Hello, I've been AWOL from the list for quite a bit this season, it's not intentional. We've had so many changes here with the future direction of our farm and lives. I'll be back to a normal life by next season....I hope? I struggled this year with my Osborn 7000 with two issues. One was the pressure switch having conniptions with the crazy winds this season. The winds settled down the second half of the season, so there is hope for next year. The second issue was the settings for the stove. For a season and a half, the LG's burned very well and on the same settings. This year there is no rhyme nor reason. Bag to bag there was a difference. If I cleaned the stove every three bags, it ran better. The preceding seasons I could run ten bags through before any issues appeared. So I began to suspect the pellets. I found out that the dealer had bought in a tractor trailer of LG pellets last spring. They sat outside on pallets until the fall when I purchased them. Could they have gained a higher moisture content and therefore cut down their efficiency? I was hoping PelletGuy would respond by now to my PM. I was looking for his pellets to be sold up in my area. I wanted to run them through the stove this season. As it is, I haven't a clue what to do for next season. A stove that doesn't like high winds. Pellets that were a solid choice...now seem to suck. Dump the stove? Dump Pellets altogether? Move underground and live like a hobbit?
Doesn't sound like you had a very good winter my friend , I think I'd be looking at another stove . I bought both of mine in the spring local stove shop wanted to move some stock and made me a pretty good deal couldn't hurt to look .
I know that he rep's / supplies LaCrete , North Country , Vandy Plat's and Olympus DF's . Maybe if you went to those web sites some times they dealer locators , just plug in your zip code .
I'll run zip codes again, I haven't in months. Thank you all for your comments and wishes. Funny the day I posted this thread we got crazy winds again. I was hoping someone would chime in on this: So I began to suspect the pellets. I found out that the dealer had bought in a tractor trailer of LG pellets last spring. They sat outside on pallets until the fall when I purchased them. Could they have gained a higher moisture content and therefore cut down their efficiency? Could they have gained enough relative humidity to cause them to burn so poorly? What happens to pellets that have high moisture content? Is the Bear still hibernating up there in the back country?
All things being equal (storage conditions), if the pellets were from the same batch, there's no reason one bag would burn 'better' vs. another.. It's the stove (airflow) or venting. Even though pellet stoves are considered 'forced draft', there has to be (some) level of natural draft (chimney stack effect) in the venting, to convey flue gases out of the venting efficiently.. Your current venting does not allow that: excessive wind is entering the venting, creating excessive positive back-pressure - so severe the stove losing (forced) induced negative draft, defeating the vacuum switch, and the combustion blower motor / impeller. The combustion motor / impeller is basically 'stalling' while in operation, from the severe wind entering the venting. To correct, you need to either defeat the positive back-pressure in the current setup, by installing a wind break / wind screen that is restrictive enough to allow the combustion blower motor / impeller to operate correctly, or extend the current venting vertically, so the venting terminates at a 90 degree angle to the prevailing wind, allowing cross-wind to carry the flue gases out of the venting, with appropriate cap, screened as needed on the prevailing wind side, to 'temper' any excessive draft, induced by high wind. Stove-wise, I would be giving a thorough cleaning, using LBT and/or compressed air at end of season, or sooner.. I wouldn't rule out a partially blocked (or plugged) passage in the stove, with all that back-pressure. -- If the above makes sense, discussing with the local dealer, installing a magnehelic gauge to check the current stove / venting condition, inspecting & testing the combustion motor/impeller, and possibly installing a replacement vacuum switch (as a preventative maintenance measure) are things I would consider doing here. Hope all is well there Ambient, and you get the stove issues sorted.
That's the issue as I see it, this whole batch of pellets, they preformed poorly this season. All from this same dealer, stored outside from last spring on pallets. Whether windy or no wind they were not the equivalent of what I burned the first two seasons. I used the LBT with my 250MPH blower/sucker. I also cleaned the stove top to bottom weekly. I had removed the pipes twice to ensure they were clean. I did have a build up at the end of the termination on two occasions within ten bags consumed. The previous two seasons I only had this happen when burning a far inferior pellet. I'm five up and five out on the pellet stack now. The termination is horizontal and angled back (south) from the prevailing winds(west by southwest). My discussions of building a temporary deflection shield aka wind break in front of the termination cap are ongoing with the DW (dearest wife). It would look ugly vs. firing up the wood stove. I do have this underlying feeling that the stove is no longer new and just isn't meeting my expectations. The DW is happy when we turn it back on, as it heats this place up in a heart beat.
Well, that sucks. We've had batch variation on the Satisfaction pellets here also, but have been able to adjust -> compensate air for that. Agree, it's sounds like (something) isn't right. Only harped on venting because IIRC, this is the 2nd combustion blower / with the venting buildup issues previously posted. It may not even be venting: when I tried to install an outside OAK here on the SE corner of the house, it did not go well - too much wind shift at the house corner was affecting intake air -> burn. (The location was covered by decking on top, the ground slopes up at a steep angle below.) The OAK was constantly shifting between too much air & starving: the flame in the fire box was alternating badly, in high wind. As strictly a test, I took a 5 gal. contractor bucket and fabricated an "air box" in-line between the OAK intake and the stove: that helped a lot w/ tempering -> stabilizing intake airflow. For code, I figure a 12" x 12" x 24" air box made out of metal HVAC Duct, with metal mesh filter inside mid-point would be what's needed here, in-line between an outside air intake and stove air inlet.. That's about the same size as the fire box chamber on the Francesca stove. ^^ That's why we've been burning w/ a short "Inside Air Kit", the piping takes the intake 12 feet away from the stove to a corner of the living room, for stable intake air flow. FWIW, I spent a good week 'tuning' burn rates here back in Oct-Nov. 16, and ended up having to increase combustion air on all settings, once the season got under way, by (80-120) RPM each, depending on feed rate. Settings ended up being much different vs. the '15-'16 season, and closer to '14-'15, FYI. Just some random info I thought you may find useful. Kind Regards, Rob
