Whacked King stove

[clr8ter]

My buddy has this King Stove Model 5510 he got from TS. It has an itermittant problem on shut-down. Sometimes, if the stove has been running for hours, the stove will shut down, and there will be some pellets left in the pot, so when the draft blower finally stops, the smoldering crap backs smoke up into the house. I was over there today, and the stove basically seems to run ok. It started up and shut down fine. The draft fan ran for at least 10 min after it stopped feeding the pot. From what I observed, that would be plenty of time to burn even a whole pot full. He said the pellets seem to form large chunks, which partially burn and do not fall thru the pot bottom as ash. Stove has been cleaned, and is run on auto. The door gasket has also recently been changed. The glass constantly is blackened, too.

The only weird thing I saw it do was after everything stopped, fire out, it fed some more pellets into the pot. It it priming itself for the next startup or something?

The manual didn't seem to shed much light on the problem...

 

[smwilliamson]

There is a way to reset factory perimeters but I'm Total Customer Service (TCS) center so I'm sure some factory training will be in line this summer. Call em up very early morning at 8am and ask a few questions, if you wait until mid day you will be on hold for hours

 

[clr8ter]

There is, and we did. He told me he has also done this in the past.

 

[smwilliamson]

Clean it out properly and it should work like it did when new. US Stove uses a thermocouple on the back of the stove to measure heat and tell the control board when there is fire. If the stove is excessively dirty or if you are using crappy pellets, you may not be producing enough heat to keep the thing running long enough to exhaust all of the fumes and therefore get premature shutdowns which get smoke to back up inside. Additionally, it soulnds like there is not enough vertical venting in the install to accommodate a power loss...if there were the smoke would make its way outside. Common when installed by someone with not enough experience installing or more common...investing enough $ to cover the venting required to make the install right. Not cutting you up (or your friend)...just sayin

 

[clr8ter]

No offense taken. Thanks for the suggestions. I just finished reading your sticky here.

Apparently, this stove has never totally burned right. He installed it himself, and it is DV, no rise on the outside of the house. In addition, he was not aware that the stove has to be taken apart & cleaned. He says he did it the other day, but it still looked pretty nasty inside the back today when I saw it. I also noticed the doors on the bottom didn't really seem to be sealing, and seemed like they weren't really meant to. I'll inquire. Also, he said that while right now he's using crappier pellets than usual, the problem's worse with better quality pellets.....

 

[smwilliamson]

because he is using pellets that want to burn in a stove that doesnt...clean that thing via the manual

 

[clr8ter]

Yeah, you think it's that simple? Even though he seems to think it's been doing it to some degree since it was brand new? (It's only 3 years old, I think.)

 

[mralias]

Pics of the setup might help as well if you can. Scott knows his stuff and chances are almost certain that based on the info provided he is correct on where to start to solve the problem. Doors not sealing? Nasty inside? Crappie pellets? No rise outside the house? Oh, none of those statements can be good. IMO

 

[SteveB]

The ash doors inside the firebox don't seal and you get wicked air leaks. I, and others on here have had to seal them with hi-temp silicone or something similar. Made a world of difference in my stove. Went from shutting down and cleaning out a caked-full of ash burnpot every day to running for close to a week with very little in the bottom of the burnpot. I called USSC about the pellets feeding at the end of the shutdown cycle and smoldering in there. The lady said its designed to do that in case there are some hot pellets at the top of the auger. Really?? When I shut mine down I also open the hopper lid which will prevent the auger motor from running at all so you don't have that problem. I'm always here when I do that and have never seemed to have a problem with hot pellets in the auger tube. After sealing the ash slides and putting a new door gasket on its been a pretty good stove. It works well on a stat, just wish it could do on-off in addition to hi-lo mode. And make sure the igniter is set back in its tube a little bit or it'll burn out in a season. Replaced two before I learned that one. It still fires every time.

 

[SteveB]

Yeah, you think it's that simple? Even though he seems to think it's been doing it to some degree since it was brand new? (It's only 3 years old, I think.)

Its probably been doing the smoldering thing since it was new but mine never shut down on its own unless I ran it out of pellets. What heat range is he running it on when it does that?

