Englander/Summers Heat - 25-PDVC / 55-SHP10... What Is or Is This Normal or Typical and my set-up..

[cntbill]

Got a different question, but not sure if I should start another thread.

What do you think of or is your experience with the other models above this one, the 25PDV and or the 55-SHP240L. Do these model also burn black on the Low, 1 setting?

 

[steveh50]

I had the same problem black glass lots of unburned pellets in the burn pot. Tried everything englander told me to do and check. I played with pipe length 3 ft, 4ft, 5ft. I took everything off and just run it straight out the wall and put a vent cap on and I also did away with the outside air. I cut about 12 inches off the outside air pipe and run it over to the exhust blower which does blow some air out the back side, now that air is blowing into the burn pot. this worked great for me. I have been burning for about a week now, everything burns up, hardly no ashes, and the glass is clean.

 

[cntbill]

Funny, last night looking at my setup I was just thinking about a way of trying to get more air in. I was considering a small fan in the fresh air pipe.... interesting results here.

 

[steveh50]

I was thinking the same thing. I am going to make something to house a small computer fan and control it with a fan control for a computer. That way I can control the air going into the burn pot. I am also going to hook the outside air back up.

 

[steveh50]

Let me say that I think by taking all the pipe off made the most difference. Maybe the exhust blower is not strong enough.

 

[cntbill]

I have a couple of small fans that came out of an computer server appliance that are 120v and really push some air, but they are 4". I know I have some other smaller fans from some computers so I'm thinking of going that route, and a power supply from a computer to run it (120v to 12v fans) just need to decide which as I have a few...lol

post back with your out come...

"Exhaust Fan not powerful enough" - I was wondering that myself....

 

[steveh50]

By doing what I did, my stove make so much more heat and burns less to make that heat. I have almost no ashes as before, I could have both sides of the burn pot full in a few days as that is where I put the ashes until I cleaned it.

 

[cntbill]

It's good to know that my thinking of getting more air in might work, as it has for you. Going to experiment with the rigging tomorrow and see how it goes...

Thanks

 

[staplebox]

Are you all talking about adding a fan in-line into the outside air tube to force air into the stove or forgoing the outside air and just forcing air into the stove from right behind it? I have a corner install and ~ 2ft of outside air tube and can feel a pretty strong suction on the outside end. I am of course intersted in the most efficient (cheapest) hottest burn I can get.

 

[pegdot]

shl9, did you just run the hose over to the backside of the exhaust blower and leave it laying there or did you attach it somehow? Has anyone just tried running their stove with the OAK disconnected?

I'm still trying to understand how this stove isn't getting enough air for a complete burn. I hear other stove owners talking about having a problem with having to reduce their air flow so as not to have pellets "jumping" out of their burn pot like pop corn and I have to shake my head because my stove doesn't blow hard enough to blow fluffy ash from directly in front of the air inlet! I know that my OAK is drawing strong because it will suck the flame out on a lighter held the to outside end of it but somehow that air flow isn't making it to the burn pot.

I've had an idea that the wear plate in the burn pot what too restrictive so for the last couple of days I've been playing with different wear plates in the burn pot. The stove burns great, white ash, no soot, good heat, no clinkers, and clean glass, with just a grate in place of the metal wear plate but the ash falls through and piles up in front of the air inlet at the bottom of the pot. The fact that the ash can build up not only in front of but actually IN the end of that tube tells me that there just isn't much air coming through that opening. Shouldn't there be enough air flow to at least blow ash out of the tube? Where the heck is all that outside airflow I'm seeing going? I'm stumped.

I'm out of metal stock to make new wear plates from so I think I'll just try unhooking my OAK today and see what happens. Old house that isn't by any stretch of the imagination air tight so I don't think I'm in any danger of creating a negative pressure situation but I have to caution those of you with newer/tighter houses about the potential for problems without outside air for the stove.

 

[cntbill]

pegdot,

Interesting experiments... Here is my theory on the wear plate / burn pot.

The distance between the auger tube and the top of the wear plate is to small, causing the pellets to burn and build up at the end of the auger tube, this allowing the build up of carbon in the end of the tube.

The area that the pellets end up and burn the holes could be in a better place.

What I was thinking of trying is to order an new wear plate, (this way I still have an unmodified one to go back to) and then take it to some one who has a torch and have them heat it up and create a valley / indentation about an 1 1/2" wide, sided to side and 2 1/2" long, front to back and about a 1/2" deep. This way the pellets would fall away from the auger and burn more in the middle of the burn pot area.

On the air flow it is interesting to note that the combustion blower for this model 25-PDVC and the next larger unit 25-PDV share the same one, or at least it is the same part number.

