well I have been burning Starlite pellets this ton, and I have come to a realization on ash. The Starlites have burned great low ash and good heat. when burning my beloved Somersets I get the same results. When burning AWP or some of the others I get more ash but more consistent heat. My conclusion is this; Burning Starlites and Somersets creates a very fine ash that gets sucked into the heat exchangers. When cleaning the stove I notice more ash in the heat exchangers when cleaning after these pellets. Also because the heat exchangers get coated with ash which acts as an insulator the exhaust temp goes up and tells the ESP to feed less pellets. Therefore reducing heat output. Now with AWP's etc. I have a lot of ash in the pan but my heat passages are very clean. This results in more consistent heat output. I have been trying to go 2 weeks between cleaning this year and this is what I found to happen. If I clean on a weekly basis this is not an issue. Thoughts??
I'm seeing it differently with my P61. I can tell after a week my heat exchanger needs to be cleaned because the heat output is down but the operating temp of the stove is up. I have a stovepipe thermometer on the side of my stove that I find invaluable.
I agree, Ash that's light and fluffy will travel through the whole stove and also out the exhaust. Where a dense/heavy ash basically just falls back to the ash pan. Burning 100% Oak Turmans was really noticeable. After a full ton I had hardly any ash in the vent, Where the light fluffy MWP had a chit load in the vent.
This explains a lot, thanks for the info. When I burn Penwood pellets, I get a chit load of ash in the vent, now I understand why!
What pellets are causing this? Good info for a similar stove here. The North Country softwood are giving me more volume of fluffy ash and easy as heck to clean but fill the pan a bit quicker.. No real buildup beyond a light one.
I'm pretty much seeing this happen no mater what I burn But I really only burn box store pellets, so I may see different results with better pllets.
Did you get any of the AWF at HD? Curious on how you might like them. I saw em in Rochester but havnt had time to get any.
I had the problem again with the Timber heat pellets. If I turn the stove up to 7 to heat camp up it is too high. Stove starts getting too hot. Someone else said the Timber Heats dropped in faster for them. Same here. Seems like 4 or 5 is max setting I should go on these. They throw nice heat though.
Not sure what "getting too hot" means. Are you concerned the stove is going to overheat? It won't.....the stove will shut down if it overheats. One way to help the stove "keep it's cool" is to run the convection fan on 9 if you have the feed above about 6.
While warming myself up I farted near it the other day and flames ignited back to my britches. I consider that getting too hot.
yea, but not a pretty mental picture... Don't forget folks, that most of us measure ash by VOLUME (how much ash is in my ash pan), whereas, when the pellets are tested, ash is measured by weight. Ergo, a denser pellet will appear to have less ash volumetrically, but the mass is higher. I'll take the lighter ash any day...clears the burnpot better and seems not to dirty up the exchangers as much
Interesting observation. I always have a fair amount of ash behind my burnpot in the heat exchanger. When I change over from the sets and able to run a different pellet for week I will have to see if there is a difference from front to rear. Never noticed it before but it sure makes sense. Schoondog
Can someone tell me what/where constitutes the heat exchanger on a pellet stove? Like mine is a Summers Heat 55 SHPAH.
I believe your heat exchanger is just a box as opposed to tubes or an accordion like design like Harman
As IHP mentions above, it can be a box, tubes, or some other part of the stove that is heated by the combustion of the pellets, and has air blown around/through it and out into the room. It's an "air-to-air" heat exchanger.
