat exchangers are behind plates, and the location of the fire is irrelevant. We've found the FS Accentra usually does burn fairly far back...small, hot fire. Just once a week or so, make sure you scrape the burn pot down WELL...you'll have carbon deposits in there...hard nastly black things....break 'em loose.

 

[Hammerjoe]

Tell me about it.

Tonight something weird happened.
The burn pot was empty and the stove was off.
I turned it on, and after ten minutes or so by luck I decided to take a peak.

The ignitor light was on, the burn pot was filled with pellets and when I say filled I mean it was packed higher than the pot and it was starting to fall into the ash pan, and it was just about to start to smoke.
I turn the stove off and the stove imediatly stopped all operations, and I emptied the pot and did a good scrape.

Restarted the stove and after 10 minutes or so it started the fire, after it was filled with smoke. (all those scrapped deposits in the pot sure make alot of smoke).

But this was the first time I've had this problem.
I had once a problem where the stove did not ignite within 30 minutes and the status light started flashing, but I've never had it overfilling the pot in a way that they fall off.

y settings are feed 3, blower max, set to temp 20. (not too cold yet).

 

[GVA]

Yeah it's hard for the ignitor to heat up the pellets through the burnpot when there is a 1/4" of carbon built up between them.
Here's a little tip in addition to that if it really starts to smoke at start up, do a stove cleaning, or at the very least remove the ash buildup under the burnpot.

 

[HarryBack]

Joe, if the stove fails to ignite after one ignition cycle, it'll try again......youll have more pellets in the burnpot then. I think it tries to light itself for about 35 minutes. All bets are off with ignition, since how fast the stove lights is a factor of many things, the most primary being how clean the stove is.

 

[Hammerjoe]

I've had the same problem again tonight!!

I am starting to think that something must be wrong.
Because it isnt cold enough to leave the stove on all the time, I usually turn it on in the evening and shut it off in the morning.
So I've scrapped it two days ago, and again today the stove did not ignite. It actually went thru the ignition cycle (35minutes) and shut off and the status button started blinking.
Turned it off, emptied the pot (it was full of pellets of course) and did a quick scrape, (there was nothing to scrape really) and restarted the stove.
I would say that in maybe less than two minutes the pellets started to burn.

I will be extremely annoyed if I have to scrape the pot everytime I want to turn the stove on.
So far I have found two flaws with this stove.
First is the ash pan, it is too small and should cover the whole bottom area. Ashes dont behave properly and end in the pan, but all over the place, and it is a pain to vacuum all the ash at the bottom of the stove.

Now the other flaw is the ignition system, it should be more foolproof, a little bit of carbon deposit and cant ignite anymore??

I am not a happy camper right now...

 

[GVA]

I've had the same problem again tonight!!

I am starting to think that something must be wrong.
Because it isnt cold enough to leave the stove on all the time, I usually turn it on in the evening and shut it off in the morning.
So I've scrapped it two days ago, and again today the stove did not ignite. It actually went thru the ignition cycle (35minutes) and shut off and the status button started blinking.
Turned it off, emptied the pot (it was full of pellets of course) and did a quick scrape, (there was nothing to scrape really) and restarted the stove.
I would say that in maybe less than two minutes the pellets started to burn.

I will be extremely annoyed if I have to scrape the pot everytime I want to turn the stove on.
So far I have found two flaws with this stove.
First is the ash pan, it is too small and should cover the whole bottom area. Ashes dont behave properly and end in the pan, but all over the place, and it is a pain to vacuum all the ash at the bottom of the stove.

Now the other flaw is the ignition system, it should be more foolproof, a little bit of carbon deposit and cant ignite anymore??

I am not a happy camper right now...

Well it's a bit of a learning curve here sometimes, the carbon buildup is first and formost the problem but you might want to check/clean out under the burnpot where the ignitor is, There is a cover with 2 wingnuts, open it Stove should be cool and for safety unplug it......clean as much ash out as you can with your finger maybe even vacuum it this should help....... Remember this time of year the stove will cycle on and off but when the temp really drops the stove will allways have fire.....

Just remember the ignition system is trying to light a pellet with heat, not flame if the carbon builds up even a little then the heat will be isolated from what it is trying to heat. Good luck