Pellet heads!! What's up today?

Not mine where is one for the USPS and it is in the mailbox message has been sent to radio guy.

 

You just found the fifth bob don't tell www. He'll have to use the wayback machine to do that one.

 

Was a leaf blower treatment done as well? Could be hidden spots inside you just can't see/get to without that.

 

Don't forget your Mayflower folk.

 

There are places in most all stoves that you simply cannot get to with a brush, regardless of where you go in from. The LBT is the only way to get the hidden stuff.

 

Hi, I have the same stove, and I've never done a leaf blower cleanout (it doesn't seem practical with our installation as we have a long vertical chimney run from the basement, plus the stove design has the heat exchanger tubes, etc.)

I do ALWAYS scrape and vac the horizontal channel at the bottom of the exchanger tubes after scraping them with the brush- there's always so much ash in there, even during weekly in-season cleanings! I also lift out the burn pot and scrape with a chisel (always have a hard buildup on there) and then I vacuum out that cavity below the burn pot.

I also drop the small baffle inside the top of the firebox and stick my vac up in there (usually a good bit of ash buildup falls into the firebox when I release that latch and it pivots down).

I do this every week in heating season (our stove heats our whole house and we burn a lot of pellets). Cleaning takes me about 25-30 minutes, without cleaning the stove pipe between the stove and basement wall.

After each ton or so of pellets, I clean the stove pipe. I also remove that baffle above the firebox completely and vac inside the upper area- this is never that bad, though.

We've had our stove since 2015 and it's been great, a workhorse. We have replaced the blowers and feed motors over the years, but still on our original igniter. You can get aftermarket parts for these for way less $$ than the OEM Drolet parts, other than the distribution blower and exhaust blower- had to buy OEM for these. But an aftermarket igniter is only around $40 compared to the OEM $140. I bought one and have it on hand, but haven't used it yet so I can't tell you how reliable it is.

I haven't had the issue you're seeing, but starting with a very extra thorough cleaning may help. I wonder also if it may be your fresh air blower (small plastic fan at the bottom back of the stove where fresh air enters). You could check this for any buildup. This is available from Drolet, but it's just a small computer CPU - type fan, and I found the equivalent online from Amazon for much less than the OEM part.

 

WildWest is outside the normal burn elevation for that stove it must be kept clean or it won't burn worth a hoot Bob not included.

 

I can't remember what Dorlet has said. They no like setup.

 

The ECO 65 has two blowers for combustion, the little plastic fan I mentioned (which I think they call the combustion blower) and a larger fan inside the exhaust (exhaust blower). The stove doesn't have any way to easily adjust these while burning, but you can go into the internal control panel settings to adjust several parameters on the stove, including increasing/decreasing voltage to each blower to increase/decrease air movement.

I found this procedure years ago on a YouTube video, and I tried various settings on mine to try to fine-tune heat output. It did make some difference- the guy in the video cranked all of his settings up to maximum possible for the most heat (with recommendations to not overdo it so that the stove wouldn't overheat). My current settings aren't far off the defaults- I think my combustion blower and exhaust blower voltages are slightly higher than default and my feed rate on lowest stove setting is slightly higher than default.

The last time I looked for this video I couldn't locate it, but I did write down the procedure to get into the settings adjustments screens. It may help to experiment with these, but if the stove has worked okay for a long time without changing anything, I'd consider the stove cleanliness, possible degradation of one or more blowers, and of course the current pellets!

Also, I'm not sure of wildwest's elevation, but we're at around 2,000 ft with no issues at all. Our stove is basement installed with about a 4 ft vertical pipe, then out horizontally thru the wall into the chimney which then has about a 20 ft vertical rise. I did use a stainless steel pipe inside the chimney.

 

I just found these instructions for getting into the internal settings (these look the same as what I'd found in the video a while back):

Extended Programming for the Eco 65, firmware version 1.09

Press + and – keys at the same time to start the programming – will display “DEFAULT”

Press the auger key to cycle through items forward, fan key to go back

EXH1-6 are the exhaust fan settings (factory settings for EXH1-4 are 68v, EXH5-6 are 105v)

CVL1-6 are the fan blower settings (change these via normal programming per the manual)

CMB1-6 are the combustion blower settings (factory settings for CMB1 is 65v, CMB2-6 are 85v)

AGA1-6 is bin feed auger (factory settings for AGA1 is 8, AGA2 is 16, AGA3 is 19, AGA4 is 24, AGA5 is 31, AGA6 is 38)

AGB1-6 is front auger (needs to stay at 100 for all, runs constant)

OVRT is over temperature (factory set to 325F)

WRMT is when the stove turns to “on” from “ignition” (factory set to 130F)

CLDT is cold temperature when the stove turns off (factory set to 100F)

PILT (factory set to 1)

EDLY (factory set to 10)

Press reset button to save once you go through the whole menu.

Edit: These are taken from a discussion I found on Hearth.com forums. I should have included the thread link as it has more info there as well. It does look like the original video I'd seen isn't available, but the poster helpfully typed all of these instructions!

Drolet Eco-65, how to fix auto-ignition problems | Hearth.com Forums Home

My apologies if it's inappropriate to post this link- I haven't been on here for a while, and not sure about forum protocol.

 

Wyoming has a high mean elevation of 6,700 feet (2,042 meters) above sea level.

Where are you in Wyoming WildWest maybe Bobs are needed, have some Makers Mark for Bob.

 

Pallet Pete , I've been sticking my shop vac hose in the channel under the exchange tubes (it's a small shop vac & hose). What do you scrape your's with? Pot scraper, exchange tube brush, or?

Our ECO -65 actually came with a scraper specifically for pulling the ash out of that channel below the tubes (we got that and a long tube brush). The scraper is about 18" long and has a 90 degree bend on one end with about a <2" wide scraper, so you can push it into the channel as far as you can with the scraper end above the ash, and then pull the ash out- this takes a few passes but I get a ton of fly ash out of there. It's a bummer if they didn't include one of these for you! If you still have your manual, I think they picture it in there somewhere.

Then I have a straight extension on my shop vac that I shove a round toilet bowl type brush into, and run that back and forth in the channel after scraping.

The ash in this channel is usually very light stuff, with no real carbon buildup, so you're probably getting most of it out when you vacuum in there (even without scraping). I would think that if you didn't, the stove wouldn't have run well at all for a long time.

Also I spaced the fresh air intake, it was vented to our "enclosed" porch but we knocked that wall down a few years ago, it's just room air now, I'll check that.

I'd definitely check that small fan in the back at the air intake- there are two clips to release that allow you to remove the intake shroud to get to the fan. I think that it's even more likely to build up with lint, fuzz, etc. if it's feeding air from the room, so I'd definitely see how that looks. It will affect how much air is being drawn in for the fire.

Is this by adjusting the augers ? (mine feeds too fast, I can't even run it on 5 or 6 without it overheating).

Yes! If you get into those control settings, this is AUG 1, and you can change the value to increase or decrease the feed rate on each of the 6 stove settings. (For what it's worth, we've never been able to run our stove on 5 or 6 without burning too hot either!
I haven't ever adjusted the feed on these high settings because we've always been good on the 4 setting here even on the coldest days- I think last winter I did bump the stove up to a 5 for an hour at a time on really cold days.) But I have changed the feed rate on settings 1 and 2 to help it burn a little hotter on those settings.

 

Woah! I need to do some geography/topography studying- that is up there. That said, if I recall wildwest has had this stove for many winters now (as we have) so major problems with the install should have showed up many winters ago.