# Bosca pellet stove problem



## chazz1554 (Nov 3, 2013)

I have a bosca classic 500 pellet stove which shuts down on its own. I purchased this stove in 2008. This year it's happened every time i start it. Sometimes it is after 30 min, sometimes 8 hours. Last week i sat and watched the stove and it seems the auger stops dropping pellets for no reason. There is a nice fire in the firebox and it just stops. I have bypassed the low limit switch with same result, i bypassed the hopper lid switch with same results. I didnt bypass the high limit because when the stove does go out i can restart it right away. Any ideas? Does anybody have a way to contact Bosca. I had a number in Washington state but thats disconnected.


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## Bioburner (Nov 3, 2013)

I think US stove took on the stove. I called about support on it from them in Feb.


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## webbie (Nov 3, 2013)

So none of these 800 number work?
http://www.boscastoves.com/contact/


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## chazz1554 (Nov 3, 2013)

Bioburner said:


> I think US stove took on the stove. I called about support on it from them in Feb.


Thanks, i called them the other day, the rep helped me but said they are no longer are the distrbutor and doesn't know who is.


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## Bioburner (Nov 3, 2013)

Northern tool is carrying the stoves. Could give them a call and try track down support.


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## MountainSean (Nov 3, 2013)

Northern tool probably won't be able to help you. They called us looking for parts a few weeks ago. I will shoot an email over to a person I have spoken with at Bosca before and see if they have found a new US distributor.


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## webbie (Nov 3, 2013)

Amazon is selling the dang things DIRECT. You'd think they'd have a distributor of some sort......although they may not divulge.


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## Bioburner (Nov 3, 2013)

From Amazon product description, support by United Stove Company.


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## webbie (Nov 3, 2013)

Bioburner said:


> From Amazon product description, support by United Stove Company.


Round and round we go, I guess!

That company has been through a lot of importers and distributors, it seem! It's a wonder anyone buys them anymore....

I seem to remember that the company pushed for retailers here to buy full containers of the stuff. That's probably why all these places are selling them. But without some support here, this is not going to end well.


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## Bioburner (Nov 3, 2013)

Wonder if the auger motor has a thermal overload? If you had a kill o watt you could monitor the load when the auger runs and determine the motors listed load as labeled to see if that may be the issue. 6 years on a auger sounds a bit short.


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## SmokeyTheBear (Nov 4, 2013)

Two dozen or so things I can think of, there is crud in the vent system or the vacuum tubing going to the vacuum switch, possible but not likely a failing vacuum switch, a split in the vacuum tubing, a loose connection on the vacuum tubing, an overheating and failing combustion blower, a marginal gasket that opens just enough when the stove temperature gets past a certain point, a perfectly functioning automatic reset hi limit switch, a failing high limit switch.

Need anymore possibilities?


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## chazz1554 (Nov 4, 2013)

SmokeyTheBear said:


> Two dozen or so things I can think of, there is crud in the vent system or the vacuum tubing going to the vacuum switch, possible but not likely a failing vacuum switch, a split in the vacuum tubing, a loose connection on the vacuum tubing, an overheating and failing combustion blower, a marginal gasket that opens just enough when the stove temperature gets past a certain point, a perfectly functioning automatic reset hi limit switch, a failing high limit switch.
> 
> Need anymore possibilities?


Thanks for all the help guys,  the stove was professionally cleaned at the end of september. It was still warm on LI until last weekend when i first fired it up. Tonight i'm bypassing the high limit switch so we'll see what happens. Smokey i will look into the things you've mentioned but wanted to tell you that i have been sitting in front of the stove (more than once),  the firebox has a great flame and the blowers all sound fine when the auger just stops dropping pellets, then the fire dies out and the stove goes into shut down mode and shuts down like normal. When i bypassed the POF switch i was told if the fire went out the blower would keep blowing and the pellets would contine to drop until the hopper was empty. I came in, the stove was off, blower still blowing, no pellets dropping and firebox completely empty???


