What happens when the power goes Out?

[Waffleman]

Have used wood stoves all my life but in my new home will be installing a pellet stove - most likely the Quadra fire Vermont AE (various reasons including the appearance, it is quiet, it seems to have simple battery backup). Will do direct vent and AOK.


My questionson are: what happens when the power goes out. Does the fire cut out quickly? Is the a risk that smoke will get into the house somehow? With the Vermont AE, do you leave the battery hooked up all the time or only do plug it in when the power goes Out? What battery do you Recommend? Generator out of question during to cost.

 

[Peterfield]

Have used wood stoves all my life but in my new home will be installing a pellet stove - most likely the Quadra fire Vermont AE (various reasons including the appearance, it is quiet, it seems to have simple battery backup). Will do direct vent and AOK.


My questionson are: what happens when the power goes out. Does the fire cut out quickly? Is the a risk that smoke will get into the house somehow? With the Vermont AE, do you leave the battery hooked up all the time or only do plug it in when the power goes Out? What battery do you Recommend? Generator out of question during to cost.

First, it depends what type of installation you're doing. With a battery backup, there should be plenty of time for the stove to shutdown normally without any smoke issues. In my case, I have an insert and no battery backup and the stove just dies out with no smoke issues due to the draft in the flue. Generators are relatively cheap and a new one can be found for $400-500 if one shops around.

 

[johneh]

When the power goes out you are in the Dark
sorry couldn't resist .
My stove just dies out no battery back up
no smoke issues
I do have a generator and it kicks in before
stove is completely out and would not be
without it . At -40 in the winter I like to keep
the heat on for some strange reason

 

[BigJohnfromCT]

I have a Quad MVAE. No battery backup. When the power goes out it just dies. No smoke. I have a portable genny that I roll out of the garage and fire up. Stove seems to work fine. I do have it plugged in through a surge protector.

 

[womaus]

I've got my Accentra FS with approx 15" horizontal run through the wall to less than 60" of vertical stack. Went as far as testing to see what would happen in the event of a power outage by simply pulling the plug after running the stove for an hour or so. No issues with smoke getting into the living area, stove eventually just burned [edit]whoever[/edit] whatever was left in the pot.

No generator on my setup, when we do lose power it's only for short period of time, we have underground electrical service. Older house, large city. We would need to see an outage in the magnitude of the East Coast Blackout of 1965 (damn, that was a fun time). Downed trees, ice storms etc usually don't have any effect on us.

I do have a UPS in play, to save the controller board in the event of electrical spikes.

(edit due to Freudian slip....)

 

[MadMax31]

I have 15' of vertical flue pipe. Power goes out, theres enough draft that I dont notice a difference in flame but the obvious blower motors stop. Pellets burn up and flame is gone.

Ive been contemplating a Honda 2000i genny for this winter, soley for pellet stove or Weil Mclain mod/con boiler. 14/15 winter was brutal here while 15/16 was a joke. Not sure what this winter will bring....

 

[mralias]

Try a controlled outage...ie...pull the plug and see what happens. That way you will know and can plan accordingly.

 

[Tonyray]

I have a Generac 7500 watt on the back porch. have an ugly 30 amp plug shown that I insert into the genny and then into a 30 amp outlet on back porch next to the Genny.
the 30 amp wire runs all the way thru the basement to a Reliance Transfer switch shown,,
I power 10 different circuits of my choosing... well, they are all pre-chosen by me but can change anytime.
1st on the list was our Oil Furnace and some hardwired rooms..Can mix/match breaker amps [15/20/30 according to what you need.. about 300.00 for box if u do it yourself which is quite easy with a supplied video. BTW: I made the 6 foot cable myself fro HD....wasn't cheap. 30amp 4 wire cable plus female/,male ends we're about 70.00
/

 

[UpStateNY]

I have 15' of vertical flue pipe. Power goes out, theres enough draft that I dont notice a difference in flame but the obvious blower motors stop. Pellets burn up and flame is gone..

To answer your question, this is all you need to know. I do NOT have a vertical chimney pipe. My pipe goes out the wall and points down . Hence when the power goes out I do get some small amount of smoke in the house. Never enough to make the smoke detector go off. Its not as bad as as burning Thanksgiving Turkey in the oven. . I don't have any immediate backup UPC or generator power. For me its no big deal.

Like one of the poster said. Pull the plug and see what happens. What could go wrong. If you have a vertical chimney pipe outside it should not be a problem.

