Pellet heads!! What's up today?

Just got done fixing the first Englander I've ever worked on, NAILED IT.

 

Kind of slow so far, re-building relationships after the previous guy blew off customers and kind of ruined things but it's picking up slowly but surely. I've been getting a fair amount of work off facebook believe it or not.

 

Details??

 

Complaint was "My pellet stove won't feed and I don't know what kind it is."
Well I did a multitude of things so I'm not 100% sure what was the TRUE fix. The tee was absolutely clogged with ash so the obvious beginning was a good flue cleaning. Ran the brush through first, then did the leafblower to clean it out. Disconnected the flue from the back of the stove and vacuumed it out, but wasn't much left after the leafblower ran. While I had the vacuum switches disconnected (never seen a pellet stove with two vac switches) I cut both ends off of both hoses as they were dried and cracking.

While poking around I noticed that somebody had messed with the wires for the lower auger motor. They must have pulled on the wire when they tried to remove it and it came out of the spade connector. Instead of stripping the wire and replacing the connector they just shoved the wire in and taped it. I installed a new spade connector. Just for giggles I put direct power to it and sure enough it worked fine.
Plugged it in, and it turned on for about 4 seconds then shut off immediately. Error E 1. So I started playing around and noticed the lower auger motor had some movement to it. The upper auger motor would not move. At first I was thinking the lower auger motor shouldn't move... but noticed there were no real brackets holding either of them in place. Soooo, I started working the upper auger motor back and forth and sure enough, ended up with the same movement the lower motor had.

Plug it in, push on and within 5 minutes she was a burning away. Different stoves, but I like them. Just wish they made it so both sides opened up, would be kind of a pain to work on without pulling it out which I did today. I didn't necessarily do all those things to "fix" the stove, they are just things I do as a standard service when I do a service call.

 

Welcome to the Pellet Pig Club

 

Not so fast there are requirements that must be met and a telepathic meeting arranged for along with proper bribery, err, I mean libation fund donation.

 

Get Swag??

 

Nope, maybe some stars to put beside the badge of honor in your sig.

 

What is a little strange to me is I bought my P61 in March of 2009 and I'm pretty sure it was manufactured in 2008. Yet when I bought it, Harman was offering an $800 rebate. I ended up paying a little over $2800 for it with all the fancy trim. The only thing I can think of is they caught up with their shortage fairly quickly and ended up overstocked. Whatever it was, I was happy.

 

That was a good deal. I've about four grand in my stove without trim etc. I think the p61 was four or five hundred less in the basic modle.
I gave it some thought. No such thing as too big so that is how I went. We had a family gathering here tonight. Lots of complaints about the heat being too much! ( and they were all upstairs)

 

There was a price increase around the same time I was trying to use a rebate, it was one or the other. Our Canadian rebate was lower from what I remember. At the time, the P68 was around $3300-3500 something and the P61A was a 2-3 hundred less. If I remember, the P61 was still been sold. Don't question me on the $$ quotes as it was 7 years ago.

 

Took the interstate highway to medical appointment this morning. Sun was out and the roads were fine. Little did I know that about 50 miles north, it was still snowing and there was a 70 car/truck/bus pile up. 17 people to the hospital, no life threatning injuries. One man had to be cut out of his car that was crushed everywhere except for the driver's seat. I'll be so glad to see this winter wind down. enough already. This and the prior two winters are among the highest twelve winters on record. This one is about to become the coldest on record ever.

 

We didn't want to hear that.

 

He he, it is good to roast them out savemony they probably have thick blood from living in arctic temperatures all winter.

Just waiting to clean the roaster and get back on a Thursday schedule again.

 

got 6 new inches on the ground down here in the Old Dominion this morning, still snowing.

 

Glad that is you and not me Mike they had a bit of that stuff a ways from me yesterday up to 9" worth and one 75 vehicle pile up on I95 up at the Etna/Newport line area. Not good stuff at all.

 

You can keep it all Mike!