Serenity - Dumb question about feeding the stove

[Talegas]

Am i allowed to open the hopper and pour more pellets while the stove is fired up?

Or am i supposed to wait until the "fire out" message shows up , then turn it off , feed it and then back on?

 

[rcook430]

I don't have your stove but in my Harman I fill it up all the time with a fire going. I wouldn't think any stove would be different.

 

[Tonyray]

NO !! U MUST GET PERMISSION FROM YOUR STOVE DEALER IN WRITING..

 

[Tonyray]

Seriously, u would spend lot of time in between fill ups waiting for the stove to shut off...by that time, you would lose lot of heat in your dwelling.
like many stoves,, the flame drops conciderably when the hopper lid is opened [Safety feature] so it is done frequently but, your stove, your choice.

 

[Talegas]

Well, turns out the fire out message was not because of no pellets available.. something is different between yesterday and today (other than opening the damper a bit more). The fire died out by itself.

Only other different thing from yesterday (when fire was roaring) and today was that yesterday was windy out there (more than today since there is a bit of wind).

 

[Deezl Smoke]

You can open the hopper to ad pellets. Just dont leave it open any longer than you have to.

Wind does/can play a role in the stove's performance. Seems many stove brands and styles have the issue with wind. But for the most part, how the stove is plumbed to the OAK and the chimney design, dictate how much the stove will be effected.

 

[bags]

I don't have your stove but in my Harman I fill it up all the time with a fire going. I wouldn't think any stove would be different.

Winter has been pretty easy for us this year. Hadn't seen you in awhile so Hello.

I fill my two stoves while running all the time but different makes / models. Also can you adjust your termination cap away from the wind?? Some will rotate away some to combat the winds. Not sure of your setup though.....

 

[Talegas]

I'm resisting to believe it, mainly because I changed the V on the exhaust motor 5 V above on each stall, but my current theory for the fire to die out is the following:

If you let the pellets run down to a level that you now can see the auger;s entry, then the fire will struggle even if the hopper's door is closed.

Why do I think this? Well, i just refilled the hopper with a new bag, and now the fire is going strong. Same wind conditions outside.

@bags , my set up goes up the side of the house using a class A chimney and ends on one of those circular caps for it. I also do not have an OAK installed...(yet.. maybe ever,..not sure yet).

Anyway, V changes were not that great and first burn had default settings adn default damper opening.. failed burn only difference from first were:
1. outside wind conditions
2. Damper just a tiny little bit more closed
3. the amount of pellets in the hopper.

Very inclined to believe that i should never let the hopper go down lower than 1/4 its capacity.

 

[pageyjim]

I'm resisting to believe it, mainly because I changed the V on the exhaust motor 5 V above on each stall, but my current theory for the fire to die out is the following:

If you let the pellets run down to a level that you now can see the auger;s entry, then the fire will struggle even if the hopper's door is closed.

Why do I think this? Well, i just refilled the hopper with a new bag, and now the fire is going strong. Same wind conditions outside.


Very inclined to believe that i should never let the hopper go down lower than 1/4 its capacity.

That's weird mine works fine with no pellets. JK

An oil tank down to 1/4 tank can tend to give you problems. Keeping the gas tank at 1/4 will tend to give you problems. JS

 

[rich2500]

I'm resisting to believe it, mainly because I changed the V on the exhaust motor 5 V above on each stall, but my current theory for the fire to die out is the following:

If you let the pellets run down to a level that you now can see the auger;s entry, then the fire will struggle even if the hopper's door is closed.

Why do I think this? Well, i just refilled the hopper with a new bag, and now the fire is going strong. Same wind conditions outside.

@bags , my set up goes up the side of the house using a class A chimney and ends on one of those circular caps for it. I also do not have an OAK installed...(yet.. maybe ever,..not sure yet).

Anyway, V changes were not that great and first burn had default settings adn default damper opening.. failed burn only difference from first were:
1. outside wind conditions
2. Damper just a tiny little bit more closed
3. the amount of pellets in the hopper.

Very inclined to believe that i should never let the hopper go down lower than 1/4 its capacity.

you had been having problems with pellets blowing out of the burnpot if I'm correct so you should be lowering the exhaust voltage not raising it. Your objective is too have a nice bright yellow lively flame with the least amount of air going out the exhaust. The more air out the exhaust is less heat too the heat exchanger.

 

[Talegas]

you had been having problems with pellets blowing out of the burnpot if I'm correct so you should be lowering the exhaust voltage not raising it. Your objective is too have a nice bright yellow lively flame with the least amount of air going out the exhaust. The more air out the exhaust is less heat too the heat exchanger.

