I've been burning pellets for a little over 4 years now and I have never been really picky about what goes in the hopper. The P61A can burn just about anything I throw in there. I have been getting better at noticing what burns well and what gives good heat and what doesn't. The first couple of years I burned nothing but premium pellets, one of my favorites were the Barefoots, I burned Green Gold, Logik etc.... The problem with that is the place I was buying from had a minimum for delivery so it started getting a little expensive. And took up a lot of room in the cellar during the burning season as well. So I started just buying 10 bags at a time here and there and mostly from TSC and Walmart and found that those pellets burned just as well and with great heat, and minimal ash too. So i save a few bucks and buy the cheaper pellets and i don't have to stockpile to ensure i get some. I am in the middle of a kitchen and dinning room remodel so I basically live at Home Depot so I saw a pallet of Stove Chow the other day and grabbed 10 bags to give them a try. Holy crap is this stuff garbage! The first bag I put in the hopper had a bunch of sticks and real small broken pieces of pellets. I know the stove will burn it but man, a little quality control on their end might be in order. Not a huge deal but i won't buy those pellets anymore, the TSC pellets are much better as far as I'm concerned. Not sure if this is a commonality with the Stove Chow but it should be about $2.00 a bag and then it might be worth it.
Ain’t had the pleasure yet, might avoid for sure. We own a less expensive stove and have found TSC pellets to be ash cake forming... but I’m still learning.
I have never seen that in the 3 brands here I've burned. That said, I did slowly kill 2 houseplants in a bad bag of potting soil that had similar but bigger like pictured, one a VERY old plant and the other only a couple years old .
Hmmm have burned a lot of chows over the years and never found anything like that in the bags, have found all kinds of goodies though in other brands.
X2. I dont recall seeing that crap in Chows. But, bad batches happen and OP seems to have gotten one.
X3 - burned lots of chows over the years, and never seen anything like that. I did see it with a few bags of AWF hardwoods once, but the stove didn't care, it burned them just fine. I would agree with IHP, you've definitely gotten your first bad batch of pellets. You should be glad it was only 10 bags; I usually end up with a bad batch by the full ton, lol. Seriously though, I wouldn't let this scare you away from the chows for good. This does look like a one off.
I'll pay a lil more attention to my batch. But it looks like that might be the Monday after the super bowl batch.............
I want to say..."yea, all those Chows from HD are junk!", but any mill can have a run of a bad batch.........
Lol, you could be right about that! I spent 27 years in manufacturing and Mondays and Fridays definitely had different quality standards! All 10 bags had a variation of scraps in it but seemed to burn just fine. I'm just not used to seeing that stuff in a bag of pellets. I'm a firm believer in second chances so I'll buy more in the future, mainly just out of curiosity to see if it happens again.
Wow!! Yeah, I wouldn't be happy if I found nails in my pellets, that would definitely warrant a trip back to the store with the pellets in tow!
I should say that the pellets where some nails or nail pieces we're found we're not stove chows.... easy heats come to mind though...[ole roy's]
stove chow? garbage! (lol)....actually the stuff you pulled out would appear to me to not actually inhibit pellet flow, would likely burn just fine......nails and screws on the other hand? Not many BTU's there
I burned MANY tons of Chow that I got from HD.....never had anything it the bags but pellets, and they always burned just fine.
I burned two tons of Chow this year...and a few last year IIRC. They tend to be a little ashy, but never had any surprises in the bags. I dump all my bags into a coal hod and use that to fill the stove. I can't say I inspect each bag with a fine tooth comb, but I have a pretty good idea of what's going into the hopper.
