I purchased a US Stove 8500 Pellet Furnace about a year and a half ago. It ran great for about a month, then it started to give me partially-burned pellets and a lot of sooting. I have pages of emails back and forth with US Stove that had me do everything from replace all the flex ducting with rigid ducting to extending the vent stack above the facia of the house to building a jumper wire and bypassing the pressure switch. Long story short, they sent me a new furnace in May. I didn't light the furnace until late November and again, it ran great for about a month then the same thing. I finally got them to send out a technician, who showed up with a laundry list of things to look for that I had done wrong to cause this issue. When none of those problems checked out, the technician was stumped.
I went about a month before I contacted US Stove. At that point, the response that I got was that the furnace is burning correctly, and that the issue is a lack of combustion air. I was instructed to install a passive air system. Now, this furnace is sitting in an 1800 square foot basement that is connected to a 600 square foot crawl space and a 1000 square foot garage. The specs on the passive air system I looked at indicates it provides a flow rate of 18 cfm. I'm having a hard time understanding how an additional 18 cfm will make the difference, especially since the size of the combustion air intake isn't changing - I could have it sitting outside and it still would only draw so much air in at a time.
In addition to my issues with poor burning and sooting is an accumulation of saw dust in the cabinet where the electronics and the draft fan is located. Any ideas of explanations of why a small addition of air will be the magic bullet. Thanks for your time.
I went about a month before I contacted US Stove. At that point, the response that I got was that the furnace is burning correctly, and that the issue is a lack of combustion air. I was instructed to install a passive air system. Now, this furnace is sitting in an 1800 square foot basement that is connected to a 600 square foot crawl space and a 1000 square foot garage. The specs on the passive air system I looked at indicates it provides a flow rate of 18 cfm. I'm having a hard time understanding how an additional 18 cfm will make the difference, especially since the size of the combustion air intake isn't changing - I could have it sitting outside and it still would only draw so much air in at a time.
In addition to my issues with poor burning and sooting is an accumulation of saw dust in the cabinet where the electronics and the draft fan is located. Any ideas of explanations of why a small addition of air will be the magic bullet. Thanks for your time.
