About to give up! Ash(?) Problems

[Mt Bob]

 

[womaus]

I Got Money...
What was this thread about?

How many $$$ you got?

 

[park4019]

Hey guys, we need some help problem solving.... Or maybe we just need to be told that this is normal, but either way, we need help!

We have a Harman Accentra freestanding pellet stove. We LOVE it, except for one huge problem. We find an extremely fine layer of ash or some sort of white/gray dust in various rooms in our house throughout the winter. We use the stove as our main source of heat so we burn about a bag a day or to bags depending on how cold it is. The stove is downstairs right under the stairs and we find most of the dust/ash in the upstairs rooms. It seems to get worse and worse as the winter goes on and we burn more. We've had the installer and another chimney guy look at it and they don't see any issues with the stove. We don't have an OAK, and have been told that that shouldn't affect the problem. I don't know.

We have also thought that it could be the ash vac... but we have tried venting it outside or covering the vent when we vacuum and we still get the dust. We do clean the stove more often as we burn more, so maybe that is related.

I also recently read about humidifiers causing dust... this might be possible, but I don't think the humidifiers are causing this amount of dust. It is everywhere... under beds that have bedskirts all around them, on top of shelves and printers. It clings to anything... plastic bags, sunglasses, external hard drives, and leaves dust streaks.

We have a baby so I am nervous about her breathing in all of the dust. We haven't turned it on yet this year, because I am worried about it, but it is cold and I would really love to use the stove. We could pay $350 for a Harman specialist to come, but I am worried that they will just tell us it's not the stove and we will just be out the money.

It is an old house that is fairly drafty. We don't smell smoke, we just find this dust everywhere. Could the house be pulling the ash back in somehow? We don't usually have the house fan running, but we sometimes turn it on.

We have also thought about dust fines, but the color and texture just seem more like ash to me.

Thoughts? Someone? Anyone? Obviously new to this and I know very little about these things. I just want to be able to use it!! We've had it through 3 winters now.

I had a similar problem with my P43. Light ash, worsened, as the season went on. I found loose bolts on the auger motor, at rear of the stove. Tightened & most of the problem went away, we always have a slight dust problem. I operate a P38,; a P43, as the season requires more heat. I always find dust enters the room, when I scrape down the burn pots, as the stoves are running. I do not have OAK's on either of the stoves. You may not have the same problem as I did, but it won't hurt to check. Good luck !
Ray