BTW I do have a backup generator in the garage. It takes me about 15 minutes to plug it in and get it started. If I loose power in the middle of the night I will continue sleeping. I only use the generator for long power outages.

 

[DneprDave]

I have a wood burning Lopi stove insert in my living room, When the power goes out, I light a wood fire.

 

[Peterfield]

Generator out of question during to cost.

(broken link removed to http://slickdeals.net/f/9072387-durostar-ds4000s-gas-powered-4000-watt-portable-generator-200-fs-via-ebay?src=SiteSearch)

This is just one of many deals on generators for short money. Some will argue that it has to be a model that has less than 5% harmonics but plenty of folks do fine with all types and sizes. I burned wood for many years and was concerned about loss of power but rig a generator up right and it is not an issue and inexpensive to do. The simplest way is to run an extension cord from a generator right to the pellet stove plug, but personally if you are going to get one, I'd buy a transgen switch and power up a few other circuits so you also have some lights and refrigeration.

 

[Spupilup]

When the power goes out I just sit back and enjoy the warmth from my gravity feed, non electric Wiseway pellet stove. The only reason i went with pellets was because of this stove. Frankly, after burning cordwood for over 25 years I could never wrap my head around the incongruity of needing electricity to run a pellet stove. That is, until I discovered the Wiseway. My stove even has a water jacket that I plan on plumbing my water heater into. A small pump to circulate the hot water between the stove and the water heater so the system doesn't pressurize and it should save me a ton of money over using the electric water heater.

 

[snavematt]

whole home backup generator here, so, we just watch TV

 

[Spupilup]

I have a generator for the whole house as well but my alternative is electric heat so I'm happy with a gravity feed stove.

 

[bill3rail]

Fire generally will keep burning without electricity. However, the fire triangle will be broken and you will reduce Oxygen and eliminate Fuel.

However, you may experience smoke backup into the room.

I am afraid to pull the plug on mine to see how much smoke I will experience.

Bill

 

[snavematt]

I have a generator for the whole house as well but my alternative is electric heat so I'm happy with a gravity feed stove.

Yeah we have electric on 2 zones and propane on the main. Trying not use the propane at all this winter if possible

 

[Wilbur Feral]

Have used wood stoves all my life but in my new home will be installing a pellet stove - most likely the Quadra fire Vermont AE (various reasons including the appearance, it is quiet, it seems to have simple battery backup). Will do direct vent and AOK.


My questionson are: what happens when the power goes out. Does the fire cut out quickly? Is the a risk that smoke will get into the house somehow? With the Vermont AE, do you leave the battery hooked up all the time or only do plug it in when the power goes Out? What battery do you Recommend? Generator out of question during to cost.

I have a Mt Vernon AE from 2010. It's one of the few stoves that uses DC motors so it is very efficient on use of electricity (low wattage) and when the power goes out you can connect a battery backup to it via a special cable. Have connected ours to a large deep cycle (110 amp hour) battery (Google that if unfamiliar with battery types) and it powers the stove for twelve hours plus. I am fairly certain it would go longer but I avoid that to prevent excessive battery discharge, and we have a backup generator that I turn on during the day. Have gone 5 days plus doing this during a bad storm.

Only problem with doing this is that Quad overthought the MVAE (personal opinion) so that it must be restarted after about six hours when on battery backup, as it goes into its autoclean cycle. They apparently did this to prevent ash buildup for those that are burning especially terrible fuel, but ours could go 12 hours or more without ash buildup. But you can't override that as it's part of the default programming, so you will either have a cold house after 8 hours of sleep (because you must restart the stove) or you have to interrupt a good night's sleep during power outages to restart the MVAE after it autocycles. Apparently the Quad engineer was an insomniac...

Overall I like the MVAE, although I have a well-known hatred of the proprietary thermostat required for it. That is easily the Achilles heel of an otherwise great stove, but you are stuck with it. But if you want a stove that is generally low maintenance and reliable, the MVAE is a good choice. You might just want to have an extra ignitor and an extra thermostat on hand. The ignitor is a regular thing you will replace every few years but they have a habit of going out at inconvenient times. You can replace it if you are handy. The thermostat is something you should not need to replace but going on season 7 I've replaced each of these twice.

Good luck, and feel free to reach out via a direct message if you have questions. I won't be on the forum as often this year as in the past but will check messages 1-2 times per week.