 

[clr8ter]

All these suggestions are awesome!! Thanks much. I agree, Scott does seem to know a lot. If all else fails, maybe my buddy could have him come out. I didn't realize untill right now he is local....

SteveB, the problem isn't the stove is shutting down, it happens when he purposely shuts the stove off. Now, when you say "seal the ash slides with silicone", do you mean permanently, so they don't work? If not how do you do that?

I don't think his "crappy" pellets are that bad. I say that because there is one brand around here that is very highly thought of, which he usually burns. (New England Pellet)

 

[SteveB]

Sometimes, if the stove has been running for hours, the stove will shut down,

Sorry, I took that to mean the stove was shutting down on its own. Unless he can find a way to seal the ash slides so they don't leak air and they still work, he may have to permanently seal them. Thats what I did.
I shut mine down and vacuum it out once a week. Not a big deal to me. It really made a big difference on how my stove burns pellets.

 

[clr8ter]

OK. Well, stove burning right is more important than those slides working, huh? I agree, not a big deal to vacuum it out. Will pass info along.

 

[SteveB]

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/king-5510-review.41617/

clr8tr,
This is a long thread, six pages worth, but if you have the time to sift through it, you can find some pretty good information. I learned a lot about my own stove by reading what others wrote. Thats what is so great about the Hearth.com forums! He might not want to change any control board settings until he tries some of the other suggestions, but it is easy to reset it to factory defaults. The factory settings actually work well once you get all of the air leaks sealed up. I did reduce my feed rate a little bit for the shoulder season. Even on HR-1 it was a little more heat than what I needed sometimes.

The glass constantly is blackened, too.

Mine used to do that too. Now it gets a thin, light brown layer in about 12 hours instead of a thick black layer after a couple hours. I don't think these stoves have an airwash, at least I don't see it, so if he can figure out a way to keep the glass clean for a couple days or so, please let me know!

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

I just took a look at the manual for the 5510 and your stove should not run the auger at any time after you have gotten the red light indicating the control board has detected you have told it to shut down (page 16 in the fine manual).

Single auger top feed stoves have no reason to dump more fuel into the burn pot.

If there are hot pellets at the end of the auger you have another issue. I can't fathom the answer you got from USSC, she must have been thinking about that pulsating combustion blower routine in their controller.

I can however see the possibility of there still being hot smoldering stuff in the burn pot after the stove has reached shutdown temperature.

 

[SteveB]

I agree 100% with you Smokey but that seems to be what they do, and yes there can be hot stuff still in the burnpot after shutdown. The combustion blower doesn't run real long after the convection blower stops. Early on I got used to opening the hopper lid to shut it down which disables the auger motor completely, however, since i sealed up the air leaks and now I don't have all that hot crap left in the pot, I haven't tried a normal shutdown. I might have to do that just to see what happens...

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

I'd be thumping on more than the back wall of any stove during cleaning if I ever had a top feed stove that supplied any power to a feed auger after having been told to shut down and receiving an acknowledgment that it saw the shut down request.

On a dual auger feed system I can see them moving the bottom auger to get pellets out of the way as the top auger feeds the pellets from the hopper.

I can even see it in a single auger bottom feed system if there is a feed gate that physically operates separately from the auger.

The actions contradict the manual and that isn't a good thing {tm}.

The smoldering stuff in the burn pot is a clear indication of an air flow issue.

 

[343amc]

My 6041 does the same thing. It'll run the auger every now and again after shutdown. I do the same as SteveB - open the lid after pressing the off button. My manual states not to do that, but if the stove has been running for a while, the shutdown sequence can take upwards of an hour if the lid is left closed as enough pellets are fed to keep the fire smoldering. If I think of it, I'll hold down the hopper lid switch after I press off until I hear some pellets drop. I'd thought of wiring a toggle switch and mounting it by the control panel so I could kill the auger and leave the hopper door closed but I never got around to it. I figure if I have hot pellets at the top of the auger tube at shutdown then I have a bigger problem on my hands.

My glass gets a film after a couple hours of burning. I don't think there is any air wash to speak of. It only goes black if I'm burning on low and have the draft fan set too low.