Pellet heads!! What's up today?

Yes JT.

 

We ran Munchy today and did 3 barrels to stove ready status
My tenants in our basement apartment are moving now as they are having a baby and they bought their first house.
They are hauling stuff out and the young man mentioned that the pellet stove was full, BUT would not start.
A quick look at the burn pot revealed the pot had a huge black hard clinker....
The igniter could not light the fire....
also the pellets were not feeding.
Pull he sides off the stove to get access to the electronics, feed motor and such.
I figured the the kids had run the stove empty last spring and the auger was dry.

I hand fed the beast and got it lit....Got the temp probe hot and the green lamp on the magic box came on...
Auger is turning but no pellets.
After a bunch of hand feedings and still no pellets I grab a bucket and a scoop and clear the hopper.
Pellets were Lignetics and were crap.
There was a football size clump of what looked like pellets that got wet or ???? before they were bagged.
Cleared the hopper all the way to the auger..
Auger crammed full of fines ....ARRRRRRRRRGH.
The Quadrafire 1000 has a coil type auger and if the things gets stuffed with fines it will not feed.
Finally got my shop vacuum in there and sucked the auger tube out and added clean pellets.
More hand feeding and after a few more tense minutes the pellets started dropping out into the fire pot and things started to work as it should.
Auger motor works as it should.....The 1 RPM motor takes forever it seems.
The large spring auger is not my favorite ....But they work fine..
Running these stoves dry can be a pain to get the auger full and the stove back into time as far as when there is enough pellets to start the fire and get the probe temp hot enough to start thr auger once the startup timer is done.
These feed about 2-3 minutes and dump a good amount of pellets, then the auger stops while the fire starts.
Then once the thermocouple reaches 200 F the auger starts again and runs until the thermocouple reaches 1000 F then things are set to go....Room fan comes on and things just work great.

No maintenance and crap fuel makes for tough sledding.
I will get in the apartment tomorrow and vacuum the stove out good and check it over well.
I just gave it a quicky to diagnose why it was not working.....

Ah well.
Pellet stoves are not the best heaters for those not willing to learn to operate them....

I have had tenants that were great.....Others not so much.

YA HAVE TO PUT PELLETS IN THE THING ????????

These stoves need a caretaker that has the entire operation well understood for sure..

AH WELL SUCH IS LIFE..

 

I had a couple of bags last year that had clumps of pellets in them - large clumps. The bags were unbroken, and the clumps were floating around in the middle (not around the edges or in corners), so it was obvious that the drying process was not as thorough as required, or that somehow moisture had been introduced just before or during the bagging process. And, if during the drying process, there was no sorting process to take out big chunks. I mean, a random baseball clump of broken down pellets doesn't just happen. Something in the process broke down or wasn't in place to begin with.

I didn't catch one of those clumps and it clogged the pellet chute so pellets wouldn't drop. So I paid more attention to what I was pouring in and was able to intercept other clumps before they became a problem.

 

Yeah
The clumps that I found were huge....One was football size .
This morning I am going to head downstairs and give the Quad a good cleaning make sure all the fan motors do not have pet hair and other debris on the end caps that will stop airflow
House dust is bad enough, but pets add an exponential amount of hair.
I try to stay out of my tenants space, but the stove must be serviced regularly .....Fire pot cleared of the nasty "Lave like" clinkers that form in the bottom and block the igniter.
The Quad has a clean out knob on the lower front that opens the bottom of the fire pot to allow the crud to drop into a catch pan in the lower booster air plenum.

Just pull the knob and a spring loaded rod pulls a crescent shaped cover on the pot open.....

This stove was purchased new in 1993.......It's been a great workhorse.....