Yup, that was the original problem. That said, i reduced the opening by quite a lot and it was sort of OK, except that the glass window really got a lot of ash/soot on it. Made me wonder if constricting the air flow made the burn less efficient and more prone to soot. So, i decided to increase the opening of the damper a bit more (but still less than the first burn), and bam!, the freaking fire went off on me.

Now that the fire dying is "under control" or "reason is suspected", i can go back to trying to find out which setting would best burn clean the pellets without them jumping like jumping beans.

I tried the exhaust settings because the fire died on me.. which by the way, it was by default set to the lowest setting for each of the "stages" of heat.. 80V is the minimum setting, so Stall 1 - 80 Stall 2 - 85 and so on.. i just adjusted 5 V to each (upward).

I will reduce it back to original settings with the current opening and give another try to the burn (several actually) to try to figure out if the fire out was really due to the amount of pellets in the hopper.


One thing to call out (following your color description), according to my wife (i;m colorblind and struggle with naming colors all the same) the flame was "pallid yellow and the ends on the orange side".

what do you think is the reason for the color: lack or air, or too much air flow?

 

[alternativeheat]

Why are you lowering the damper setting and raising the voltage setting, what is your reasoning ?

In most cases I've witnessed with Serenity high combustion issues, the damper started something like wide open and was lowered to 1/3 open or between 1/4-1/3 and that's it for that portion, then adjust combustion voltage to a nice flame, done deal.. One lady here accomplished that in two or three messages with the Serenity guys here in the forum and hers was shooting sparks outside, her neighbors called the fire department ! She got it adjusted within a couple of days elapsed time. but in just about all cases I've witnessed, everyone lowered combustion voltage not raised it.

Edit: you answered that above !

To answer your flame color question, I'd want the tips lighter than that but not white. I'd do as I mentioned above , adjust that damper to about 1/3 , then adjust voltage for even lively flame, a few pellets dancing or wiggling in the pot but none blowing out. Maybe some sparklers coming out but no whole pellets.

 

[Deezl Smoke]

Yup, that was the original problem. That said, i reduced the opening by quite a lot and it was sort of OK, except that the glass window really got a lot of ash/soot on it. Made me wonder if constricting the air flow made the burn less efficient and more prone to soot. So, i decided to increase the opening of the damper a bit more (but still less than the first burn), and bam!, the freaking fire went off on me.

Now that the fire dying is "under control" or "reason is suspected", i can go back to trying to find out which setting would best burn clean the pellets without them jumping like jumping beans.

I tried the exhaust settings because the fire died on me.. which by the way, it was by default set to the lowest setting for each of the "stages" of heat.. 80V is the minimum setting, so Stall 1 - 80 Stall 2 - 85 and so on.. i just adjusted 5 V to each (upward).

I will reduce it back to original settings with the current opening and give another try to the burn (several actually) to try to figure out if the fire out was really due to the amount of pellets in the hopper.


One thing to call out (following your color description), according to my wife (i;m colorblind and struggle with naming colors all the same) the flame was "pallid yellow and the ends on the orange side".

what do you think is the reason for the color: lack or air, or too much air flow?

Darker color is lack of air. You dont want the flame to just lap upward and be lazy or not very active. But you also dont want the pellets blowing out of the pot either. There should be no smoke out of the chimney other than ignition. The exhaust pipe behind the stove, assuming it is approved double wall pellet pipe, should be just cool enough to hold your hand on for several seconds. You dont want to much of your hard earned heat going out the end of the chimney.

You are setting the "exhaust blower" to work the fire, not the "blower"?

You should be able to run the hopper until the pellet light comes on telling you you are out of pellets without effecting anything. The hopper is sealed at the lid with a felt like seal. The only entry and exit holes in the hopper should be the lid and the auger. If there are any other places for air to get in, the stove may sense a loss of vacuum. The factory used orange rvt on my stoves to seal the seams of the hopper.
If the fire goes out when the pellets get low, I wonder if pellet quality is causing some pellet bridging or some other means of pellets not dropping into the auger. If you watch the pellets drop into the pot, you'll notice sometimes it drops a bunch and then after several bunches, it only drops one or two pellets, or may even not drop any for a cycle or two. You can see the auger feed icon on the display each time the auger spins. If the pellets are really long, then they may bridge some and that may be compounded when the hopper runs low as the auger draws from the center of the pile when full. So when the hopper run low, the wedge effect of the funnel shape may cause longer pellets to bridge.

