Pellet heads!! What's up today?

Atter all the years of running shells....Learned something.
The big stove has not been feeding shells well recently and we needed to run the beast up on "4" to keep a fire going.

After watching the Drop recently the feed light would at times come on 3 times without a drop...Then maybe a weak little bit would drizzle out.

I checked to be sure the auger was moving each time the light was on...YESS...Every time there was motion.

I decided to bail out the hopper this morning while the stove was down for a regular cleaning the fire box/burn pot.

OH MY
The lower 2/3 of the exposed auger was full of fines and the shells were only getting into the upper area....Maybe an inch or so long.....

Vacuumed the entire auger out and checked things ALL OK

Refilled with shells and set the feed to "P" (PRIME) This runs the auger continuously....
Soon the shells were coming out the drop tube very good.....A Tea spoon full or more each cycle.

The auger on time is set to the factory 2 seconds on.

So now we are running 5 off/2 on......SETTING #3

I like it.
I am thinking maybe this should be part of a monthly clean schedule....

We clean the ash out of the fire box weekly and the ash baffles every other clean and do LBT at the same time....

This gets the stoves innards as clean as can be done considering the torturous path the gases and fly ash travel.
The only other way is to remove the draft fan and go up inside the cross travel channel with a WHA WHA BRUSH (Large brush similar to a thermos bottle brush but stiffer and longer)

The cleaned auger seems to be making things much better....

Ther first hour or so the fire will die down a lot every few cycles but then come back up...Once a bed of coals forms the dire will stay up and hold well....

Draft rod setting needs to be on the factory setting with the rod collar tight against the side of the stove.....

As the ash accumulates over a week or so pulling the draft rod out maybe 1/2" keeps things happy until the next cleaning.

Ah yes

 

So in conclusion shells can create a fines problem as well. Me may take a nap now.

 

That is one nice perk of being retired , I can just go lay down for a bit whenever I feel like it.

Sam

 

Pellets have fines too.....
Once we run the shells through Munchy there is a bit of fines created from the process......Over time they filter down and collect in the lower level of the hopper.
Since I have not cleaned the hopper since we started it on shells back in 2010.....

Not a bad deal though....

 

I old as well; I am entitled or is it titled?

 

Well,well look at what showed up at the Food Panty for Deer.

 

On mine, the clock loses about 2 minute every 6 months. not a big deal. I only notice because it is installed above my work computer and the time no longer matches. Not a big deal to me though as long as I don't rely on it for when I should hop onto meetings (obviously, my reminder will pop up on the work laptop, so it's not a big deal).

If you have the DST set, it will guess as to the date it changes. Like this year, we had a very early DST start and I reset the clock. Then, a couple of days ago it changed and was an hour fast, so I reset it again.

I do not have it hooked to wifi, so it doesn't have anything to compare itself to.

 

Hey you guys how’s it going? Glad to see some of the OG people still here. I got a ton of TSC red bag pellets delivered yesterday and the Roadie delivery guy showed up with a Ford Explorer stuffed with my 50 bags. To top that off he was in Jesus shoes and a black leather blazer, no gloves, no hat, no warm clothes and the wind chill was 7 degrees. But this guy unloaded and stacked those bags in ten minutes flat like a boss. I was impressed. Thought you guys would get a kick out of that. Brother and I moved them into the porch a few hours later. Roadie only delivers to the driveway but all good.
My 2005 St Croix Prescott is still pumping out the heat. It’s 5 am - ish and outside is 4 degrees but 73 in my living room with the stove on setting 2.

 

Welcome back!

 

X 2 where have you been?

 

That brings back the days I used to do that - load my Explorer with a ton of pellets. Red one was 2007 Explorer, gray one was the 2014 Explorer. I think I've done this at least once with my current 2018 Explorer, but can't find pictures so maybe not (bought late 2022 so may have already had all the pellets I needed - last 2 years I've gotten deliveries from HD).

 

Feeding starts Tuesday December 16th

 

The weather around here has been very wet .
Hauling shells in the rain is a NO GO
Yesterday dawned with a low cloud deck with zero precip showing on the radar.
We decided to head to the nut plant and get a load of shells as next week looks dreadfully wet around here...
Trip was uneventful.....WEATHER STAYED DRY all day too....
Depending on how we feel we may or may not unload today..(SATURDAY)
I need to clean both stoves and my computer has been having a graphics card issue of late....Graphics card is 15 years old and started doing weird crap a while back....And now if I try to run videos or other pages that work the card it quits.

I scared up a good (Tested...fingers crossed) used card of the same model and such
It's a Radeon HD6870 Black edition.
Looks like new....

Around here with all the dust mine sure does not.

I use a "Duster can" regularly on the CPU and the Graphics heat sinks/fans.
When the picture dropped \the other day I took the card out and blew it out with mu shop air.

I got about a half a cat worth of Orange fur.....Our cat is grayish black.....Card was used when I got it.
The card is not easy to get the plastic cover off.....So I blew through every orifice it had.....

The fan has always cycled the speed up and down even when there was no load on it.
The other day when it got hinky the fan went berzerk and screamed....

That was before I blew it out.

I have been able to do email and simple pages on line and keep it running....

Here in a while after 3-4 more cups of coffee I will swap in the Card that came yesterday.....

I am gaurdedly optimistic that this will fix the issue as the only thing that causes trouble is graphics heavy use...

 

Yup, you know how. I did it 6 years ago. Haven't seen a flake of sn*w in 3 years.

 

My last two *blows boxen said they followed cousin Billy's rules.

My Linux boxen followed cousin Jeffs rules.