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## SmokeyTheBear (Nov 4, 2013)

You might want to check the flashing lights in the heat range the next time it shuts down.


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## chazz1554 (Nov 4, 2013)

SmokeyTheBear said:


> You might want to check the flashing lights in the heat range the next time it shuts down.


The #3 light is flashing. I'm up to number 10 on the manual list, the high limit switch. It says to let the stove cool down but i can restart the stove right away and it starts right back up. The next two steps involve the control board and i know it's not the fuse. If it was blown it wouldn't start back up.  I'm thinking it's a bad control board and don't know if i can get a replacement


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## Bioburner (Nov 4, 2013)

May have to try Bosca.uk if it comes to that.


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## SmokeyTheBear (Nov 4, 2013)

chazz1554 said:


> The #3 light is flashing. I'm up to number 10 on the manual list, the high limit switch. It says to let the stove cool down but i can restart the stove right away and it starts right back up. The next two steps involve the control board and i know it's not the fuse. If it was blown it wouldn't start back up.  I'm thinking it's a bad control board and don't know if i can get a replacement




If you are trying to burn on low it is possible that you are blowing the fire out, reduce your draft or change your low feed trim (this trim gets reset if the stove losses power).

ETA: It is still possible for the vacuum system to be causing a #3 flashing and not its normal #2, the #3 can come from the vacuum switch not being closed enough of the time so the stove starves for fuel which is what the #3 is all about, namely hey feed me I'm outta go juice.

ETA#2: A loose connection in the POF system can also cause what you are seeing, with the juice off, the stove cold, unplug and check all of the connections in the POF system, those slide on connections have been known to not always stay tight at the POF switch.  Any break in this circuit will cause the #3 light to flash and the auger to stop as the stove thinks it has lost flame.


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## Snowmobileaddict (Nov 5, 2013)

I have a bosca 500 classic and I've never seen my stove flashing a #3 light before after a fail-safe shutdown.

I have had a #2 light flashing a couple of times as an intermittent thing that happened a few times during the last heating season.  I never was able to identify what caused it, as it was likely 3-4 occurances over the course of hundreds of start-up cycles (stove is on a T-Stat).  When mine did this, it happened during a startup cylce.  The exhaust blower would start, the auger would drop a couple pellets and then it would go into shutdown mode and flash a #2 (indicative of insufficient vacuum measured in the firebox).  In my situation a fire never even had a chance to start.  All of my vent, the OAK, my switches, the rubber hose, gaskets and blowers all checked out.

If you think you have a defective board and you are out of warranty here are some places to order one:

http://www.stove-parts-unlimited.co...htm?searching=Y&sort=2&cat=623&show=45&page=1
Kind of spendy!

This guy has a boatload of new boards for sale that fit your Classic 500
http://milwaukee.craigslist.org/hsh/4158385629.html


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## SmokeyTheBear (Nov 5, 2013)

Just a short list of things you might not think can cause a flashing #2:

Damper mispositioned, doors warping under heat,  hopper lid open, high negative pressure in the stove room and no OAK, joints in the firebox opening due to high heat or due to improperly tightened fasteners or missing sealant..

For a flashing #3 besides actually being out of fuel:

If you burn a lot on low and there is anything in the fuel path that partially blocks it, or the damper is open too much,  these can lead to loss of heat and coupled with ash (read you didn't clean your stove properly) on the low limit/POF leading it to drop out long enough for the controller to say hey I'm out of fire, running the convection system on high with a marginal fire going in the stove, a loose POF/low limit switch (not fastened to the stove properly).  Intermittent loss of negative pressure such that the auger gets shut off for too long or periodically, a flaky vacuum or auto reset high limit switch.


Both indicators can also come from wonky controllers.


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## chazz1554 (Nov 6, 2013)

Here's an update, two night ago bypassed high limit switch with same results stove went out. Last night bypassed the vacuum switch and as i leave for work the stove has been on for 12 hours (on low no less, it's warm here). I think we found the culprit (fingers crossed). Will update later tonight.


