I bought the Quadrafire MT Vernon AE as my first pellet stove over the summer and finally got it hooked up and running a few weeks ago. My house is a ranch that is built into a slope, so my basement walks out to the backyard and also has a 2 car garage. The basement is about 750sq ft and the upstairs is about 1200. I was hoping this stove will heat the whole house so I wont be buying any oil this year. It hasnt been too cold here in NJ yet, but the lows are in the 30's.
So far it has worked out great. Considering the size of the house, it takes quite a while for the heat to radiate upstairs. During that time the stove will run on High and burn about 1.5 bags a day. Once the house is warmed up though, I have been able to maintain a 75 degree basement and a 70 degree upstairs burning 1 bag per day. Even my back bedrooms over the garage have been around 69 degrees thanks to a fan in the hallway. I am currently renovating the basement so it is virtually uninsulated, so I expect the performance to improve alot once that work is completed. When I gutted the basement I found none of the walls were insulated to begin with, so that makes me wonder about the insulation upstairs. Thats a later project though.
The main reason I wanted to write this is because of the battery backup system. I had a few questions about this before I bought the stove and I wasnt able to get clear answers (even from the dealer) before I bought it. First of all, you dont need to spend $80 for the battery cable from the dealer. If you pop the plug out of the back of the stove you can connect your own wires to the spade connectors. The ignitor in the stove uses 110v but everything else is 12v, so the stove doesnt have the ability to start itself when running on battery power. You will have to light it manually with gel, but thats really easy. If the power goes out while the stove is running, it will automatically switch to battery mode and stay running. If the stove reaches the temp you have set on the Thermostat, it will go into a low Maintenance burn instead of shutting off (since it cant re-light on its own). The one important thing that I have found is that the stove will eventually shut down for autoclean. I run the stove on the hardwood setting, to under normal operation the stove will autoclean about every 3 hours. On battery backup mode the stove will run for exactly 7 hours and then shut down for autoclean. I didnt expect that, from what I read in the manual it sounded like the stove would keep itself running until the power came back.
2 Days after I installed the stove I lost power due to a big snow storm. So I went to buy batteries to hook up to the stove. I didnt really expect the battery to run the stove for more than a couple hours, so I bought 2 deep cycle 105AH batteries and wired them together, hoping to get 10 hours out of it. My power was out for 4 days and I had the stove running the entire time, the battery gauge on the thermostat still showed more that 3/4 full on day 4 when the power came back on. I was very impressed with that, I would expect now that with only one 105AH battery, the stove would be able to run for 5 days or more.
So far it has worked out great. Considering the size of the house, it takes quite a while for the heat to radiate upstairs. During that time the stove will run on High and burn about 1.5 bags a day. Once the house is warmed up though, I have been able to maintain a 75 degree basement and a 70 degree upstairs burning 1 bag per day. Even my back bedrooms over the garage have been around 69 degrees thanks to a fan in the hallway. I am currently renovating the basement so it is virtually uninsulated, so I expect the performance to improve alot once that work is completed. When I gutted the basement I found none of the walls were insulated to begin with, so that makes me wonder about the insulation upstairs. Thats a later project though.
The main reason I wanted to write this is because of the battery backup system. I had a few questions about this before I bought the stove and I wasnt able to get clear answers (even from the dealer) before I bought it. First of all, you dont need to spend $80 for the battery cable from the dealer. If you pop the plug out of the back of the stove you can connect your own wires to the spade connectors. The ignitor in the stove uses 110v but everything else is 12v, so the stove doesnt have the ability to start itself when running on battery power. You will have to light it manually with gel, but thats really easy. If the power goes out while the stove is running, it will automatically switch to battery mode and stay running. If the stove reaches the temp you have set on the Thermostat, it will go into a low Maintenance burn instead of shutting off (since it cant re-light on its own). The one important thing that I have found is that the stove will eventually shut down for autoclean. I run the stove on the hardwood setting, to under normal operation the stove will autoclean about every 3 hours. On battery backup mode the stove will run for exactly 7 hours and then shut down for autoclean. I didnt expect that, from what I read in the manual it sounded like the stove would keep itself running until the power came back.
2 Days after I installed the stove I lost power due to a big snow storm. So I went to buy batteries to hook up to the stove. I didnt really expect the battery to run the stove for more than a couple hours, so I bought 2 deep cycle 105AH batteries and wired them together, hoping to get 10 hours out of it. My power was out for 4 days and I had the stove running the entire time, the battery gauge on the thermostat still showed more that 3/4 full on day 4 when the power came back on. I was very impressed with that, I would expect now that with only one 105AH battery, the stove would be able to run for 5 days or more.
