Quadrafire Mt. Vernon AE pellet stove review

[mIstabone]

Reading posts here helped me immensely while I was doing research on stoves so i thought I'd do a review on what I decided on.

Location: Southern Ohio

House: @1,900 square feet wood siding 25 year old open floor plan. Two stories, had existing hearth pad in an area that's the living room/Kitchen/Dining room. Opens up into the stairs for the 2nd floor and sits across from a hallway that leads to the rest of the house.

Previous heating method: Forced air electric, very cold and inefficient (20 year old system), would run 24/7 just to keep the house 65. Previous owned had a propain stove but that was removed before we moved in this summer.

The contenders: Quadrafire Mt Vernon, Harmon XXV

I ended up deciding on the Quad Mt vernon. I loved the new features of the AE model, the programmable thermostat, larger hopper, self cleaning firepot, and being i was planning on heating my whole house with this i liked the higher (on paper anyways) heat output. I disliked the harmon feed method.

We had existing 8" stove pipe and chimney above the hearth pad and decided to run the standard 3" pellet pro pipe straight up that. I understand i could have used a reducer and just vented into the 8" pipe however i felt safer running the new pipe and being i plan on eventually burning both corn and pellets i wanted the stainless lined stuff to last longer with the corn fumes abuse.

The good.
-The stove puts out a tremendous amount of heat. It more than adequately heats my whole house except for a out of the way great room. This room has an open wood-burning insert that i'll probably attempt to replace with people's input here next summer.
-I've only had the stove for 3 days however I love the self cleaning firepot. You set the fuel type and the stove dumps the firepot into the ashpan whenever necessary with the type of fuel it's burning
-The thermostat. This thing rocks you can program the temperature you want weekly or daily to the hour. I currently have the stove firing up at 4:30AM before we wake-up and heating it up to 74 at 9:00AM I have it set for 65 degrees to keep the house warm while we are at work. At 2:30PM before the wife gets home i have it set to fire back up to 72 to keep it nice and toasty for the evening. At 11:00PM it's set back to 65 to keep the house somewhat warm over the night. All of this is done automatically with no problems. You can set a temperature differential for the delta the stove take into account before it fires back up.
-If you dont want to rely on the above advanced mode you can choose manual and set a temperature and a heat output rate from 1 to 5. This is nice if you just want one blower setting for the evning.
-Depending on the fuel type or quality you can choose the flame height.
-Large hopper a 81 pound hopper holds alot of pellets. I've been going through about 3/4 of a bag a day
-Burns very clean. I've noticed very little ash, klinkers, soot, etc and the windows has stayed pretty darn clean

The bad
-This units is pretty loud if you have it on high and the blower is running full bore. Its not overwhelming by any means buts its worth noting.
-Pricey compared to many other pellets on the market this one seemed to be the most pricey. However i do believe its worth it, only time will tell if it was the right thing to buy a new years model with so many changes

Feel free to ask any questions or comments. I've appreciated all the knowledge i could gain from here and hopefully this will help someone out

 

[BrotherBart]

Congrats on your new heater. Looks good and sounds like it is heating good. It can't get better than that.

 

[begreen]

Thanks for the review. It looks great and appears to have the 2 dog night approval. I've been eagerly awaiting tests of the new design. How is the blower noise at medium? What speed are you normally running the stove at?

 

[mIstabone]

From medium to low including a medium low setting the blower isn't bad at all in my opinion. Our TV is right to the left of the stove and we have no problems watching TV and haven't had to turn it up any unless th units on high. Most of the time i have the stove on auto and it picks the blower speed and it normally bounces between medium-low and medium.

Heh quick question for all. I see some people talk about getting their installs inspected/approved etc. Does anyone know ohio's stance on that or is it by counties?

 

[elkimmeg]

Ohio adopted the The International Building codes so atlleast you know there is a code base suposidly they are equiped to enforce them but as other have found out this is not always the case
By mentioning the code base, there are codes written concerning pellet stove installations You will have to get intouch with you local inspection officials to see what they require
Some do not take kindly to inspecting a stove fired without permits or for that matter installed without permits

 

[MountainStoveGuy]

The DC motors are supposed to be quiet, one thing that is never quite is moving 200 cfm of air. Is it air noise your hearing or motor noise?
Glad you like the stove. I, like BG, have been waiting for some more reviews on this new pellet system. Pretty cool technology!

