Here's my story...
I recently returned home from vacation to find the weather has turned cooler, especially at night. Since I was gone for two weeks, I had the propane boiler set to come on at 61 degrees. Just warm enough to keep the aquarium heaters within their ability to heat the aquarium water to 80 degrees. Anyhow, I was anxious to fire up the pellet stove for some comforting heat. Its been "pickled" over the summer, which means it had a good cleaning, a desiccant placed inside the fire pot to absorb any moisture, and a shop rag stuffed in the exhaust clean out to keep bugs out. I removed the desiccant and pulled the shop rag out, noting a few stink bugs also came out who were looking for warmth, and as usual and I vacuumed them up till all was clear. I brought in about 20 lbs of pellets I had stored from last year and dumped them into the hopper. I replaced the batteries the the wireless thermostat and receiver with new fresh ones for the season and fired it up. Normally it takes a few cycles of hitting the reset button until the auger pulls the pellets up through to the drop chute. The odd thing is that I did not hear the sound of the auger turning. I let it go and hit the reset a few more times. No pellets dropping, no auger sound. Crap. It must be stuck or something. and I had loaded 20 lbs of pellets into the hopper. So i hand scooped them out until I could feel the auger with my fingers. I wiggled, pushed, pulled, and turned it. It did not appear stuck. Great, something else is broke. Being an electronics tech and working with industrial machines, troubleshooting would be no more difficult than going to work. I first checked the appropriate snap discs and they all were in the normal state. The next thing I checked was the vacuum switch, which seemed to me the most likely culprit, as it was a common failure amongst folks online. I placed a jumper between the terminals on the vac switch and hoped I would finally have auger movement. Nope. Grrrrr.. I decided next to pull the cover off the auger motor assembly and inspect the motor. I never had this off before, so I was curious anyways to see what it looked like. Visual inspection looks good. I did noticed the rubber tube coming from the vac switch plugs in under this cover, so i pulled it off and found it was indeed clogged with a good amount of fines. So i took the opportunity to blow them out from the other end. This wasn't my problem, as i had the switch electrically bypassed, but it was good to know for future reference. I reseated the connector to the motor and spun the wheel of hope again. No go. Next I removed the plug and measured the resistance of the motor. It was 1.6kohms which didn't seem unusual to me. Next I turned the stove on again and measured the voltage at the plug coming from the controller to the motor, expecting to see 120vac pulsing on and off. Nope. The controller isn't even trying to make the auger turn. The controller is connected with a circuit card edge connector, so I reseated this. No go. Hmmmm. All the conditions are set for the controller to turn on the motor, but its not doing so. Dag-nabbit, the most expensive part of my stove is probably bad. So there I sat, nearly midnight, anticipating another night of propane heating. Now I don't know why, but for whatever reason I decided to do a continuity check on my jumper. I recently bought a pack of aligator clip jumpers so I never used it before. Sure enough the jumper was open. Ah-ha! Back up the truck. I grabbed another jumper and check it first. Beeeeeep. It was a good jumper. placed it across the vac switch terminals and turned on the stove. The auger was alive! But this wasn't the end of my story. I decided to leave the jumper in place until the morning, which I would go to the local store and buy/order a new vac switch. I pushed everything back in place and prepared for some nice warm pellet heat. The fire pot loaded with pellets and started to ignite. However I noticed the smoke wasn't rushing around as crazy as usual. The fire started and was was really lazy looking, like it was a fire lit outside, not that usual smelting furnace jet engine burn you normally see. What now I thought? Did I leave an extra shop rag stuffed inside the exhaust clean out that i missed? I opened the door and saw a little pile of stink bugs. Thats not unusual, as the little buggers try to find warmth when the weather turns colder. Thats why I stuff a shop rag in there, to keep them from coming inside the stove. I sucked them out with a vacuum. No extra shop rag found. I thought to myself the chimney must be clogged, so i pulled off the top part of the exhaust adapter that mates to the 3" metal flex pipe. I've never had it off before so it was a little difficult to remove. Once off there was a big dirt plug covering the entire inside right at the end where it i removed it. I sucked it up with the vac and after it came out, so did a couple hundred stink bugs! It was a stink bug plug. They must have came down the chimney at been camping out on top of the shop rag I stuffed in there, and made a plug of dirt and whatever under them. Since I was gone for so long, it just piled up with stink bugs and dirt. After cleaning them out, I fired up the stove and everything was running great! I thought to myself, the vac switch probably wasn't bad all along. The obstruction in the exhaust flex pipe made it impossible for the exhaust blower to pull a vacuum inside the stove. The vac switch was doing its job. I removed the jumper and sure enough everything was fine. I waited until the convection blower kicked on, loaded the rest of the pellets back into the hopper and went to BED a little after 1am. Next season I plan to wrap up the chimney cap up on the roof instead of plugging it down at the stove. It was a good exercise in learning how the stove operated and costed me nothing but a little time.
Today's contribution back to the forum is for those looking for troubleshooting tips for augers not turning, make sure your stove's exhaust isn't clogged somewhere!
