Some help, new here (a little long)

[esuitt]

My wife and I bought a used Enlgand 25 PDVC pellet stove to use as primary heat instead of our oil fired forced air.
The unit is 10 years old and the couple we bought it from had all the paper work since new. They had just replaced the main blower and exhaust blower on the unit.
We brought it home and installed it as is with the factory settings and the heat and blower speed set to 1. It was keeping the house at 80* constant. Nice upstairs, but you could not sit in the same room with this thing.
So I called tech support (after 40 minute hold time) and talked to a very helpful technician who told me to change the factory low fuel setting from 6 to 4. This took my pellet consumption from 12 hours to 16 hours and my temp to 75*. Now a week later and it is 32* outside and I am having a hard time keeping the room temp 69*. I have tried to re adjust it back to the factory settings and even change the heat and blower speed. But it seems as is the room air blower is working but not the way it should be. I took the cover of the back and did verify both blowers are working.
Our house is a 105 Victorian and I new there is no insulation. Just seems to be a big change from 75 to 69 and the outside temp went from 45 to 32. Or is this normal?
Thanks for any help.
Ed

 

[warmncozy]

Hi Ed. Welcome to the forum.

I guess the first two things we should know are:

Have you cleaned the stove in the last week?

Have you changed pellets in the last week?

There also might not be anything wrong. The outside air changed 13 degrees and your inside temp changed 7 degrees. In a house with little insulation that doesn't seem like it's all that bad.

Dave

 

[esuitt]

Dave
I just cleaned the burn pot out this morning and made sure the vent holes were clear.
I did have to make an emergency run to Walmart on Thanksgiving cause we ran out of pellets.

We are just used to the stove keeping both 1st and 2nd floor comfortable.

But to stand next to the stove it does not seem to be blowing the heat off the way it was out of the vents.

 

[esuitt]

oh yeah the burn pot is building up a lot, like a wall instead of falling out into the ash trays. Why I had to scoop it out this morning, there was hardly any fire but it seems to be firing ok now. But still no heat from it.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Welcome Ed.

First you likely need to get out of the low heat mode on that stove.

Those low burn adjustments work in the lower two primary heat settings mostly (there are some exceptions, it depends upon the burn mode the stove is in).

I would also suggest that you run the room blower a level at least one above the heat level. You should try running the stove at say 3 4.

Where is the stove installed in the house.

What happened is that the house is requiring far more heat than you are providing. Changing the low burn feed setting reduced the amount of fuel being burned that is an automatic reduction in the heat that can be extracted from the stove by the convection system.

For a good idea of what it takes to heat a house I suggest that you locate a heat loss calculator such as http://www.builditsolar.com/References/Calculators/HeatLoss/HeatLoss.htm and do a bit of research in order to fill in all of the nice little boxes. I promise it will be an eye opener.

 

[warmncozy]

I'll let some of the more knowledgeable members continue to chime in here, but I'm curious what brand of pellets you were using before and after you ran out.

Dave

 

[esuitt]

I was just reading one of the post below for the 25 PDVC and am going to mess around the control board settings a little bit to see what happens. The 1st day we installed it and I changed the setting I kept blowing the fire out. That is why we reset them to the factory settings.
Take a compass and put our house in the middle of it, rear left is N, rear right is E, front left is W and front right is S. The stove is on the 1st floor west side corner.
The pellets I started with are Lignetics from an amish hardware store. These burned really real about every 16 - 18 hours. Walmart are Natures Heat from Pennington.
Half an hour ago I changed the control board setting to 4-6-1 and 3-5

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

A couple of other things to consider would be to put the settings back to what they were and to verify that any deflector plates are properly inserted.

I have no idea of what your or the party that you purchased the unit from ideas were as to a proper cleaning procedure.

Whenever there is ash involved it will build up and act as an insulator this of course interferes with heat extraction. So all heat exchanger surfaces fire facing and convection air facing need to be kept clean. The convection blower needs to be clean as well as any air intake grills, do not block the air flow into the convection system.

On the combustion side it is the same only you'll need to do more of the keeping it clean routine and it is a dirty job.

Signs of a dirty stove are excessive build up in the burn pot, a poor flame, a reduction in heat when using the same settings and fuel. Dirty stoves also have trouble lighting and staying lit.

 

[esuitt]

I am not familiar with total stove cleaning. So far I have cleaned the ash pots about once a week and the burn pot about every 2 bags of pellets.
So if there are other areas to be or need to be cleaned. Please tell me.
We vented straight out the side of the house horizontal 3" 4' long with a rain cap on the end, no elbows or Ts.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Try the two links posted in the first post in this thread here:

https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/58243/

and this year's thread here:

https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/60581/

It gives a performance overview of a number of the pellets available, please read all of the disclaimers.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

I am not familiar with total stove cleaning. So far I have cleaned the ash pots about once a week and the burn pot about every 2 bags of pellets.
So if there are other areas to be or need to be cleaned. Please tell me.
We vented straight out the side of the house horizontal 3" 4' long with a rain cap on the end, no elbows or Ts.

You should download the manual for your stove and get a copy of the CD that Englander provides.

Basically both of the air paths from intake to output need to be cleaned.

The combustion air path the most, there are periodic cleanings that are needed most are pellet consumption based but are actually a function of the amount of ash produced.

Your venting can likely be given a good cleaning just by using a leaf blower in vacuum mode after a good brushing of the fire box and the ashy side of the heat exchanger.

