# Piazzetta  - some advise and little secrets you would like to know



## Pascal_Maertens (Aug 17, 2014)

Before you by a Piazzetta just make sure that your dealer knows is product and how it's going to be installed and it's good for other brand to...
if he is going to put the stove in your trailer and goodbye, run away.
if the dealer dose not make* the first start and adjustment of your stove*, run away.
if a* magnehelic* sound like a strange word to him, run away.
if he dose not have a* boot loader* well he might not be such an Piazzetta expert.
if not you are going to be the next one on this forum waking that your stove run like sh...

I own a Piazzetta for too years it's a Sabrina model and I also sale an install them and I can assure you that none of my customers went on a forum complaining about there stove and this is due to the fact that I always go an start the stove for them. why would you ask

first adjust the stove to the proper settings cause Piazzetta is built in Italy and for dose who know a little mechanics will know that a carburetor in high altitude will not work whit the same adjustment than at low altitude. so the settings in the technical manual ( yes there is one, which is different than the owners manual that the customer has and many dealer don't even know about lol.) the setting was I saying are going to be slightly different then the one given by the manual different altitude or just different house will be enough to have a significant chance in settings 

then to teach the customer how to operate his stove, just to avoid the ones that don't read there owners manual
and also how to do the maintenance every 4 days, every month and every 50 to 55 bags of pellets 

and before I leave the last question but the more important to me  is ( *if one of your friend comes in a week or so and ask you if you are satisfied about your stove, if your answer is well I'm satisfied but* ) you just forgotten to give me a call. and this is how every dealer should treat there customers


then come the little tricks;

like taking the grid of the chimney cap off, it cause fine ashes to stick to it in intense cold weather -30 to even -40 Celsius ( I live in Quebec )
adjust the energy saver +1 off and -1 degree start, more money in your pocket
not to install an external thermostat it cause the energy saver not to work properly ( a bug? )
extending your sensor wire so you can have it on the second floor you will not be able to control the temperature but at least you going to have the correct temperature where you want it.
adjusting the temperature of the stove to the same off the second floor were the sensor is ( yes there is a way just ask me )
adjusting the alarm to a longer delay so wen you open the cover to put pellets in you have enough time so the stove don't shut it self off will feeding it default is 30 sec. rise it to 90 sec.
adjusting the grate cleaning time and frequency of cleaning to longer and more frequently period
and they is also more to it when comes to trouble shouting there is always a solution and believe me when I say that none off my customers are unsatisfied whit there Piazzetta stove so there is a way to be happy whit your stove

just put your priority on finding a good dealer, they sure will also have good stove to offer you.

for those who think that this is all publicity the most part of this forum come from the states I'm from the north of Quebec in the nice little village of Mont-Laurier the only way I could ever meet you is if you ever come for snow sled we have many nice trail over here

well that's it for today if you have just any questions, I'll be more then happy to try to help you out

regard's Pascal


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## Pascal_Maertens (Aug 17, 2014)

chickenman said:


> Hi Pascal,
> Can you please explain to me the importance of this as I never use one and see no reason why people should be running away from me....
> What is so important about the magnahelic that cannot be trimmed by the trained eye?
> I appreciate that pellets are pretty uniform but with other fuels, which I do not know if your stoves use, you cannot affix a set draft rate and they require individual adjustment.
> ...


lol. no offence to you, all there is about the magnehelic is for Piazzetta and all those European stove that have way much more adjustment then others if I refer to Pacific energy, warmland, ecotech, drolet I do not know about Harman all they have for adjustment is one big raw metal trap when you set those up you let it burn for a will at level 3 an then set up most of the time around 14 wc on the magnehelic pressure gauge big deal ! for sure some advised eye will definitely be able to set it up but when it come to Piazzetta you have minimum 7 level to set properly and there no I don't think it's a good idea to try to set then by eye. rpm from 1500 to 2800 thinking that only 10 makes a difference hum..... if I sale other brand I usually don't even go true all that trouble unless the customer calls for reporting a problem. most of those other stove have an very old technologies in, they run like tank but are not as energy efficient as the European are. but hey it's not like I have 25 years of experience but still it's my opinion. and by eye or by magnehelic the result must be the same for the customer, dealer has to be there when needed !


