Quadrafire Mt Vernon AE failure to ignite

[vinnymac]

Hello Hearth

I've recently come into possession of a Quadrafire Mt Vernon AE Pellet Stove that was purchased in 2007. The pellet stove has been operating fairly normally for the last three weeks, with an occasional `Vaccum Sw Error`. I've cleaned the entire pellet stove top to bottom, and read the entire manual front to back to better grasp how it functions.

This past weekend the ignitor stopped working, pellets drop and the blower is working, but no heat comes from the ignitor. I've never owned a pellet stove before so I am still learning a lot about how they function, however I am an engineer by trade so I know enough to understand how to debug mechanical hardware. Here is a photo of the original burnt ignitor.

After narrowing it down to the ignitor I found a spare that was purchased in January 2020 by the original owners. Replacing the ignitor with the new one immediately remedied the issue, and I saw the new ignitor turn cherry red within 60 seconds after Autoclean ran. 24 hours later the new ignitor stopped working. Everything else seems to be exactly as it was, except I noticed a small white burn on the ends of the new ignitor where the metal meets the insulation. Here is a photo of what that looks like. At a glance it seems like this ignitor is made of cheaper materials than the original SRV7000-462 model.

Thinking it was just a bad ignitor, I went and picked up a spare one just in case. After installing it and trying to go through startup for 10-15 minutes, the new ignitor was also not working. (New ignitor was Part #SRV7000-462)

Thinking a fuse might have blown, I removed the control board and inspected the traces to look for any damage on the PCB. It seems someone already added an inline fuse for the ignitor with a ceramic fuse, but it appears to be in perfect working order. The only possible sign of damage of any kind on the control board is the Neutral Line, which seems a bit more brown than the other components, as if it is heating up more than it should. It looks pretty similar to this photo another user has posted on this forum. (This isn't my photo but is a good representation of what I mean.)

Here is some information about my control board with the added fuse on the bottom. Apologies for the picture quality. The white plug all the way in the bottom left corner of the panel is the one that appears slightly burnt.

I am going to call a technician to come take a look at it. The board lights up, all the LEDs appear as one would expect, and otherwise the stove is operational and without error. I am worried I am going to be told I need to replace the entire control board, but I was hoping someone here might be able to advise me on another solution. I unfortunately don't have another solution at this time, and with the temperatures so low this year, I'd like to figure this out ASAP.

Also is it safe to light a fire manually in the Mt Vernon AE without the ignitor functioning?

Thank you

 

[johneh]

vinnymac welcome to the forum.
Pellet stoves were ignited for years manually.
Use hand sanitizer, put some pellets (handful into a bowl
soak in igniter fluid (Hand sanitizer) for a minute or two
put in the burn pot lite with a match close door after a few
seconds hit the start button and Bob's your uncle you have heat
Or just use a propane torch to lite the pellets in your burn pot

 

[Ssyko]

take a multimeter set to 200v AC neg probe on neutral and pos probe on Line, when stove is first turned on and see if the board is sending 120vac. if it isn't your board took a hit. if it does , check the connections and check the new igniter using the multimeter with probes hooked to the 2 igniter wires and set it to Ohms 2K and if it has resistance it should be good if it has 0.03- 0.00 it's shorted out?bad

 

[vinnymac]

I recently moved into a new home, so most of my belongings are still buried in boxes. I’ll see if I can find my multi meter but I doubt I’ll find it quickly. I may just go buy a new one.

I appreciate all the advice though, and will let you know as soon as I can what readings I get back from the stove.

Manually lighting the pellets has been working great! It appears to work just fine without the ignitor installed. So at least I am warm for the time being.

 

[kappel15]

When the power supply wire harness and connections for ac power to igniter, start to turn brown, they are on their way out. One of the weak points in this stove. Time to replace the ac power supply harness, and control board. It is a hit as expensive as the boards are, but needs to be done. Even if board still functions, it will fail in the future. kap

 

[SidecarFlip]

The convenience of auto light versus the old school gelled firestarter and match method. I'm the latter. If I ever bought another unit and it was auto light, I'd disable it.