 

[rich2500]

Stick with it talegas, you will figure out the fine tuning in no time, The Serenity just takes a bit to learn because of its design and all its adjustability. We get alot of Serenity owners that come here asking the same questions and usually within a few days they get it figured out.All we can do is get you going in the right direction because almost every install is different so your settings may be slightly different.

 

[Talegas]

Darker color is lack of air. You dont want the flame to just lap upward and be lazy or not very active. But you also dont want the pellets blowing out of the pot either. There should be no smoke out of the chimney other than ignition. The exhaust pipe behind the stove, assuming it is approved double wall pellet pipe, should be just cool enough to hold your hand on for several seconds. You dont want to much of your hard earned heat going out the end of the chimney.

You are setting the "exhaust blower" to work the fire, not the "blower"?

You should be able to run the hopper until the pellet light comes on telling you you are out of pellets without effecting anything. The hopper is sealed at the lid with a felt like seal. The only entry and exit holes in the hopper should be the lid and the auger. If there are any other places for air to get in, the stove may sense a loss of vacuum. The factory used orange rvt on my stoves to seal the seams of the hopper.
If the fire goes out when the pellets get low, I wonder if pellet quality is causing some pellet bridging or some other means of pellets not dropping into the auger. If you watch the pellets drop into the pot, you'll notice sometimes it drops a bunch and then after several bunches, it only drops one or two pellets, or may even not drop any for a cycle or two. You can see the auger feed icon on the display each time the auger spins. If the pellets are really long, then they may bridge some and that may be compounded when the hopper runs low as the auger draws from the center of the pile when full. So when the hopper run low, the wedge effect of the funnel shape may cause longer pellets to bridge.

God, i'll have to read this after the 9.5% ABV beer and the bottle of pinot noir i drank have been correctly processed by my liver

thank you all for the responses.. will review/read/test and provide feedback. For what is worth, i did take a few pictures of the hopper, and yes there are red/orange sealant in some areas but i wondered if they missed some other (i provide pictures in my other post). That said, this latest burn was perfect.. fire never went off and i'm still very suspicious of the fact that the hopper was full this time.

Cheers! (Beer) <-- there should be an icon for drink or beer here!

 

[Talegas]

Darker color is lack of air. You dont want the flame to just lap upward and be lazy or not very active. But you also dont want the pellets blowing out of the pot either. There should be no smoke out of the chimney other than ignition. The exhaust pipe behind the stove, assuming it is approved double wall pellet pipe, should be just cool enough to hold your hand on for several seconds. You dont want to much of your hard earned heat going out the end of the chimney.

You are setting the "exhaust blower" to work the fire, not the "blower"?

You should be able to run the hopper until the pellet light comes on telling you you are out of pellets without effecting anything. The hopper is sealed at the lid with a felt like seal. The only entry and exit holes in the hopper should be the lid and the auger. If there are any other places for air to get in, the stove may sense a loss of vacuum. The factory used orange rvt on my stoves to seal the seams of the hopper.
If the fire goes out when the pellets get low, I wonder if pellet quality is causing some pellet bridging or some other means of pellets not dropping into the auger. If you watch the pellets drop into the pot, you'll notice sometimes it drops a bunch and then after several bunches, it only drops one or two pellets, or may even not drop any for a cycle or two. You can see the auger feed icon on the display each time the auger spins. If the pellets are really long, then they may bridge some and that may be compounded when the hopper runs low as the auger draws from the center of the pile when full. So when the hopper run low, the wedge effect of the funnel shape may cause longer pellets to bridge.

Ok, now that i dont have any alcohol in my body i was able to read this

I think the color of the flame is good.. it looks orange through the dirty glass (due to ash and soot) but through a clean corner it looks yellow and i guess bright.. pale says my wife.

I think the problem with the level of the pellets was that it was trying to kick start. I say this because for the past 2 days i have refilled the hopper when it was rather low in pellets and the fire never went off.

It seems i have the right settings now.. I will change the higher stalls on sunday (during cleaning time) and set them to 85 or 90 Max.. just to keep comparing them.

While i did a serenity search, i came across this (https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/serenity-pellets-in-hopper.148063/) and it seems that in some instances the fire does go out when there is not enough pellets in the hopper.

 

[Deezl Smoke]

Ok, now that i dont have any alcohol in my body i was able to read this

I think the color of the flame is good.. it looks orange through the dirty glass (due to ash and soot) but through a clean corner it looks yellow and i guess bright.. pale says my wife.