 

[mIstabone]

The noise is totally blower related (air coming out) and not motor related as far as i can tell. It sounds like a forced air vent on crack when its on settings 4 and 5. On 1,2 and 3 the airflow is less and it quiets down. The only mechanical type noises that i have noticed are when it automatically dumps the pot on a self clean.

 

[smirnov3]

The DC motors are supposed to be quiet, one thing that is never quite is moving 200 cfm of air. Is it air noise your hearing or motor noise?
Glad you like the stove. I, like BG, have been waiting for some more reviews on this new pellet system. Pretty cool technology!

Sure you can move 200CFM quietly - you just need the right shape / size fan bladeto prevent turbulance

 

[MountainStoveGuy]

the air noise issue was supposed to be solved by not using exchanger tubes, the entire back of the firebox is the new exchanger.
I guess the fireplace industry hasnt figued out that design of fan blades yet! at least the compaines that i deal with. There all noisy

 

[bmoore]

I also have the MT. Vernon AE. I'm new to stoves. The blower noise was a big surprise for me. It's also next to our TV. I've had some problems. And based on some of the other stuff I've seen on another site (iburncorn.com), lots of other people are having problems. It's just a new technology thing. I almost gave up on it and traded it in on the old MT. Vernon, but I stuck it out, and I think I'll be glad.

 

[mIstabone]

Just noticed for the 1st time today at startup the whole unit made lots of noise. Sounded like really low base like vibrations they quit after 3 or 4 minutes. After nearly 5 days of straight burning i can se ethis unit will be pretty maintenence free. Empty the ash pan, shopvac the area around the burn pot and you're done, sans the once a month full vacuming.

Still burning straight pellets cannot find any corn at a resonable price in southwest ohio.

 

[mIstabone]

Update after burning season. The Mt. Vernon AE ran great all winter. No major issues or failures. A minor issue with the self cleaning burn pot getting jammed if i ran out of corn and only burned a certain type of pellets. A buildup would occur and keep the burn pot bottom from closing. I burned 80/20 - 60/40mix of pellets and corn most of the winter and everything ran great. I've not had a board replacement yet like many have an am Leary of having it done with as good as it ran last winter. I used it as my soul source of heat all winter and would recommend one to anyone. I put 2 tons of pellets and 1 ton of corn through it.

 

[Bob512]

mIstbone, I have a new Mt. Vernon AE also. Only got to use it a few cool evenings this spring after the install. I have the same loud bass sound at start-up. It sounds like CORIE'S boom box.. :lol: My stove guy is coming out tues. with the new upgrades, and to fix the boom box sound! :coolsmile: Other than that it is not too noisey. It runs and cycles on and off with the t-stat. Exactly what I wanted. I'll post what they find, if anything tues night. Quick

 

[begreen]

bone, what did you settle on for settings during normal operations? What speed did you end up setting the fan at?

 

[Highbeam]

Since cost is such a big issue with this stove... how expensive was it?

 

[mIstabone]

I ran the stove on manual all winter. Fan setting on 2 or 3. Flame height +2, Fuel setting on premium pellets.

Stove was $2999 there are only 2 dealers in the area and neither would budge from MSRP on price. I went ahead with the quad rather than relying on a 20 year old heat pump which cost me 300 in November alone.

 

[begreen]

Sounds good. Glad that it worked well for you. What region/state are you in?

 

[Highbeam]

I ran the stove on manual all winter. Fan setting on 2 or 3. Flame height +2, Fuel setting on premium pellets.

Stove was $2999 there are only 2 dealers in the area and neither would budge from MSRP on price. I went ahead with the quad rather than relying on a 20 year old heat pump which cost me 300 in November alone.

Thanks for the info, that doesn't seem all too bad really. If the machine performs as well as it is supposed to and as well as you report then the price looks to be reasonable.

 

[mIstabone]

Sounds good. Glad that it worked well for you. What region/state are you in?

Southern Ohio area. Pretty mild winter except for a few weeks of zero degree's with windchill and 20 MPH winds. The Quad still performed like a champ and kept the house 72+ degree's.

 

[Bob512]

Bone, Stove guy was here today and put in the new[upgrades] that Quad sent them for my stove. They put in a new black box in the stove and a new t-stat on my wall. Fired it up and it doesn't make the boom box sound anymore. :coolsmile: Seems like Quad is on top of things to keep happy customers. He said they sent 8 of his stoves back to the factory and did the upgrades there. Hope it gets cool again this weekend so I can use it again. Quick