Do a You tube search on pellet stove leaf blower.

 

[warmncozy]

For what it's worth Ed...the Penningtons are a low end pellet that just don't give off the heat that the Lig's do.

Keeping all of Jay's disclaimers in mind I would at least try one of the higher end pellets on his list before you go crazy trying to find something mechanically wrong with your stove.

Short story:

Last week we had a little mild weather so I decided to get rid of the last bag of Lakes Region that I had from last year. These were (they're out of business) a very low end pellet.

I actually ended up digging them out of my hopper because I just couldn't get ANY heat out of them even on a mild night.

Moral to the story: The claim of "Pellets are Pellets" is VERY untrue.

Make sure you do everything that Smokey told you to do also. A clean stove is a happy stove.

Good luck,
Dave

 

[esuitt]

this is what I 1st started using and worked really well
http://www.lignetics.com/wood-pellets.html
I bought a couple of bags to start for 3.95, they also sell them by the ton for 199.00 from the amish store we go to.

 

[esuitt]

like I said Walmart was an emergency pellet source, I will not use them for my main source. It was thanksgiving day and they were the only store open. LOL
it was my fault for running out, i did not calculate my bag usage correctly or I would have bought more Lignetics.
Ppl we bought the stove from had two manuals and the all the paper work from replacement parts and stuff that was done over the years. Plus I had already downloaded it just to check on what I needed for installation.

 

[warmncozy]

this is what I 1st started using and worked really well
http://www.lignetics.com/wood-pellets.html
I bought a couple of bags to start for 3.95, they also sell them by the ton for 199.00 from the amish store we go to.

That's a great price by NH standards. I think it's even a great price in your area.

 

[esuitt]

yeah, I was just reading some reviews and seems the Lignetics have excellent reviews while the Walmart Pennington is almost worthless!
We have been wanting a stove for the past 3 years and I thought we did pretty good picking this one up for $450 used (even if it is 10 years old). But it beats paying $3 something for a gallon of oil ...

 

[warmncozy]

yeah, I was just reading some reviews and seems the Lignetics have excellent reviews while the Walmart Pennington is almost worthless!
We have been wanting a stove for the past 3 years and I thought we did pretty good picking this one up for $450 used (even if it is 10 years old). But it beats paying $3 something for a gallon of oil ...

That's for sure. We've reduced our oil consumption by almost 600 gallons a year by burning just under 3 ton a season. It's not a HUGE savings with oil under $3, but we don't have to answer that question.....too pre-buy or not to pre-buy..LOL

(it's also a warmer heat)

 

[esuitt]

Yeah, now that I am sitting here watching the burn pot. I am beginning to think it is in the pellets! These Remmingtons have a real low flame, like a smolder as the Lignetics had a tall bursting flame.
Thank you all for the help.
Even after reading the reviews, Lignetics had more good then bad. But you know how that goes too! All in a persons opinion.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Well I guess that's enough preaching about keeping the stove clean and time to practice instead.

Now my annual combustion blower cleaning was done after burning 23 bags and doesn't need to be done again until bag 73 (yep annual frequently means once a ton). So today it is brush the heat exchanger, open the ash traps and do a bit of putty knife and ash sucking work, dump the burn pot, empty the ash pan (it was last emptied 26 bags ago and can usually go 50 but it is not bone numbing cold out yet, so I'll do that today along with a check of the venting, OH THAT REMINDS ME Ed that 4' of horizontal you have did you make certain there is a slight upward slant to it?), maybe take the grill off and run a brush through the convection system outlets, and scrape any build up off of the fire pot.

You get to know that stove's air paths and shortly you will be its master.

 

[esuitt]

No, with the exhaust pipe we actually ran it down about 1* or so for rain and condensation run off. Our house on the side of a hill, so the exhaust is approximately 4' from ground level.

 

[esuitt]

I attached the heat loss calculator. Not sure if I did it right or not.
I had our furnace serviced three years ago and the tech performed efficiency test and got 83% for 80% furnace that is probably 20 years old.

Just changed the presets to 4-7-1 and the heat range and blower speed are 4-5. The flame is a little better, but still not heating like before. Sitting right next to it on the computer and barely tell it is running.

 

[esuitt]

Wont let me attack pic. Afraid if I make it any smaller you will not be able to read it.

 

[Phatty]

on these stoves the pellet quality and cleaning are very important.
im running green teams top setting 7-9 three lower 4,7,1.
i also run mine on a thermostat. i get 12-16 hrs out of a bag
when i need to fill the hopper i shut it down, dump the pot and start
it back up. once a week i shut it down pull out the burn pot grate
and the impingement plate vac and brush the whole stove. if i go
more than 7 days between cleaning when its real cold out she just blows
room temp air

 

[esuitt]

Phatty that seems like all it is doing now. Blowing out room temp air!
I have only had 14 bags through this stove. I stated above with the other pellets I could go 2 - 3 bags before having to brush out the burn pot. With these Remmingtons I had to get out the putty knife and actually scrape the crud out of the pot after 1 bag.
The ppl we bought ours from had a T stat hooked up to it, but it never seemed to work. So, I just leave it in the off position.

 

[esuitt]

Alright I just shut it down, going to let it cool off then get the shop vac and clean out the ash pan and burn pot really well.
Is there anything else I need to clean while I am in there? Still learning about this here.