 

[pegdot]

Hmmm....interesting idea getting the pellets away from the auger tip. I'm not the worlds best fabricator but when I get some more stock I'll give it a try and let you know how it goes. Without altering the lip that holds the wear plate in it's going to be a little tricky but ya never know till ya try! ;-)

I've left my original wear plate alone. I've just been replacing it with the ones I've made during the day when I can monitor how it's burning and putting the original back in at night.

 

[steveh50]

pedgot, I did just run a a short length over to the back of the exhust blower. I you put your hand down by the blower, you can feel some air blowing from the exhust blower. Not sure how the low air settings work, but I have mine on 7 or 8. If I put it on 9, all the pelletts are burned and all I have is ashes. If I put it on 9, everything is burned, but the ashes are clinkered together. I guess that would be too much air.

 

[steveh50]

Also, like I said in one of my other post, I think taking all the pipe off the outside made the most difference. I am going to play around with that again.

 

[cntbill]

OK... I went ahead and put the fan in the intake hose and ran it last night. So this morning when I was cleaning the burn pot - Ashes were a little less, but what was most noticeable there were no clinkers to speak of. OK I thought cool... so I lowered the Low burn rate to 3 and the Low air to 7. Everything seemed to work ok, fire was getting enough pellets to keep from going out and from smoldering. Only thing temp was down 20*, I figured this would be somewhat acceptable to have a low consumption of pellet and still enough heat to keep the house warm.

Problem... Later on this evening I thought I would run it on high to check it out and to warm up the house a bit and at the same time burn up some pellets that were not good. As for the heck of it I thought I would try some of those Pennington pellets that I read about in another post out of curiosity and as it turned out the couple bags that I picked up were the bad batch bags...

Put it on high and what was happening, the auger would deliver a bit of pellets get a good fire going like normal but then it would die out.... hmmmm thought maybe the pellets were jamming in the auger, check it, OK. What I found out by putting my finger on the top auger motor feeling it turn was about every 5 sec. it would run for a few seconds. But as I checked when the fire would get going all of a sudden the top auger would stop running its cycle, it was being turned off some how. So turned the fan off, set stove to 7 -7, and it went back to working normally.

So I'm not sure of the pressure switch setting and such, but I believe the extra air flow was causing it to trip one, stopping the top auger feed. Bottom line.. improves burn but only on low.

I have another problem, but I don't believe it is from my testing here, as I set the stove back to the previous settings and did not use the extra fan. I am going to start a new post on that.

 

[packerfan]

OK... I went ahead and put the fan in the intake hose and ran it last night. So this morning when I was cleaning the burn pot - Ashes were a little less, but what was most noticeable there were no clinkers to speak of. OK I thought cool... so I lowered the Low burn rate to 3 and the Low air to 7. Everything seemed to work ok, fire was getting enough pellets to keep from going out and from smoldering. Only thing temp was down 20*, I figured this would be somewhat acceptable to have a low consumption of pellet and still enough heat to keep the house warm.

Problem... Later on this evening I thought I would run it on high to check it out and to warm up the house a bit and at the same time burn up some pellets that were not good. As for the heck of it I thought I would try some of those Pennington pellets that I read about in another post out of curiosity and as it turned out the couple bags that I picked up were the bad batch bags...

Put it on high and what was happening, the auger would deliver a bit of pellets get a good fire going like normal but then it would die out.... hmmmm thought maybe the pellets were jamming in the auger, check it, OK. What I found out by putting my finger on the top auger motor feeling it turn was about every 5 sec. it would run for a few seconds. But as I checked when the fire would get going all of a sudden the top auger would stop running its cycle, it was being turned off some how. So turned the fan off, set stove to 7 -7, and it went back to working normally.

So I'm not sure of the pressure switch setting and such, but I believe the extra air flow was causing it to trip one, stopping the top auger feed. Bottom line.. improves burn but only on low.

I have another problem, but I don't believe it is from my testing here, as I set the stove back to the previous settings and did not use the extra fan. I am going to start a new post on that.

I'm not sure, but the top auger could be stopping if the temperature was getting too high. I believe this is a built in safety feature to prevent the stove from overheating.

I've had the feed stop on my pdv 25, and at first I thought I had pellets that were bridging. Turned out that my top auger was stopping due to high temp. This happened to me with a feed setting of only 3 and blower at 9.

 

[cntbill]

Interesting, Check out a post I just made.

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/15083/

 

[pegdot]

Sorry to hear about your problem, Bill. Scary!

Well, I disconnected the OAK yesterday and then proceeded to run every other appliance in the house to see if I was going to have a negative pressure problem. No problems. On the up side, after running it on 3-3 for well over 24 hours now the glass is completely clean. It's never done that. There is a visible difference in the flame. It's lighter in color, brighter, and more active than it's ever been but...I still had a decent size clinker in the pot this morning. Not quite as large as it normally is but still not a complete burn by any means. It's unseasonably warm here right now but as soon as it cools off again I'll do some comparisons on heat output. For now, I'm leaving the OAK off just to see how long it will burn before I have to clean the glass.

