Warped/possibly broken ash pan - Breckwell P23?

[gggallons]

Hello pelletheads,

I'm new to pellet stoves, been renting a house with one for the past two months. It's been going great, but the other day, we started to notice a smoky smell coming from it, which didn't seem right. After shutting it off, I found that there were still some smoldering pellets in the ash pan, which also didn't seem right, and they were smoking heavily.

Once it cooled down, I noticed that on the front of the ash pan there seemed to be a bit of sticky black residue (is this creosote?) so I opened it up, and found that it seemed to have warped, with the bottom panel especially bent, such that it no longer was fully attached to the bottom of the front panel, leaving a very small gap.

It seems implausible that the heat from the smoldering pellets could have warped the whole pan, but if it was like this previously, I didn't notice. We've continued using the stove, with my theory being that I just hadn't shut the door tightly enough that time. We haven't noticed the smoke smell again, but the window has seemed a bit more sooty than usual.

I guess my question is: a. am I right that leaving the door less-than-totally closed caused this problem and b. is the warped/broken ash pan something I should worry about and c. how best to go about fixing it if so.

Any and all advice is welcome! Thanks in advance.

 

[Don2222]

If the fire door is not shut tight, the vacuum safety switch in the stove would stop the pellets from feeding and show a blinking 2 heat level light.
The pellets are bouncing out of the burn pot before they burn completely. Breckwell sells a collar. See pic below. The burning pellets in the ash pan could have contributed to the warpage. What I do is drill a couple holes and use nuts and bolts to help bend it straight and add high temp silicone to seal the front part of the ash pan and put silicone in the corners to completely seal the ash pan.
That will make it run effectively like it should.