Still squeaking and I'm depressed....

[newf lover]

Had a Harman P68 delivered on Dec. 2nd, and a couple short hours after the installer left, there was a lovely squeaking sound when the pellets were feeding. Dealer came out, said needed a new bearing/bushing(?).The part finally got here and he came yesterday and put in the new part, scraped the auger down, scraped the burnpot etc. It was good for another couple hours, and now we're back to nails on a chalkboard. Needless to say I am quite depressed. I love everything about the stove, but the squeak is more than a little annoying. I have read here about people vacuuming out the hopper and putting powdered graphite in with some pellets and running that through. That's something I know he didn't do. Before I call him yet again, I will give that a try. How much graphite do I put in, and does anyone have any other suggestions?
I am confident the dealer will make this right, but I'm not happy with the length of time this is taking to straighten out. My fear of pellet stove companies cranking these out without good quality control is apparently coming true...

 

[newf lover]

I think that's what the dealer did yesterday, which is why I'm depressed. I don't know what else they can do. He took the auger out, had a file and was going to town on it. This was after putting in the new part (whatever that was), scraping the burnpot again, vacuuming out the stove, spraying some kind of stuff on the parts, and I don't even know what else. Obviously, what he thought was the problem, wasn't the problem. He spent quite a bit of time here. I will call tomorrow morning and he will have to come out yet again. Again, I'm extremely frustrated because it was like this out of the box. It's not because it's dirty, or anything else we could have done because it came that way. The fact that the dealer hasn't been able to fix it just makes it worse. Sorry for the venting.

 

[newf lover]

I shouldn't even post this, as the squeaking will start again, but I vacuumed out the hopper, put some graphite in with the pellets, and so far, so good. Obviously this wasn't the problem originally because the stove came with a problem. I'm not convinced this will be a long-term solution, but hopefully I'm wrong. The guy at Home Depot thought I was crazy when I told him what I was going to do. This forum is fantastic, as this solution had been suggested by a couple people in other threads. We'll see what happens, but for now I am enjoying a squeak-free stove!

 

[cantman]

I have had intermittent squeaking on my XXV and usually will go away rather quickly (a few days). If I were you, let the stove run for a
week or so, and then assess the squeak. Sometimes, things just have to "break in". The squeak occurs when the auger is feeding pellets
and I attribute it (the squeak) to the auger tube having fines or slight build up in it. The squeak always goes away. I can count on one hand
the number of times the squeak has occurred in the last two seasons.

What type of pellets are you using?

 

[newf lover]

LG Granules, although I started with Dry Creek. It was squeaking out of the box, so that's why I didn't think it was fines or anything. At this point, I'm happy things are quiet. It was so awful there was no way I could run the stove at night. I will make this part of my weekly thorough cleaning; it's not that big a deal. I hope I have as good luck as you're had. I could stand a squeak or two, but this wasn't tolerable.

 

[cantman]

The LG Granules pellet is the same product I used last season and the beginning of this season. I found that the
fines content were high and I attribute this as one cause of the "squeal". Also, the pellet length is very short and I do feel
this does effect the combustion quality where longer pellets allow more air space between pellets. I have been burning "Lignetics"
pellets lately (1/2 ton so far) and have not had any "squeal".

 

[newf lover]

That's interesting; I was wondering if that could be the cause. I have noticed the pellet length is very short, although I haven't noticed a lot of fines, nothing at the bottom of the bag. The hopper was definitely "dusty", and I'm going to vacuum it out once a week, or more if it starts squeaking. I have 2 tons of the LG, and 1 ton of the Dry Creek. Not much choice this year. I was going to switch to see if there was a difference, but there's not much I can do about it at this point anyway. I need to burn them. I will just have to be very diligent in my cleaning. Thanks.

 

[newf lover]

The squeak is back. It appears that it only stays away until whatever lubricant that's used wears off. I'm burning what's in the hopper, then will scrape everything out again, vacuum the hopper, put in more graphite, and put in a different brand of pellets. At least that way I can feel comfortable that I've done everything on my end and the dealer won't come out and waste my time doing stuff that won't work. The stove has been squeaking since I got it, which is 3 1/2 weeks ago, so I've given it enough time to work through any breaking in period. Very frustrating.