 

[cntbill]

Peggy,

Out of curiosity, what is your setup of you OAK?

OK on the Bright side found out what my problem was. When I purchased my stove one of the guys suggested to put a vermin screen on the exhaust, so I found a screen that goes in gutters and thought that would work... well.... that was plugged up with soot... Live and Learn I'm thinking that maybe the extra air flow might have had something to do with it, like blowing the loose soot in the system and just a little too much at one time for the screen, hence plugging it up...

 

[pegdot]

My plan was to rebuild my hearth this summer and reinstall the stove catty corner. (It's just sitting square to the wall now.) So, I didn't cut any length off the OAK just stuck it through the wall and put the cover over the end to keep critters out. It's long but it's straight. Shorter would probably be better.

The glass is still perfectly clean this morning! One thing I will have to change if I decide to leave the OAK off is to move my humidifier to another part of the house. It's been in the same room as the stove but the stove is now drawing the moist air right towards it so the humidity level in the house has dropped.

 

[bret4]

I wonder if smoke would ever come out the air intake for the OAK in a power outage? That's the only reason I didn't try it yet. Sounds like you are getting a much better burn with out it. Keep us updated on how it goes. Would be interesting to pull the plug to see if any smoke backs up out the OAK intake without the OAK on the stove.

 

[cntbill]

Peggy,

Just for the heck of it I disconnected my OAK to see if I would get similar results, one thing I did also was to leave the discounted opening about 2" away so it could still draw outside air. But still ended up with a build up in the glass, although a bit lighter, but still not right in my opinion.

I'm beginning to believe I should have used 4" vent pipe for my installation even though the tech I talked to said 3" was good enough, which kind of gets under my skin because if I needed 4" I would not have wasted my money, time, and effort with the 3".

So this leads me to another question as to what is the length of your vent and are you using 3 or 4". Thanks for your time.

 

[steveh50]

I am using 3 inch. I still think the exhust blower is not strong enough on this stove. Maybe 4 inch would help, don't know.

 

[cntbill]

slh9 - Figured out why the fan stopped the auger motor. One of the switches detect that the door is opened and stops the top auger motor. So I am thinking when the fan was running it created pressure in the burn chamber thus fooling the system thinking the door was open... Lack of Vacuum, switch opens, brakes circuit, auger motor stops.

Well... wish I found this forum before getting and hooking my stove up....

I believe a post here somewhere by pegdot linked to a page on how to figure pipe length. So with those calculations I have a caculated length of about 25 ft. Out the back of my stove - T=5, 6x1'=3, 90=5, 1 horizontal=1, 90=5, 3'=1.5, 90=5, then terminator=?

And so yes, my guess also that there is an exhaust blower problem also.

pegdot - Your OAK, I'm guessing here that you used the one that came with the stove... My guess is with the hose, I'm thinking after a certain distance there is too much turbulence because of the spiral design of the hose. The manual says it's a 6' hose and anything beyond that should be 3" dia, hmmm maybe in reality max should be 4'. If yours goes Straight maybe you could try just a straight piece of pipe - PVC or the like and being smooth on the inside will allow the air to flow smoother. ?

 

[pegdot]

I suspect you could be right about the length and design of the OAK. I did use the hose that came with the stove but I may try changing it out for a straight hard pipe. As for my vent, I used the 3" corn vent pipe simply because it was all that I could get locally. I've got the adapter, 1' horizontal through the wall to the clean out T, 3' vertical to a 90* elbow, 1' horizontal to the cap. Our house is a craftsman bungalow with 3' deep overhangs and the current set up is sooting the bead-board directly over it so I plan on extending the vent through the roof this summer.

I've still got the OAK disconnected and the glass has stayed remarkably clean. I did a through cleaning yesterday of the whole stove and the exhaust and I did get a little black off of the glass but nothing like I'd been getting. It still appeared to be clean with only a slight haze.

I got some more metal stock Sat. and finally had time to knock out yet another wear plate and install it yesterday. I used the same hole placement as the original plate but increased the size and added about a half dozen in places where the original plate didn't have any. Funny thing, suddenly I have flame in front of those holes on the sides of the burn pot where I've never seen flame before. Not at all sure why increasing the air flow through the plate would cause that. Seems a little backwards to me. Still had a clinker this morning but it was much smaller than normal. I'm going to remove the plate and add a few more holes later today to see what happens.

After looking at the lip that the wear plate rest on it's obvious to me that it's designed to keep the pellets against the back wall. Anyone have any ideas why? I realize that the igniter is there but is there some other obvious reason to want the pellets to pile up against the wall? Better heat transfer to the baffle perhaps?