Friendly reminder to clean the fines box - see pics

Hi
The fines box is Not Fine if it is Full of Fines!

Only Harmans have this but there are a few out there. The stove in the pics is a P61a used quite heavily for 2-3 years.

Click on pics below to Enlarge.

 

Every time I clean my P61A the fines box looks like that (I clean every 2-4 weeks). Doesn't seem to matter what I burn. Doesn't usually seem to affect performance when it is full though. Conversely, the P43 has almost no fines in there no matter what I burn.

 

Very Interesting BogieB !!!
This is a pic of a newer P61a that I installed about 4 years ago with the crossover air tube kit installed at the factory and has the steel fines box cover with the wing nut at the very bottom of the box.
My much older P61s that have the cast iron fines box cover and do NOT have the crossover air tube kits are like your P43 and do not build up so quickly like this!
So how old is your P61 BogieB and does it have the crossover air tube kit factory installed???

Pic below shows crossover air tube

Also my 10 year old P61 that has nothing on the bottom of the fines box.
Can u take pics of your box?

 

My P61a has the newer box and cover and has a date of 8/13. No it doesn't have crossover, nor any other mod. Runs great.

 

my P61A manufacture date 2012...
same deal here.... once month cleaning and the fines box needs vacuuming... lot's of broken pellet pieces along with the sawdust..

 

The fines box is part of the feeder weldment that contains the auger chute. The P61a is a bottom feed. The fines box also contains the slide plate and the arm that opens and closes the slide plate to limit the amount of pellets that drop into the auger chute to prevent auger jambs. Other bottom feed stoves such as the 25-PDV, 25-PDVC and the AGP have a top auger to limit the pellets into the bottom chute. Therefore the operation of this mechanism cause the fines to build up in there so there is a cleanout cover to remove the fines. The early cleanout covers were cast iron with a rubber seal. The new covers are Steel with foam Gaskets.

 

And it burns fines just fine. I've dumped in a bag of mostly disintegrated pellets (obviously wet at some point) out of curiosity and had no issues.

 

Hey BogieB - can you be my stove tester!
That reminds me of how I set up a 70K stove in my shed and cranked it up to see how hot I could get the shed so maybe I could make a sauna! However it quit when the shed was about 120 degrees. So I learned that most convection blowers in our stoves have an overheating circuit breaker protection circuit that made the room blower stop! This circuit kicks the blower out at approx 120 Degrees! LOL so the temp inside the stove until the High Limit switch kicked out and stopped the auger from turning and shut down the stove! Good learning experience!
In the case of the Harman stoves the ESP should shut it down. Do u want to test it?

 

Well, had the basement up to 90 before - couldn't stand it any hotter down there, and the upstairs only got about 67 at the warmest part (while it was about -5 outside) so lowered the set temp for the big stove got a smaller stove for the main floor and called it good. If the P43 breaks down perhaps I will test that out for you though