What is everyone using to store pellets...Indoors

gold rush

 

Not a Harman

 

guess so.. looks like lot of work [added to the regular maint work]..

 

Thanks for that pic. If I were to do that with four bags of the AWF white pines there would have been at least ten times that amount.

That said... It sounds like sifting the pellets at all isn't really required. I started doing it because the tech from the company that put the stove in did it when he loaded the stove the first time. He poured in about 95% of the bag and stopped, and when I asked him why he didn't pour the whole thing in, he said he was "trying to keep the small junk out."

From that, I assumed it would be best if I followed his lead? But now it sounds like the general consensus here that any sifting or pellet cleaning beforehand is unnecessary? Might keep the dust down a little when you load the hopper (which SWMBO likes), but other than that... unnecessary?

 

I can do you one better for your consistency analysis... I've actually got two different lots of AWF white pine here. A couple bags from 2015, and a couple bags from 2017 that I just picked up a couple days ago to get through the past couple days of constant running. I can tell you that they appear identical in every way between those two dates. Look, smell (nice), taste, and burn exactly the same. So yes, at least for the past three years, they have been consistent!

And about the stuff I collect in the colander... I'm too cheap not to burn it!! That's what I use when I manually light my stove. I found that the smaller chips start burning way faster than whole pellets, probably because of the increased surface area. With the lighting method I use, I've got healthy stable flame about sixty seconds after light off. That's better performance than I ever got using whole pellets for the manual light.

Now, with the huge amount of chips from the AWF white pine, combined with the fact that I've been running constant without taking the stove down... I've been generating chips faster than I can use to light it. Hopefully that condition will change soon!!

 

Dunno what kind of stove you have PhilaB - can't say if it's necessary or what works best for you & your stove there..

Only you can decide that.

We scoop out of each bag until 3-4 inches are left at the bottom, then toss it aside (well, wife does anyway), and open a new one. When we get 4 or 5 "sifter bags" stored up, off the the Pellet Vac they go. The cleaned pellets go right back into the Hopper, or the next opened bag.

Our stove is a drop-tube fed stove vs. a bottom-feed stove: so the auger sits at the very bottom of the hopper: pellets are pushed into a 3 inch opening in the auger tube by the auger, then rise up -> until they are pushed over the top of the tube, and drop down into the burn pot. The dust & fines in that pic will collect & fill at the bottom of the auger, then push/bind against the auger.. Bad for the auger bearings. And it will screw up the feed rate - it's easy to tell when the bottom of the auger is 'sawdust-filled' here. * If we didn't vac, we'd be emptying & vacuuming the Hopper out every 25 bags. Been there, done that. But this is just our particular stove here. She's getting old, and finicky. And it does keep the dust down a bit, vs. not Vac'ing.

Hope this gives some insight to why we use the Pellet Vac.

 

I love just being able to dump fuel in there and not fart around. It's another task one can entirely skip.

 

Yup. Thanks for the insights. Much appreciated. I didn't mean to sound like everyone sifting pellets was wasting their time. Hope it didn't come across that way. I'm sure there are plenty of situations where this is absolutely the right thing to do.

I have a Harman 52i as well, and it sounds like it doesn't care too much. I've been pretty much doing the same thing you describe with sifting the bottom 3-4 inches of the bag, and I'll probably keep doing that. But maybe I won't be as thorough and just try to get rid of the dust instead of trying to separate out almost all of the chips.

Thanks again for the help!

 

That's true, it's another task, but it's no big deal: it usually takes longer to setup the Pellet Vac (if not already setup) than to vac out the bags of 'sifters'. Just a few minutes, once or twice a week. And it keeps the stove clean.

 

Nah, your Harman will just eat them up. .. And it has a "fines" box, an added bonus!

Happy Burning!

 

Yeah the fines in a box feature just contributed to my $325 purchase.

 

What was the purchase, if I may ask?

Edit: Saw your other thread - Smart purchase on the 52I rail kit there dotman17 .. No fun trying to move any stove, w/ a recovering injury.

Hope the hand is feeling better / you are recovering well.

 

I bought the rail service kit at a place headquartered in Oregon here in Washington. Coastal Farm and Ranch. They are pretty big now and usually can undercut the competition. I get my DF pellets there at great prices

 

Thank you sir. I appreciate it.

 

Olympus DF is the -only- brand of pellets I've ran here that did not require any extra stove maintenance, or any kind of Pellet Vac'ing in our stove - they burn so clean & hot: it is truly a pleasure burning them, when we can.

But we'd be Broke, if that's all we burned. Priorities..

 

I bought the kit after i learned of the gunk that fell out of my stove exhaust. I put a flue brush up there and was surprised of the amount. But then it's been 3 1/2 tons since I have checked. Made me wonder about the chimney flue. And, yeah, why i am in there, i am going to empty the 'fines' box.

 

They are my number #1. I got an exceptionally good price on BMs so that's what I am burning now. But PC Pellets are the best IMO.

 

There's even better than Olympus / BM DF pellets out there ?

I'm on the wrong coast.

 

I want to experiment... Got some Purcells and North Idaho bags for fun. But I found local brands that are really Olympus on the cheap and there's no point really to buy anything else. You don't want to know what I can get them for.

 

No, not tonight - I'm already depressed enough. Tomorrow's a busy day, there's some Roof shoveling in my immediate future.

Have a great evening dotman17 , Stay Warm out there in DF land.