What's the oddest thing found in your hopper??

[Mr Whitfield]

Like the title said,. What is the oddest thing found in your hopper. I ask this because today I did a service call on a Quad Fire Castile Pellet Insert. The Auger was not turning, the owner clean the hopper out and found a cell phone charger, just the transformer with about 3 inches of wire. I had to take the auger apart and the rest of the charger wire was wrapped in a ball. The owner was not missing any chargers, she thinks it came in a bag of pellet.

 

[dannyashana]

That's pretty crazy. I think that I would notice something like that while loading the hopper on my Whitfield Advantage Plus. Because I always pour the pellets slowly in an attempt to minimize the glory cloud of pellet dust. My wife keeps our house very clean and I try to do what I can to help...

 

[krooser]

Sounds like a question for Rock Hudson....

 

[hearthtools]

there is more on this thread and here is one of my many
https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/10383/#119119

 

[North of 60]

there is more on this thread and here is one of my many
https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/10383/#119119

Well Rod, what I want to know is how much did ya soak the people to get that washer out of there or did you give them a $ reward for finding it?
Good stories by the way.

 

[nailed_nailer]

The oddest thing I have found was a LEGO man.

When I asked my 3yr old at the time if he knew how it got there...he said the dog put it in there.

Now he is almost 6 and his toys are getting bigger and more expensive. What will be next???

---Nailer---

 

[North of 60]

Geez, I hope you got rid of that DOG!

 

[rickwa]

i was on a call the other day that was having feed issues and found polished fossil rocks about the size of golf balls blocking the feeder. luckily they were to big to get down in the screw. then a couple of days later i took a 16d nail out of a auger you never know!

 

[imacman]

.....he said the dog put it in there.......

Those darn dogs...always causing trouble!!

 

[daydreamer]

he said the dog put it in there.

---Nailer---

That darn dog always eating kids homework now throwing LEGO men in the hopper.

 

[kilbury]

Platic easter egg and toy hammer run up the feedspring on a MT Vernon AE (couldn't figure out why it wouldn't feed enough corn, lol)and a rubber toy dog on a Santa Fe once

 

[Delta-T]

has noone found any dentures or a prosthetic limb in a stove yet? No bottles of wine? i think people need to get MORE creative with the foreign objects.

 

[Panhandler]

has noone found any dentures or a prosthetic limb in a stove yet? No bottles of wine? i think people need to get MORE creative with the foreign objects.

No prosthetics, real ones. That's how I get rid of the bodies.

 

[tjnamtiw]

Ironically, last night I got intimate with my Sante Fe insert when the auger motor stopped working. Had to pull it out of the fireplace and it's custom made surround to pull the auger. PITA!! Of all things, it was a wadded up aluminum WARNING LABEL from somewhere on the stove! I guess it was warning me not to put warning labels in the hopper!

 

[Panhandler]

Ironically, last night I got intimate with my Sante Fe insert when the auger motor stopped working. Had to pull it out of the fireplace and it's custom made surround to pull the auger. PITA!! Of all things, it was a wadded up aluminum WARNING LABEL from somewhere on the stove! I guess it was warning me not to put warning labels in the hopper!

From inside the hopper lid, perhaps?

 

[rphurley]

has noone found any dentures or a prosthetic limb in a stove yet? No bottles of wine? i think people need to get MORE creative with the foreign objects.

Or a gerbil? lol

 

[jtakeman]

Inferno wood pellets.

Last year was ACP.

 

[CanadaClinker]

.....he said the dog put it in there.......

Those darn dogs...always causing trouble!!

....ya....pretty soon they will be burying there favorite bone in the hopper.....I'd be watchin them from now on!! :smirk:

 

[stoveguy2esw]

i inspect product that gets returned to us on occasion and rework them in the summer, so i see quite a few different things;


oddest was a golf ball (twice but a long story i think ive told in here before) nuts, bolts , a set of keys in my own stove that came out of a bag of pellets. hazelnuts (unshelled) pieces of wood drywall chunks etc. have had a couple with pelet bags wound into the feed system (guess the guy at the store told em just put a bag in a day and it will heat your house and was taken too literally (those suck by the way) had a local who apparantly knocked an ink pen out of her shirt pocket while refueling that wound in and jammed an auger. (the quote was"ohh thats where that went") had part of what looked to be a necktie in one a few years back , had me thinking of a guy imploring to his wife " HONEY GET THE SCISSORS FAST!!" laughed so hard i cried at just thinking about the scene that would have been...

 

[summit]

best thing ever in a pellet stove was a set of woman's panties in the distrubution blower on a Accentra Insert... since the unit was in a formal dining room, It was odd... the guy's wife looked a little flustered when I pulled them outta the thing. He had a smile on his face.
In the hopper the usuall is pieces of pellet bag, or a screw or nut... once a paper cup and a GI JOE kinda action figure.
Found a bird stuck in the exhaust fan on a P68...
and we pulled a pool of molten lead (about the size of a quarter outta the catch under the burnpot in a RIKA that had been burning Athen's pellets (guessin' someone was having a little fun in the woods one day..)

 

[tjnamtiw]

Ironically, last night I got intimate with my Sante Fe insert when the auger motor stopped working. Had to pull it out of the fireplace and it's custom made surround to pull the auger. PITA!! Of all things, it was a wadded up aluminum WARNING LABEL from somewhere on the stove! I guess it was warning me not to put warning labels in the hopper!

From inside the hopper lid, perhaps?

Not likely since Quad lids just slide back and don't lift up so you could see the label................. Well, now wait, maybe that DOES make sense to put a warning label where no one can see it.........

 

[schmeg]

I found a blue marble in mine. No one in my house owns marbles.

 

[imacman]

......have had a couple with pelet bags wound into the feed system (guess the guy at the store told em just put a bag in a day and it will heat your house and was taken too literally (those suck by the way)......

That is TOO funny!!

As for me, haven't found anything weird......yet. :-S I guess Jay was right. The worst thing I ever found in my hopper were.....Inferno pellets! :sick:

 

[johnny1720]

I found two very interesting things:

-A part of a 2x4 about 8 inches long

-We had a batch of pellets that seemed to be blue. We were all laughing about how some Smurfs must have got in the material at the plant. We laughed it off until we found part of a blue counter top in one of the bags. These guys were grinding up counter tops and putting them in the pellets. The piece of blue counter top was triangle shaped and about 5 inches long.


Johnny

 

[hearthtools]

I found two very interesting things:

-A part of a 2x4 about 8 inches long

-We had a batch of pellets that seemed to be blue. We were all laughing about how some Smurfs must have got in the material at the plant. We laughed it off until we found part of a blue counter top in one of the bags. These guys were grinding up counter tops and putting them in the pellets. The piece of blue counter top was triangle shaped and about 5 inches long.


Johnny

sounds like the mill I worked at. the last year it was open we build a hammer mill and was hammering out old pallets and mixing them with good wood and left over grape trays. see it was in the centra california valley were most of the worlds agriculture comes from so there were a lot of pallets and grape trays used to make raisins
but the pellet milled failed because at the time there were not alot of stove that could handle high as fuel and all of the other pellets made on the west coast is Soft wood that is a lot cleaner that hardwood pellets you guys are used to on the east. but now I see BTU is pushing easter pellet and telling you they are the best you ever seen
well you should have used the 100% fir pellets we had in the past. REAL clean you could go weeks before you had to touch your stove.