Pellet heads!! What's up today?

Too much I think.

 

Got the Harman insert installed up in NH, wow I just love it plus got the 2k rebate from the gubment. Ran a bag almost 18 hurs kept the home 65-66 which keeps wife happy. St Croix is purring away also.

 

Out for delivery.

 

Swapped out the original room air blower on Helga last night.
15 years was a good run.

Gonna see about getting some lube into the shaft/bearing gap.
Probably should have done that in at least one of 14 off seasons, lul.

Just hit the old one w/ some tri flow.
It freed it up, but it still sounds a little bit softly gritty.
I'll hit it some more over the next little while.
Should have many years to dry out.

I think even if i had just pulled it and blown it off once a year it would have done better.
I've had the new one on hand since 2024.

 

Still winter

SN*W

 

Hi all
Been pretty mundane weatherwise out here in the PACNW
We had a skiff of the white stuff a couple mornings this week....
More rain coming for a few days

Been clearing out a lot of our old stock shells this winter.
We have a full trailer sitting in the barn waiting to be unloaded.
Some of the shells in the stock have been on hand for several years, so decided to burn this stuff up and replace it with fresh materials.

Unless the stuff gets wet ita pretty much good for a long time.
Sitting in the barrels some of it has started to get a tad bit of a musty smell....

Burns fine, just not quite as pleasant sitting in the buckets with the musty smell.....

Some of the stock is 5-8 years old.....Sadly the way the barrels are stored it is tough to get at the stuff on the rear of the slab......

So far things are good here....No major breakdowns or other unwanted issues with the stoves.
The small Whitfield is going to need a new convection fan come spring/summer.
Bearings are getting noisy.
1990 model....LIKELY the original fan too....
Best part is the old fan can be replaced.
The original fan had a "Hall Effect" sensor with a separate wire harness that plugged into the control board to regulate the fan speed depending on where the heat setting was.
Sort of an odd arrangement....The convection fan has a shunt tube that adds air to the burn pot to help combustion and so they regulated the fan speed with the setting of the fuel feed (Heat setting) 1 through 5

When I built the new control I discarded the hall effect system and run the fan using a fan speed control .
A volt meter on the panel allows setting the blower speed to what the factory originally had.....Also the system can be "Tweaked" to get the best fire possible....
Voltages can be dialed in and then the control locked down to keep things set....
So the old fan is no longer made, but the fan from other Whitfields of the time bolt right on and work fine.

The stove I am speaking of is shown in my Avatar.....Whitfield "Prodigy 2"
A sort of Red Headed step child.....The Prodigy series was not a real sweet unit.
The early versions did not have a draft fan. but instead required a tall chimney for draft.
The shunt from the convection plenum was still used......
These stoves could not be direct vented......
The Prodigy 2 saw a draft fan installed into the exhaust casting on top of the stove which made a big difference in function.

Direct venting was doable but the overall platform was a bit less than stellar.
A love hate thing maybe....
Since adding the custom controller things work good......The little beast does require a bit more hands on than some of the other Whitfields.....

Ah well.....Life is good

 

We are once again out of reach of the worst of the storm.

2" to 5" forecast through tomorrow.

 

Time to start planning some Shell hauls
I called the plant a few minutes ago and we have a tentative shot at a Thurs. Fri. run
Weather is looking favorable at this point....Wed. through the weekend show sunny skies.
So we have to get the full tub on the trailer inloaded.
PROBABLY ....Weds...
Weather has not been cooperative at all.
So we have been clearing out old stock .
Going to be sweet to get the barrels full again....
Lady at the plant says they will be operating into late spring....

So we are good.

I stacked all the empty barrels off the slab in order to be able to clean the deck and move a lot of the remaining old stock forward.....
We have about enough empties at present for 2 hauls and maybe more.....But since we can leave the rig in the barn now we can always go and get a tub full.....

I like getting the stash as full as possible to start the next season.
This next run will be #6 for he season...

Just about on par for a winter run.

Currently running the Large Whitfield Advantage 2T
24/7 With short shutdowns to clean out the ash and then back up...

The joys of running pellet stoves

 

Surprisingly we only have about 6 inches here in Kingston as of 11:30am. Lori's family down in Fall River Mass however are getting slammed.

sam

 

This was probably the most snow in one storm I have ever seen.The wind was insane but we didn't lose power.Picture of my deck.

 

Monday at 9am, I measured 4", in 3 places while the wind was still light and not drifting the snow. Later the wind came and I have no idea how much more snow I got. Probably not more than 8" total. Cleaned up everything on Tuesday when the wind was a bit calmer. Still got a couple of face-fulls of snow from high gusts at the wrong time, but overall it wasn't too bad.

Then it snowed another couple of inches Tuesday night, so I went out and shoveled everything yesterday. It wasn't enough for a snow blower to get involved, but didn't want it to partially melt and then become a sheet of ice overnight. Perhaps more snow early this morning (app is saying it will start before 1am).

 

Lori's family and friends down in the Fall River/Somerset Mass area got between 30-40 inches of snow, with drifts as high as 5 feet .

We ended up with about 10 inches here in Kingston,only got a coating yesterday.

Sam

 

Weather was great the last couple days.
We finally unloaded the last tank of shells that we brought in on January 19th
We did that on Thursday and yesterday we headed back to the plant and got load #6 for the year
Its parked in the barn and we are hoping to get it unloaded tomorrow and then go back to the plant on Monday and get another load.
At present I think we will probably do an 8th load before we shut down for the summer.
I like to have the stock full up or nearly so heading into the fall season.
This past couple months we have burned up a lot of old stock to allow getting fresh materials in the barrels.
With decent weather a requirement to be able to haul shells we grab them when we can.
The older we get the more planning and lead time we need.....
Used to run to the plant, get a load, get home and unload then run back in the late afternoon and grab a second load.
Rinse and repeat.....Not any more.
Grab the load, get it in the barn.....Recoupe and maybe the next day we will unload the can.
Ambition is sorely lacking and doing any of this stuff in cold weather makes it tough on old bones.

Ah well.

Fun stuff

 

Sn*w

 

No spring -- MUD

 

Sn*w followed by 50 degrees and full sunshine = raining off the roof