It just builds up, and there is nothing you can do but scrape it off, which buys you another ~6 hours before you need to scrape it again. Will it eventually fall off the edge? I suppose so, but it doesn't matter because it's too far gone already - the fire is already smothered and starved for combustion air. Here's another picture I grabbed a couple weeks ago when we stopped at a countryside store for lunch. Chuckled when I saw they were heating the place with a Harman stove, burning La Cretes. It looked like the stove had not been cleaned for months. You may not be able to see it clearly, but there is a monster chunk of ash about 4" tall sitting in the right side of that burn pot. It was all I could do to stop myself hunting down the Harman tool to scrape that devil out of there!
So for lesser pellets this is Harmans way of helping to keep a clean burn. But it also caps the feed rate as well correct?
I believe so , IIRC the feed is the maximum amount of times that the auger will turn in 1 min. I may be wrong ,if lousy weather shows up he can clarify this.
You have it right. Each number on the dial represents 10 seconds, so if you set it at 6, in theory under the maximum heat demand that auger is turning non-stop. At that rate, you are burning ~8lbs of pellets per hour, yikes!
I know my stove wouldn't be getting enough air to burn at feed rate 6 so it would be smoking like crazy and eventually burning pellets would be falling off the end of the feed pot.
It's nice to know other Harman owners are experiencing the same symptoms as me. I get this with FSU, which is part of the same family as the Chows.
With a P61A I agree with your complete take on the Chows..[burned 2 tons last year] But, I never had that much ash as what is in your picture.. that's a crapload..