I recently returned home from vacation to find the weather has turned cooler, especially at night. Since I was gone for two weeks, I had the propane boiler set to come on at 61 degrees. Just warm enough to keep the aquarium heaters within their ability to heat the aquarium water to 80 degrees. Anyhow, I was anxious to fire up the pellet stove for some comforting heat. Its been "pickled" over the summer, which means it had a good cleaning, a desiccant placed inside the fire pot to absorb any moisture, and a shop rag stuffed in the exhaust clean out to keep bugs out. I removed the desiccant and pulled the shop rag out, noting a few stink bugs also came out who were looking for warmth, and as usual and I vacuumed them up till all was clear. I brought in about 20 lbs of pellets I had stored from last year and dumped them into the hopper. I replaced the batteries the the wireless thermostat and receiver with new fresh ones for the season and fired it up. Normally it takes a few cycles of hitting the reset button until the auger pulls the pellets up through to the drop chute. The odd thing is that I did not hear the sound of the auger turning. I let it go and hit the reset a few more times. No pellets dropping, no auger sound. Crap. It must be stuck or something. and I had loaded 20 lbs of pellets into the hopper. So i hand scooped them out until I could feel the auger with my fingers. I wiggled, pushed, pulled, and turned it. It did not appear stuck. Great, something else is broke. Being an electronics tech and working with industrial machines, troubleshooting would be no more difficult than going to work. I first checked the appropriate snap discs and they all were in the normal state. The next thing I checked was the vacuum switch, which seemed to me the most likely culprit, as it was a common failure amongst folks online. I placed a jumper between the terminals on the vac switch and hoped I would finally have auger movement. Nope. Grrrrr.. I decided next to pull the cover off the auger motor assembly and inspect the motor. I never had this off before, so I was curious anyways to see what it looked like. Visual inspection looks good. I did noticed the rubber tube coming from the vac switch plugs in under this cover, so i pulled it off and found it was indeed clogged with a good amount of fines. So i took the opportunity to blow them out from the other end. This wasn't my problem, as i had the switch electrically bypassed, but it was good to know for future reference. I reseated the connector to the motor and spun the wheel of hope again. No go. Next I removed the plug and measured the resistance of the motor. It was 1.6kohms which didn't seem unusual to me. Next I turned the stove on again and measured the voltage at the plug coming from the controller to the motor, expecting to see 120vac pulsing on and off. Nope. The controller isn't even trying to make the auger turn. The controller is connected with a circuit card edge connector, so I reseated this. No go. Hmmmm. All the conditions are set for the controller to turn on the motor, but its not doing so. Dag-nabbit, the most expensive part of my stove is probably bad. So there I sat, nearly midnight, anticipating another night of propane heating. Now I don't know why, but for whatever reason I decided to do a continuity check on my jumper. I recently bought a pack of aligator clip jumpers so I never used it before. Sure enough the jumper was open. Ah-ha! Back up the truck. I grabbed another jumper and check it first. Beeeeeep. It was a good jumper. placed it across the vac switch terminals and turned on the stove. The auger was alive! But this wasn't the end of my story. I decided to leave the jumper in place until the morning, which I would go to the local store and buy/order a new vac switch. I pushed everything back in place and prepared for some nice warm pellet heat. The fire pot loaded with pellets and started to ignite. However I noticed the smoke wasn't rushing around as crazy as usual. The fire started and was was really lazy looking, like it was a fire lit outside, not that usual smelting furnace jet engine burn you normally see. What now I thought? Did I leave an extra shop rag stuffed inside the exhaust clean out that i missed? I opened the door and saw a little pile of stink bugs. Thats not unusual, as the little buggers try to find warmth when the weather turns colder. Thats why I stuff a shop rag in there, to keep them from coming inside the stove. I sucked them out with a vacuum. No extra shop rag found. I thought to myself the chimney must be clogged, so i pulled off the top part of the exhaust adapter that mates to the 3" metal flex pipe. I've never had it off before so it was a little difficult to remove. Once off there was a big dirt plug covering the entire inside right at the end where it i removed it. I sucked it up with the vac and after it came out, so did a couple hundred stink bugs! It was a stink bug plug. They must have came down the chimney at been camping out on top of the shop rag I stuffed in there, and made a plug of dirt and whatever under them. Since I was gone for so long, it just piled up with stink bugs and dirt. After cleaning them out, I fired up the stove and everything was running great! I thought to myself, the vac switch probably wasn't bad all along. The obstruction in the exhaust flex pipe made it impossible for the exhaust blower to pull a vacuum inside the stove. The vac switch was doing its job. I removed the jumper and sure enough everything was fine. I waited until the convection blower kicked on, loaded the rest of the pellets back into the hopper and went to BED a little after 1am. Next season I plan to wrap up the chimney cap up on the roof instead of plugging it down at the stove. It was a good exercise in learning how the stove operated and costed me nothing but a little time.
Today's contribution back to the forum is for those looking for troubleshooting tips for augers not turning, make sure your stove's exhaust isn't clogged somewhere!