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## Pascal_Maertens (Aug 17, 2014)

chickenman said:


> Hi Pascal,
> Can you please explain to me the importance of this as I never use one and see no reason why people should be running away from me....
> What is so important about the magnahelic that cannot be trimmed by the trained eye?
> I appreciate that pellets are pretty uniform but with other fuels, which I do not know if your stoves use, you cannot affix a set draft rate and they require individual adjustment.
> ...


well this time the boot loader is to reset a stove but not has the default settings but to a full setting I'll try to explain

this is a boot loader you plug this in the back of the stoves so you can unlock all the settings



now whats about it, well has you can see in the next image I have circled settings 2.0 being the minimum and 12 is the maximum adjustment for pellet feed
that's is true in the tech book only, in real life  the stove default adjustments are way less permissive if I remember at Power level 3 you only can go from 5.9 to 7 ( time feed ) but what if you need more or less in an other exemple the combustion blower settings are from 1500 to 2800 rpm but by default at level 3 will be from 1750 to 2300 if you need more you cant unless you have this little boot loader to expand all setting and it gets very fun when you have different configuration example; using energy saver or not, or I had a customer who wanted to run is stove on solar system there a way to never stop the stove just like those thank stove, but to bring it down so much you wound believe there is a flame in there. anyway they are so many adjustment I can do whit a Piazzetta it almost unbelievable that people are having problem whit this stove it's now my third years whit Piazzetta many sales and all of our customer are very satisfied whit the product and it as to stay that way Mont-Laurier is to small for customer problem. sorry if I offended you but if you sale and install  Piazzetta I remain whit my opinion.


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## reallyte (Aug 17, 2014)

Very nice detailed tips. On the grate for the exhaust I can attest to it clogging in peak burning season. I thought so many other things were wrong before checking a very clogged exhaust grate. Note that I do put mine back on when in off season because I had a bird divebomb my exhaust and jam my exhaust fan...


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## Frank White (Nov 6, 2014)

If I am finding substantial ash build up in my burn pot soon after a full cleaning is it the pellets or is there an adjustment I can make to mitigate this from happening?

Thanks


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## chken (Nov 6, 2014)

Frank White said:


> If I am finding substantial ash build up in my burn pot soon after a full cleaning is it the pellets or is there an adjustment I can make to mitigate this from happening?
> 
> Thanks


Try different pellets, more combustion air, adjust by eye or with a manometer. Someone on here last season, a dealer who went to a big trade show in the Western US, said that Piazzetta would have a new burn pot this year, stainless steel, with a lip to prevent that ash pile under the pellet chute. 

As for Mont-Laurier being small, I used to live 80 miles away in Ste Agathe-des-Monts.


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## gdphishman817 (Nov 7, 2014)

So I bought a lightly used manometer on ebay, a UEI EM150. I for the life of me can't figure out how I'm supposed to connect it to the stove. I took the nut that covers it to Lowes to see if I could find the part to screw into it, as far as I can tell, the nut is metric. What do I need to connect to this thing?


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## chken (Nov 7, 2014)

gdphishman817 said:


> So I bought a lightly used manometer on ebay, a UEI EM150. I for the life of me can't figure out how I'm supposed to connect it to the stove. I took the nut that covers it to Lowes to see if I could find the part to screw into it, as far as I can tell, the nut is metric. What do I need to connect to this thing?


Usually, it comes with flexible silicon tubing that you just wiggle on. Just take off the nut and attach.


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## gdphishman817 (Nov 7, 2014)

Ok, I wound up putting over the nut that's on the back of it


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## gdphishman817 (Nov 8, 2014)

chickenman said:


> Dont confuse yourself with hokey settings.  Get the basic right first. Fuel quality, fuel feeding, air supply volume.  Play with the pressures later.


I really wasn't confused at all, I was just unsure of hooking up the tube for the Manometer to the stove. I'm a tech/computer guy, so I strongly stick to RTFM, "Read the F____ Manual." I must say, once I got the Piazzetta programing manual, setting the air was pretty straight forward. In fact, tweaking all of the settings is pretty straight forward. I'm not sure why you call them hokey, it seems that setting the draft on a stove is one of the first things that should be done and my dealer never did. I think it's just different with Piazzetta stoves as it's all done digitally via the programing menu. Thanks to people like chken and Pascal, this stove has become really demystified for me.