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## Bioburner (Nov 6, 2013)

Loss of vacuum, now to find where the loss is


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## SmokeyTheBear (Nov 6, 2013)

Hmmm professional cleaning, we have seen a few of those on here that resulted in the crud getting shoved into the stove from the vent instead of being removed from the system.  

Oh well at least the issue has been narrowed down.


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## Snowmobileaddict (Nov 12, 2013)

Any word yet on who is the new distributor for Bosca Stoves, now that US Stove Co is no longer?


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## MountainSean (Nov 12, 2013)

I emailed Bosca like I said I would but I haven't heard anything back yet. Since the company is in Chile I can't really chase them down too much but I am keeping my ears and eyes open.


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## MountainSean (Nov 15, 2013)

I have heard back from Bosca. They told me the following
"As you probably know our office in Spokane was closed two years ago under a commercial agreement with USSC as solid distributor for USA, today this situation is changing and now we will back to have our people in charge for parts and warranty claims in USA, I will keep you informed about our parts inventory in USA. "
Along with another email saying they are working on getting a delivery of parts and stoves sent to the US with one of their people in charge up here. It looks like perhaps there might be a glimmer of light in the tunnel now.


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## Critchley (Nov 10, 2014)

Chazz 1554, did you solve the shut down problem, I have a Bosca doing the identical thing...


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## chazz1554 (Nov 12, 2014)

Critchley said:


> Chazz 1554, did you solve the shut down problem, I have a Bosca doing the identical thing...


Yes, it is still happening, i have bypassed every switch in the stove. I just read a post where the person has a different company's stove and had the same problem and it turned out to be the auger motor was flakey. It seems Bosca is out of business. After the auger motor the only thing left is the contol board and I don't know if you can get one to replace it


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## brooks (Dec 8, 2014)

Hi Guys, I have stumbled upon this thread because I am having the EXACT same problem with my Bosca Spirit 500. It is about a year old, but this is the first season it has really been used. I had to restart it 4x yesterday after it already had a good flame going and was functioning exactly as it should.. It just likes to turn itself off. It is very frustrating. I use this as my main heat source, and knowing it can just choose to fail and turn itself off when I am gone, is very annoying. I live in a heavy snow area so if this thing decides to junk out on me in Jan, it will not be good! If anyone gets any answers please post them on the forum. I am going to go through it all today for another cleaning. Having trouble finding a small bottle of the SAE 20 oil they request on the blower motors..


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## gymrat0663 (Dec 8, 2014)

My Bosca Spirit 500 has shut down like that on occasion, mostly when testing different pellets.  What I've found is the pellet has been the culprit as the longer the pellets the more this seems to happen with this stove.  It seems that a pellet bridges the auger and the stove will shut down.  Often a restart gets things moving again and other times it requires moving the pellets around in the hopper.  This problem went away completely when I made the switch to Lignetics as they are cut small and the auger handles them just fine.  The other shutdown issue that exists with Bosca stoves is trying to run them on the #1 setting.  Simply put, it doesn't work as the stove will shut down every time.


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## brooks (Dec 8, 2014)

gymrat0663 said:


> My Bosca Spirit 500 has shut down like that on occasion, mostly when testing different pellets.  What I've found is the pellet has been the culprit as the longer the pellets the more this seems to happen with this stove.  It seems that a pellet bridges the auger and the stove will shut down.  Often a restart gets things moving again and other times it requires moving the pellets around in the hopper.  This problem went away completely when I made the switch to Lignetics as they are cut small and the auger handles them just fine.  The other shutdown issue that exists with Bosca stoves is trying to run them on the #1 setting.  Simply put, it doesn't work as the stove will shut down every time.



Thanks for the reply. You may be on to something with the longer pellets.. My normal supplier decided to throw in some junky corn based pellets with my order, which is normally smaller wood ones. Anyway, that could be part of the issue. Agreed on trying to start it on low, that is a joke. However once it is running it seems to be pretty efficient on the low setting if you don't need too much heat. I appreciate the response.


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