Clinkers! gasp....

OK looks like what I have is just a baby clinker then. Now to try to figure out if it is really the pellets or not. Unfortunately all I have left is this years batch of mwp softies and with the shortage, looks like I won't be able to try a different pellet right away.

 

I would actually think there was something wrong with my stove if I didn't have any clinkers. Had them since day one with 7 or 8 different kinds of pellets tried. Some bigger than others.

 

Needs more airflow through the burnpot.

 

I agree but I have no way to accomplish that.

 

What brand/model is it? You never put that info into your signature (it saves you having to answer questions like this )

 

I started a thread about this very problem in the pellet stove section this morning.

 

Still a little early but I bought 5 bags of freedom fuel to try. That's all that was available and I was already out running errands. I've been burning them since around noon yesterday in stove temp manual so the stove has been in maintenance burn mode for a good portion of the time. No clinkers yet....

 

Well maybe and then again maybe not. Depends upon the stove and if the installer knew what they were doing.

Some stoves that don't have draft adjustments can still have their draft tweaked.

 

Sounds like you were overheating your Harman ash turds, that is one way to make ckinkers the ash wasn't being ejected either by air flow or by falling off the burn pot edge soon enough. Since you can't easily change the air flow you are left with burn pot hole cleaning and/or fuel feed adjustment. ISTR a section in that Fine Harman Manuel on feed adjustment something about one inch and that it is fuel specific. Or then again it could just be CRS on my part.

 

Yes there is a feed adjustment procedure. The procedure adjust the maximum feed rate.

The way I have the tstat wired in series with the room probe, whenever there is a call for heat my stove goes to maximum heat until there is no call for heat and then the stove goes into maintenance burn. Sort of like forcing a Harman into a hi-lo mode. However the calls for heat are never more than 10-15 minutes long. This is due to the run the stove is in, my thermostat position and 1 deg temp swing. Because of all that, ash never reaches even 2"-2.5" from the eye of the burnpot.


Maybe it did have to do with feed rate but from my understanding of how the stove operates I still think pellet issue.

 

So I have burned 5 bags of freedom fuel and 10 bags of Maine's choice. No clinkers. Guess I was right about it being a pellet issue. That's probably the last time for a while that I fork over the bigger bucks for the "super premiums."

I picked up some fsus this morning. Looking forward to trying them out.

 

Your prior post says it all, you are cooking your ash, the feed adjustment is off for the super premiums.

Clinkers = ash + temperature + time.

 

Perhaps. But in my stove the feed is regulated by the ESP which is lightly brushed every two weeks. The feed adjustment on my stove is only to limit the max feed. Due to my stove's heating capacity, house insulation/tightness, room temp dial position, thermostat swing setting, and thermostat location, i think my stove rarely goes into max feed.

Maybe I am not understanding things. Maybe this years batch of map softies has a huge amount of ash compared to last year's. I guess I don't know.

What I do know is that the cheaper pellets work better for my situation. And they save me more money compared to the pricier stuff.