I think the problem with the level of the pellets was that it was trying to kick start. I say this because for the past 2 days i have refilled the hopper when it was rather low in pellets and the fire never went off.

It seems i have the right settings now.. I will change the higher stalls on sunday (during cleaning time) and set them to 85 or 90 Max.. just to keep comparing them.

While i did a serenity search, i came across this (https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/serenity-pellets-in-hopper.148063/) and it seems that in some instances the fire does go out when there is not enough pellets in the hopper.

Reading the link, I think Bioburner has a good feel for it. However the one thing I question is that the hopper is supposed to be air tight. If there is a big enough leak to allow the vacuum switch to shut the fire off, then it should happen about any time, not just when the pellets are low. So I would still consider the possibility that pellets bridge a bit when low and the auger has gaps of no pellets between the pellet bridge falling in.

I have a go pro camera and a small light. I guess I should try to put the camera and light into the hopper sometime when it is low and watch it. It may be fun to see what really goes on in there.

 

[Talegas]

i think you are right.. since then i have this tendency of going to the hopper and push all pellets towards the center.. i don't trust gravity to pull them towards the auger. I just filled it up again, so i'll test it tomorrow once it starting to starve.

 

[Lake Girl]

If you let the pellets run down to a level that you now can see the auger;s entry, then the fire will struggle even if the hopper's door is closed.

If you are seeing the auger, you should have already added more pellets unless you are planning to run it out to vacuum the fines that collect at the bottom. When hopper gets that low, the auger can not pick up a full load. If the stove is on it's lowest setting, it is very frugal on how much is feed to the pot i.e auger off for far longer than it is on.

 

[Deezl Smoke]

If you are seeing the auger, you should have already added more pellets unless you are planning to run it out to vacuum the fines that collect at the bottom. When hopper gets that low, the auger can not pick up a full load. If the stove is on it's lowest setting, it is very frugal on how much is feed to the pot i.e auger off for far longer than it is on.

^^^ This is exactly how it works.^^^

Here's my hopper as of last night. I did not help the pellets in any way by scooping them to center etc.


I noticed that the heat coming from the stove was a little lower than it should be. The auger was still grabbing enough to keep going, but the auger had gaps of low pellets.

 

[Talegas]

If you are seeing the auger, you should have already added more pellets unless you are planning to run it out to vacuum the fines that collect at the bottom. When hopper gets that low, the auger can not pick up a full load. If the stove is on it's lowest setting, it is very frugal on how much is feed to the pot i.e auger off for far longer than it is on.

I am not debating that, what I am pointing out is the fact that if all pellets fell to the bottom (as the design intends to accomplish) the auger would always be covered by the amount of pellets left in the hopper.

Thus Deezl's point of "bridge" is what was happening here. It has not happened lately as I tend to go there and shove the pellets towards the center. (reason is that I am measuring how long i can go with a single bag..right now is 24 hrs)

Here is a picture of a left alone feeding process.. after i shoved the pellets around, it filled the bottom high enough to cover the auger and more. So yes, if i left it like that it would have starved as auger would not have picked up any more pellets due to pellets "clinging to the walls" and not falling to the bottom of the hopper. This design should include some sort of up and down mesh/grid/grill that ensures movement of the pellets within the hopper. This amount shown in the picture would have lasted for 3 more hours.

 

[pageyjim]

So by your account your gravity hopper-feed system would be 89% efficient. And it was still running I presume. Not bad imo

 

[Talegas]

So by your account your gravity hopper-feed system would be 89% efficient. And it was still running I presume. Not bad imo

It is actually 87.5%
And i don't think this relates to "efficiency". Is not that is feeding more than expected, is that it stops feeding when not expected. Anyway, i guess this is the reason why the fire went off on me.

 

[pageyjim]

.

 

[Talegas]

24 divided by 27=88.8. From your post you had a potential for 27 hours of burn time."

Nope, sorry if it was misinterpreted. I meant that a single bag (through the last week) has been lasting 24 hrs. Not that the current bag was already 24 and 3 more to go. At the time of the picture, it was already past 21 hrs since i filled the hopper with a single bag and thus the remainder inside the hopper were expected to last 3 hrs more.

Tomorrow i am cleaning it up, vacuum it, cleaning the window, and then if i can will try the blackstone pellets for next week.

will try to figure out if more heat comes out, less ash, if they last more or less than the 24 hrs i got from these ones, etc. Fun to try new things.

oh!, and i'm thinking of placing an OAK to it drawing air from the cold chimney ash cleaning door.