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## chken (Nov 8, 2014)

chickenman said:


> Our stoves are exactly the same, control wise.
> You are missing the point.
> Just because you have a chart in front of you saying what to set things to does not mean those settings are correct.
> THe huge advantage of these new stoves like yours and ours is you have the flexibility to get the optimum performance from your stove.  We routinely improve the performance of HHT stoves by 10% by not following the recommendations and tuning to the specific fuel and location.
> Your stove has so much potential it is a terrible waste to rely on failsafe factory settings.  I bet your stove would be easy to run on multi-fuels and considering your corn is half the price of pellets it makes great economic sense.  You wont run multi-fuel or get top performance from varying quality pellets if you rely on the factory settings.  Learn how the fire works, it will be specific to your installation and tune accordingly.  You will reap the rewards over time.


I think there was something lost in translation. gdphishman has a stove that is on factory settings and he was getting the information on how to tune it to his particular locale for "optimum performance" by using a manometer. That should allow him to tune for the specific fuel and location.


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## Pascal_Maertens (Nov 9, 2014)

Frank White said:


> If I am finding substantial ash build up in my burn pot soon after a full cleaning is it the pellets or is there an adjustment I can make to mitigate this from happening?
> 
> Thanks


you have to shorten the cleaning delay to 40min, and raise the time of cleaning to 25sec if problem still occur then 30 min delay  and 30 sec cleaning go step by step cause higher cleaning rate will also cause higher consummation of pellets.


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## Pascal_Maertens (Nov 18, 2014)

Frank White said:


> If I am finding substantial ash build up in my burn pot soon after a full cleaning is it the pellets or is there an adjustment I can make to mitigate this from happening?
> 
> Thanks


*A Piazzetta will accept any kind of pellets soft or hard wood as long they are clean dust free is better but I would adjust the cleaning time and intervals for sure *


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## Pascal_Maertens (Nov 19, 2014)

chickenman said:


> Pascal me thinketh you go to far.  Once you get pellets with ash ov
> 
> 
> chickenman said:
> ...


 
yes there will always be dust, but some turn to easier to dust then other if you take a hand full and try to close your hands on it some will just turn to dust very easily some other will stay firm


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## chken (Nov 19, 2014)

Pascal_Maertens said:


> yes there will always be dust, but some turn to easier to dust then other if you take a hand full and try to close your hands on it some will just turn to dust very easily some other will stay firm


Okay some confusion here. I think our Aussie friend is talking about ash, while our Canadian friend is talking about fines.

Anyhow, Pascal is from Canada, I'm not sure they have pellets over 3% ash That scares me just looking at it. Anyhow, I'm burning DF Blazers right now, and they're supposed to be 0.3% ash, and they're great.


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## Pascal_Maertens (Nov 20, 2014)

I used Cubex, Northernwood, Comfort which are all Hardwood from Lauzon company and yes they are less than 3% 9000 btu/lbs. Last Christmas Dec 2013 Rona hardware store had softwood for only 2,99$ a bag witch make a 2,25$ economy over the hardwood yes usualy 5,26$ Canadian dollars.

But when I listen at all the comments on softwood in my locality, it seemed to me that softwood had all the default of the world. For what I heard, I taught that it would nearly damage my stove. So, I ran the company stove whit it instead of mine since last Christmas, this stove is running whit only softwood perfectly set up, no problems, the heat was fine, and the maintenance was just like the hardwood, so…

This year I’m running whit softwood at my house it’s cheaper

Rumors, rumors, rumors lol… well thats for Piazzetta stove and I think that you can burn just anything in a Piazzetta as long as it's is set properly


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## igot8 (Nov 25, 2015)

Pascal_Maertens said:


> Before you by a Piazzetta just make sure that your dealer knows is product and how it's going to be installed and it's good for other brand to...
> if he is going to put the stove in your trailer and goodbye, run away.
> if the dealer dose not make* the first start and adjustment of your stove*, run away.
> if a* magnehelic* sound like a strange word to him, run away.
> ...


hi
 I have had my piazzetta stove going on its third winter. my problem is that the ash pot keeps getting full after only burning one bag. what can i do to fix this problem and i did ask the dealer who sold it to me and they have no clue. i love my stove and it keeps my house so warm. just don't want to have to empty the ash pot twice a day.
thanks
kathy


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## chken (Nov 25, 2015)

igot8 said:


> hi
> I have had my piazzetta stove going on its third winter. my problem is that the ash pot keeps getting full after only burning one bag. what can i do to fix this problem and i did ask the dealer who sold it to me and they have no clue. i love my stove and it keeps my house so warm. just don't want to have to empty the ash pot twice a day.
> thanks
> kathy


A picture of the pot and a description of the ash would help. What pellets are you using, does changing pellet brands change the result? How often do you clean the stove and venting? Was it ever any different in the 3 years?

