ILet me give you some related wood burning background. Living in central NH we have always burned wood, not for any other reasons than cost and just always done it. For two years we used two outside wood fired air furnaces to heat two commercial buildings, another costly bad idea. We burned in excess of twenty cord per year. We recently purchased a Wiseway pellet stove to replace an old and small Russo box stove that we have used for years. The Russo heated our small 1000 square foot living area on the coldest NH winter days to 70 plus degrees. The Russo was hooked to a masonry with two flues, the wood stove using the larger 8"X12" flue. The chimney is two stories I would guess 23'. It has always had an excellent draft, never measured it, but you can here that thing pulling and NEVER had any backdraft issues. OK so on to the Wiseway experience. The Wiseway (now owned by US Stove) people recommend soft pellets. Difficult to find here in NH and when you do find the highest rated one, Vermont Pellet for instance, they are very expensive and usually sold out with a waiting list. We have been trying mixed and hardwood the most recent ,a softwood, INFERNO, ash 0.7 fines 0.5. The issue has been the loss of performance within just a couple hours. A clean stove will only get to about 650 degree stack temp and even when you leave the stove full bore it consistently drops temperature. If you idle it at low it smolders and builds creosote and nearly goes out. Well early this morning it nearly turned to disaster. You would actually have to see one of these stoves to understand how it functions but it has a removable primary burn chamber with a removable burn basket. The combustion air is somewhat adjustable with a dial on the face of the burn chamber then there is a slide on the exit side of the burn chamber with holes that pull in ambient air stalling the draft and cooling the stack temp. We when you burn with the slide closed (full draft no ambient air post combustion chamber) it pulls ash in to the stove stack which reduces performance. So I bent up some heavy wire (ok a coat hanger) that I slide under the burn basket and pull down the ash in the stove stack so the stove will somewhat maintain a 300 degree stack temp and sort of heat the house. Let me back up a bit here. Yesterday when I cleaned the stove I could not get the burn chamber out, it was held tight by solid creosote built up all around it and the cavity where it fits, I did not pull the ash down that day with my ash removal device (ok a bent coat hanger). Ok so you get what is going on here? Don't pull the ash out while running the stove loses performance and eventually creosote develops all the way to the external part of the burn chamber. Back to this morning. I had widened out the end of the wire to grab more of the stack floor to pull the ash out and it caught the burn basket and would not release and come out. While trying to get it out I dislodged the entire burn chamber and pulled it partially out of the chamber, the chamber filled with new pellets which started to ignite. I had to pull it completely out while it was still burning with only one welding glove (could not find the other) and throw it outside. Fire alarm is going of my dogs are barking and pellets are burning in the open stove. Pulled the pellet feed shut off down and just kept pulling pellets out and bringing them outside. It was with the last batch of these pellets I felt condensation between the bags when I picked them up at Lowes which probably contributed to the creosote but this thing is a nightmare. It is off now and I am going to try to get a different pellet. These things a very sensitive to the pellet you are burning and at this point I wish I did not get involved with Wiseway. I am open to any help/information. Thanks Jon
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