Cleaning...honestly

[mikesj]

A couple of other things to keep in mind are dealer support and your own mechanical inclination. The dealer who sold me the stove was worthless- he really didn't know anything about it. I don't think he sells Harman's anymore. Fortunately I have another dealer close by who has been way more helpful.

It doesn't take much to figure it out and this forum is a great resource, but there is definitely a learning curve with these things.

As far as mechanical inclination, it also doesn"t take much. Harman's are pretty straightforward to work on. Are you cool with taking a cover or two off and cleaning the fans every now and then and pulling the esp to clean it every ton or so? None of that stuff is a big deal, but some people can"t or won't do that kind of stuff.

I grew up with a wood furnace, and I can say that for me, heating with pellets is about 90% less work.

 

[UpStateNY]

Most Important: is how fast can you clean the stove. I love Harman's but unfortunately my Harman Advanced takes longer to clean than other Harman's. Every 30 to 50 bags the ash pan fills up and I do a complete clean, which requires removing 7 pieces of metal that takes me 30 to 45 minutes. Frequency all depends on pellet quality of course. This is why I like burning Pacific Clean Fire pellets. The North American Pellets are the worst because I think they are 50% dirt. I can't prove North American are 50% dirt but lets just say I hate those pellets.

I have only burned 40 Pacific Clean Fire bags this year and have yet to clean the stove. When ever I restart the cold stove, I do a 1 minute scrape of the burn pot to get the hard clinkers out to make it easier for the stove to auto start. With cheap oil this year, I shut the stove down at 11:00pm and restart the stove in the morning. On days above 35F I have been using cheap oil to heat the house during the day. Buy a Harman just not the Harman Advanced.

If oil stays this cheap and pellets above $250 a ton, not sure Pellet Stove is going to save you much over oil or even Propane. For under $6,000 you can get a GAS (propane of NG) furnace or boiler. The >98% efficient GAS boilers have on demand domestic hot water, no hot water tank required, no chimney required, and hang on the wall with a small foot print. With on demand domestic hot water and not heating hot water tank can save you money.