Interesting issue with Cleaveland Ironworks pellet pot ash buildup

Just saw this video on. Cleveland Iron Works pellet stove

The holes on the sides are only for corn and other multi-fuels. They are not needed for pellets.

Magnum makes Multi-Fuel wood pellet stoves. Their Magnum Countryside is a real workhorse and does have a fuel stirrer rod.
Their Baby Countryside does not have the fuel stirrer rod so they have a cast iron pellet pot just for wood pellets with only holes in the bottom because wood pellets burn better with under side air only.

 

Time to get the cordless drill out and drill some holes. I enlarged mine on both my 6039's simply because I mix corn and pellets so air flow is very important. Ran a hopper full of somewhat damp pellets last night with no issues at all but then both my units are very forgiving and have stirrers in the burn pots. Only thing I notice is, with damp pellets, the heat output drops off so I need to bump up the PPH feed rate to compensate for that.

That burn pot is very poorly designed, least in my view and the door glass is filthy which is a direct result of lack of air flow.

 

Which holes did you enlarge, bottom or sides?

 

Bottom. I enlarged the existing holes by 1/16th inch. Nothing on the sides. That pot had none and I'd add at least 8-10 holes. You'll always get a hard cake with no combustion air migrating through the pellet bed.. My other issue is, there is no mechanical means for stirring the fuel bed.. On both mine, the pot is 'stirred' constantly with a stainless steel (for lack of a better term) 'rouser' that agitates the fuel bed constantly. Really don't matter of it's a corn /pellet mix, like I run or pellets only, that hard cake (or clinker) will form no matter what.

Like I said, poor pot design, nit thought out at all.

Why the view glass is getting loaded with fly ash as well. I don't ever have that issue. My view glass will eventually collect fly ash but it takes about a week or more and if I'm running hard, the glass stays pretty clean even after a week.

Bottom holes for certain. The quantity will depend entirely on experimentation, but I'd start with at least 8 to begin with, 4 rows of of 2, spaced equally and go from there.