Burned the first bag of golds last night. The stove was thoroughly cleaned beforehand. Lit at 8:30pm and shut it down at 7:30am this morning. At that time, there was about ~5lbs of pellets remaining in the hopper. Here are some pictures. While burning: Hopper this morning: Picture of inside of stove after burning: A closer picture of the burn pot:
How does this compare to other high end pellets that you have burned in the past? seems like you have platinum and DF?
Thanks for posting your first results tdburg. Any clinkers in the ash? I am also curious what you think of them.
That ash looks like a pretty good burn.. I'm guessing the heat was pretty good? Was the stove running the entire night? Or did it start and stop as needed?
Tough to compare because it's so early in the season. The only pellets I have burned so far are these, Minute Man, Ligs, and I just threw in a bag of MWP tonight. After I get a bit more burn time, I will be able to do a proper comparison. No, I did not get any nuggets like you experienced. I did have a decent size speed bump in the burn pot when I cleaned it out tonight though. I've come to expect that with softwoods, especially pines. A good scrape with the Harman tool easily breaks it up. It was 30 here this morning, so the stove ran a good solid burn all night, no stopping and starting. It was on 3.5 for both feed rate and temp (room temp mode). I'm fine with the ash because it's super light and doesn't remain in the pot, so the air flow is not adversely affected - it was burning just as strong this morning as when I went to bed, no scraping needed. The jury is still out on the heat output. Need more burn time to know for sure. I will say that the stove temp was hovering between 350 and 400 each time I checked it. When the hopper was completely depleted tonight, I threw in a bag of MWPs, and within 15 minutes the stove was up to 425. Was not expecting that.
Agree with Dex, that doesn't look bad and no nuggets either. I am going to dig down in the pile and burn through some bags from another ton.
For comparison purposes, here is what the stove looks like after a night of burning MWPs. It wasn't quite so cold last night, it only got down to 39 here, so the stove didn't have to work as hard. There's probably ~10lbs of pellets left in the hopper. For me, this is a lot of ash, and the flame was definitely burning lazy this morning because of it. Will have to wait for some real cold weather to continue the tests and see how they do with a good strong burn all night.
so, seemingly there is more ash with the MWP, correct? I think the analysis of the product versus the Okie gold would bear that out. As for the "clinkers", I don't think the original ones were that bad, and, as per the Harman cleaning instructions, they should be broken up when you do your burn pot scraping anyways, correct? I believe your owners' manual will tell you Daily or, depending on the type of pellet, every 3-5 days. Frankly, I don't see an issue with the OP's clinkers if you follow the proscribed directions given by Harman. I should say though, in the interests of full disclosure, that I do sell Okie gold as one of my brands.
Hello Lousyweather, It's paying the premium price to reduce the maintenace. As mentioned I am going to dig into the pile and burn some bags from another ton. It seems others are having good results. Just need some cold weather.
I would disagree that the Clinkers the OP had were not that bad. When you spend too dollar for a pellet you should not have to deal with them at all. Now it could have something to do with the OPs set up. I personally would like to see a few more members post their results to make a judgment. Also, it looks like they are gonna burn a few more bags before making a real judgment. One bag would not be a great way to determine how good or bad a pellet might be.
I have burned through about 2 bags in my harman xxv. I have seen no issues. Ash is lite, no clinkers, no major ash buildup on heat exchanger. They are what i expected of them a clean pellet. Time will tell on heat when cold weather arrives.
Yes, Could be your stove is different than theirs, But this could also be due largely to batch variance. Could be you got a bad batch while the others got a better one. The fiber used in your batch could have had a higher sodium or silica content. I'd also worry of the blackness that DexterDay mentioned. If that is creosote and is sticky?
This is why my forum name is Spock. Spock is different. As far as the black stuff I will report when I get home.
If you have a friend/neighbor with a pellet stove, Toss/trade them a bag to see if their stove also clinkers.
the maintenance of your stove (scraping the burnpot, etc) has no bearing on the quality of the pellet.......ie: just because you bought a upper end pellet (but you didn't pay top dollar...if you did, you'd have Doug Fir), doesn't negate the need for a proper cleaning regimen
Lol you can get Douglas Fir without paying top dollar.......ask ttdberg. They are priced as a top of the line product and he should expect top of the line performance. . Which should include less time spent on maintenance. Otherwise why spend the money? Agree however that there still needs to be a proper maintenance being performed.
I respectfully disagree. Haven't been burning but 2.5 seasons but there is defiantly a difference how often you have to go into your stove, both regular and deep cleans, vs the pellet you are burning.
The site is acting very badly ...needs reboot. I was not finished with my post above and it posted after giving me 'BAD GATEWAY'. But you admins and mods already know that...