Have you ever changed your settings? There are quite a few threads, and a sticky post at the top of the forum pretty much explaining everything about Piazettas.


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## Pascal_Maertens (Nov 25, 2015)

igot8 said:


> hi
> I have had my piazzetta stove going on its third winter. my problem is that the ash pot keeps getting full after only burning one bag. what can i do to fix this problem and i did ask the dealer who sold it to me and they have no clue. i love my stove and it keeps my house so warm. just don't want to have to empty the ash pot twice a day.
> thanks
> kathy


your problem is so ease to fix; like says chken changing pellet could be an helping solution, but I dont know for you guys. But over here as a pellets retailler, we get to have so many brand of pellet one year after the other. But if you read my post; *Programing the stove parameters* and download the proper programming pdf file that I have put on my sticky post you will find that setting P3 and P12 will usually fix your problem only if P16 to P22 have been priory and properly set.


https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/piazzetta-pellets-stove-a-to-z-recommendations.147362/

good luck
if you have any more question on this please feel free to contact me
Pascal maertens


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## igot8 (Nov 28, 2015)

chken said:


> A picture of the pot and a description of the ash would help. What pellets are you using, does changing pellet brands change the result? How often do you clean the stove and venting? Was it ever any different in the 3 years?
> 
> Have you ever changed your settings? There are quite a few threads, and a sticky post at the top of the forum pretty much explaining everything about Piazettas.



I have changed pellets and it is still the same problem. I had the guys who sold me the stove come out and look at it but they were of no help. the pot is like a brick and i usually get an ignition failure alarm if i do not empty it after 1 bag. The first year i had the stove i could go for more than a day and the tray underneath would be full  now just the ash pot is full there is nothing in the tray. any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
kathy


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## chken (Nov 29, 2015)

igot8 said:


> I have changed pellets and it is still the same problem. I had the guys who sold me the stove come out and look at it but they were of no help. the pot is like a brick and i usually get an ignition failure alarm if i do not empty it after 1 bag. The first year i had the stove i could go for more than a day and the tray underneath would be full  now just the ash pot is full there is nothing in the tray. any help would be greatly appreciated.
> Thanks
> kathy


As before, the more info, the better our guesses!

Do you have a picture of your pot and inside of the stove's firebox that we can see? Do you think the holes in the pot have closed up at all over time? Carbon buildup looks like it's part of your pot, but it isn't, it needs to be removed. Do you ream them out on occasion? Does the pot sit in its spot squarely, or has it warped?

As I said, pictures would help. The ignition failure warning means something and you need to figure that out first, as it is likely part of the same problem why you are getting full pots.

When you say the "pot is like a brick" do you mean you've got a giant clinker in your pot?

If ash is not flying out of the pot into the ash pan, then the cause seems to be linked to the pot/grate. It's not functioning correctly. In 3 years, it can wear out and need replacement. Having a 2nd pot as a backup is a good idea, then you can change them, and clean the dirty one while a clean one is in the stove, etc. If it's not the pot, then the amount of air coming thru the pot is the next likely source of your problem, clearly it's not blowing the ash into the pan, but as I said, the pot is what you need to first look at.


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## Pascal_Maertens (Nov 29, 2015)

igot8 said:


> I have changed pellets and it is still the same problem. I had the guys who sold me the stove come out and look at it but they were of no help. the pot is like a brick and i usually get an ignition failure alarm if i do not empty it after 1 bag. The first year i had the stove i could go for more than a day and the tray underneath would be full  now just the ash pot is full there is nothing in the tray. any help would be greatly appreciated.
> Thanks
> kathy


I will repeat my self

your problem is the  easiest problem to solve on a Piazzetta;  if you read my post; *Programing the stove parameters* and download the proper programming pdf file that I have put on my sticky post you will find that setting P3 and P12 will simply fix this problem yes there is more to know about adjustments but at least this one will be fix. I usually fix this one with a finger in my nose lol..

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/piazzetta-pellets-stove-a-to-z-recommendations.147362/
good luck


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