Fahrenheit Endurnace 50F Project

HAHA OK. SO, this is just my opinion. I love my Harman, and yes it will burn anything I have thrown at it, good bad and ugly. That doesn't mean that there is any heat from what you burn.

Case and point being the Granules LG that I tried. I had been burning a good pellet that put out a lot of heat. When we started burning the LGs they evaporated from the burn pot, even on a high feed setting, with very little heat output compared to what had been burning. That's all I was getting at.

I've talked about these pellets on a thread in Pellet Bag, something about your worst pellets.

 

Not sure what it was, but wasn't air flow. The burn wasn't dirty, just very poor heat output. It was literally like flipping a switch when I went to the Granules LGs from what I had been burning. I had thought it was stove related and grabbed a bag of something different and the heat came back. They were just really crappy pellets. Luckily I only had 30 bags.

 

Still getting dirty burn here, but not too bad heat now. So burning it tonight with the cold weather setting in.

Still need to start on the mods Dex just posted a while back and get the pics of the ground up pellets I'm seeing. Now that Christmas is over I should have time to play again.

BTW...... Merry Christmas Everyone. Hope you guys had a good one!

 

Any pics? Just curious to see what you got up to over the holidays.

 

You and me both!!!

 

Gotcha. Nothing ventured, nothing gained - like you said, your P61A can burn just about anything, it just doesn't like Granules LG, that's cool.

Stove here doesn't like certain pellets, just can't tune it to burn them well, I can relate to that.

 

You got it. But good pellets still makes all the difference, bottom feeder or not

What pellets does your stove not like? Oh and not knocking your success with the Granules, I could have had old pellets or a bad batch. I bought the last 30 bags a local place had been sitting on for who knows how long.

It's something I could never understand. The flame was good, but no heat. I could never figure out how you can have a "cool" flame. It's like burning green wood, it yields poor BTU's. If anyone knows the physics/chemistry behind it I'm all ears.

 

I'd show a pic when it goes down. Cold snap was on the way so I fired it up in a hurry.

 

That's cool. That's the same reason I didn't play with mine last night. Too cold in the basement so wanted to burn it and see how it performs in this cold weather. Probably do it tonight. We'll see how cold it is tonight when I get home from work though.

I really need to find a good cheap supply of corn. I was really happy with how the 50/50 corn pellet mix burned.

 

I had other reasons...but I didn't play with mine last night either!!

 

I need to be more specific when I post a comment here. I keep forgetting who I'm dealing with

 

OK, so finally had some time to do a bit of an update. Let me know what you guys think.

Here are a couple pics after getting what will be a mechanical/storage/workshop area a bit more finished. Thought you guy might like to see it. Still lots to be done.








As discussed in earlier posts, here are the pics showing the damage I am seeing to my pellets after they have been fed up the auger shaft. Please note, this is better. It was way worse before I adjusted the hopper position.





The pic below is pellets pulled right from the hopper.



Last but not least, here is the ash pan. The ash colour looks good to me. Please let me know your thoughts. I am still seeing a fair bit of soot in the burn chamber area though. Still need to do one more round of Dex Mods.

 

I like the gray of the ashes
Soot is another thing, what heat level?

 

Yeah. I was actually surprised to see the ash colour. But the soot has me perplexed. I see soot on all levels. I see the least on heat setting 5. But I think that's because at 300 C the burn chamber is too hot for the soot to build up too fast.

 

Forgot a few other pics. Here are the before and after of the heat exchanger tubes. You guys can guess which is which!

 

Soot could be air leakage AFAIK! My theory is your getting air from here & there but not all where it should come from. It could be from the corn? If you cover the air intake, you might hear the leakage? It might sound like a whistle so be prepared for a shriek from the powerful exhaust fanWhat a difference those tubes came to be

 

Yeah, really surprised how much better the heat exchanger tubes look. Still a bit of buildup on the underside of the upper row, but haven't figured out how to get to them yet.

Don't think the soot is from the corn. I was still getting it with or without the corn.

I'll try covering the intake. The glass air wash sucks quite a bit of air through it. Be nice to know how much should be going through at that location.

 

The pics of the dirty heat exchanger are from when I got the stove, and the clean pics are right after cleaning. I'll get some pics of inside the firebox and burn pot, to show the burn I'm getting. Thanks, the burn quality has come a long way from what it was a month ago!

I run mine mainly on 2 and 3, just letting it sing along. But with my older control board it'll run on 5 if I use t-stat mode. Regardless, the soot issue is present on all heat settings. But it's not horrible like it was. I'd just like to get it burning as clean as you guys.

As far as hopper alignment. The issue is that the hopper had dropped down, causing a lip where the auger flight mates with the drop chute. This lip allowed the pellets to jam and was the primary reason for the mashed pellets. I mean it was bad. Think 2 or 3 times as bad compared to the "damaged pellets" pic I posted above. The pics from above are after I adjusted the hopper.

As for the leak, I had a leak where the hopper mated to the top panel of the stove, between lifting up the hopper and adding foam, the leak is fixed. However, I am also concerned about a leak where the hopper bolts to the back of the firebox. Which is where you are talking about ("where the auger flight meets the drop tube"). There must be some sort of a gasket at this location. But I'm not sure. I didn't remove the hopper, only loosened and adjusted as per instructions from Matt. I'll fire an email to him and double check if there is a gasket at this location.