Harman Absolute 43 review

[fmsm]

Glass stays really clean on all temps for me. Night and day to my P35i's

 

[richfow]

Glass stays really clean on all temps for me. Night and day to my P35i's

Ok, what do you think is wrong with my setup. You note you have a 2015 so you must have the feed rate of 0 - 100% on your display. What is your rate set at or does it matter. I read somewhere that if you are on auto, then the ESP and with the temp set, the feed rate will be automatically adjusted. Is that correct? Then is the feed rate only useful in manual mode? Just trying to find out why my glass is fogging.

 

[richfow]

I have a cabin in the Sierra at 7500' and got a Harman Absolute43 installed to replace an old wood burning stove.
So far so good, the pellet stove work great, heats up the house in a hurry. The new display is convenient and offers a great deal of settings and information. The new burning pot fence works well, make beautiful flames and still allows the ashes to fall down.
This is a great stove, but in some ways I still prefer the Accentra that I have in my home because it is quieter.

Here is a list of features that could be improved upon on the Absolute:
- Wifi connectivity, the HW for that costs $15, they could have added that to remote debug an issue, do firmware updates and allow remote control of the stove (like heat up the cabin before you get there).
- Room fan, the minimum setting is off, this is great and very silent, but then the setting above is 10% and that's pretty strong already, making the stove too noisy.
- Burn rate, the minimum burn rate is 1 and is much higher than the Accentra 1, the stove heats up too much.
- Empty notification: The LED that lights up the pellets (great!) blinks when we need to add more fuel, but the level is wrong, the tank is half full, and there is no indication on the display.

All in all, this is still a great stove and I'm happy with it, I just wish they would fix some of the issues on the next firmware update.

Cheers!

On my Absolute 43 the Whisper mode is 10%. I have a Hunter room air cleaner and it is louder than my 43. I quess my old Black Bart II wood stove and my room cleaner together were louder than the 43 fans running at say 75%.
Was wondering about your burn rate, do you not have the display window with the various menu levels? I don't see a burn rate on my display. i do have a feed rate but it goes from 0 - 100%. One on that scale would be 10%.
As noted in another post the sides of the hopper need to be steeper or a slicker material needs to be used. The pellets seem to be slow in dropping down. At least I don't have the backdraft and smell/smoke issues I had with my wood stove and the pellets are a more sure thing then the loads of wood I was getting.

 

[richfow]

I have a cabin in the Sierra at 7500' and got a Harman Absolute43 installed to replace an old wood burning stove.
So far so good, the pellet stove work great, heats up the house in a hurry. The new display is convenient and offers a great deal of settings and information. The new burning pot fence works well, make beautiful flames and still allows the ashes to fall down.
This is a great stove, but in some ways I still prefer the Accentra that I have in my home because it is quieter.

Here is a list of features that could be improved upon on the Absolute:
- Wifi connectivity, the HW for that costs $15, they could have added that to remote debug an issue, do firmware updates and allow remote control of the stove (like heat up the cabin before you get there).
- Room fan, the minimum setting is off, this is great and very silent, but then the setting above is 10% and that's pretty strong already, making the stove too noisy.
- Burn rate, the minimum burn rate is 1 and is much higher than the Accentra 1, the stove heats up too much.
- Empty notification: The LED that lights up the pellets (great!) blinks when we need to add more fuel, but the level is wrong, the tank is half full, and there is no indication on the display.

All in all, this is still a great stove and I'm happy with it, I just wish they would fix some of the issues on the next firmware update.

Cheers!

On my Absolute 43 the Whisper mode is 10%. I have a Hunter room air cleaner and it is louder than my 43. I quess my old Black Bart II wood stove and my room cleaner together were louder than the 43 fans running at say 75%.
Was wondering about your burn rate, do you not have the display window with the various menu levels? I don't see a burn rate on my display. i do have a feed rate but it goes from 0 - 100%. One on that scale would be 10%.
As noted in another post the sides of the hopper need to be steeper or a slicker material needs to be used. The pellets seem to be slow in dropping down. At least I don't have the backdraft and smell/smoke issues I had with my wood stove and the pellets are a more sure thing then the loads of wood I was getting.

Wireless t-stat is a rather simple device, perhaps the one they sent me is just a really crude prototype to get me off their backs. Wireless is good up 30 feet, thermostat itself is very accurate (at least according to my main T-stat). Other than that, I have found no added features such as remote connectivity, nor are any mentioned in the instructions sent by Harman. The firmware update that needs to be done before the remote sensor can be used (they sent it on a thumb drive with the sensor) has some cool features such as a more accurate fuel supply gauge & available temperature history (I'm sure there are others that I have not discovered yet). So far so good.

How is your 43 running now with the wireless T-stat? You said they gave you an update on your software. Could you go to page 5 under Diagnostics and get the number. My version is 15.02.11. Thanks

 

[richfow]

Same with mine but it does hold 52lbs

I went into the menu, page 2 and select Fuel Calibration. Tap the Fill Amount and it goes to yellow color. Push the up arrow until it reads 51lb. Check it by opening your hopper lid. Clear the Was hopper fiiled yellow button, and your hopper lb to empty should read 52 lbs. Hopefully, this will resolve this minor issue. I keep messing with the menu and hopefully my tinkering will not cause this thing to blow up. Thanks for the feedack.

 

[richfow]

I went into the menu, page 2 and select Fuel Calibration. Tap the Fill Amount and it goes to yellow color. Push the up arrow until it reads 51lb. Check it by opening your hopper lid. Clear the Was hopper fiiled yellow button, and your hopper lb to empty should read 52 lbs. Hopefully, this will resolve this minor issue. I keep messing with the menu and hopefully my tinkering will not cause this thing to blow up. Thanks for the feedack.

Should read 52lbs. My bad. It will not go any higher.

 

[ColoradoSolar]

Could someone with the Absolute 43 and a kill-a-watt meter put the 2 together and get some readings. I would really like to know how much power they actually draw as I want to put one in my off-grid solar house.

Thanks.

 

[fmsm]

Anyone else have an igniter issue? Mine stopped working and I'm told it is something to do with a warped flame guide. They have ordered the part.

 

[astroman]

Hello,
There aren't a lot of Harman Absolute 43 stoves out there ... we recently bought one ... serial number 008 ( or maybe it has been sitting in the showroom for a long time ). Our previous stove was a Harman P38 ... it worked for us for over ten years all winter long. We decided to "upgrade" to the "state of the art" Absolute 43. HUGE MISTAKE ...
This stove is so bad we are going to demand replacement with the P43 ... the modern version of the P38. We can live with a lot of things, but there is one thing that we won't ... and that is black lampblack SOOT. It's everywhere inside this stove ... you can't clean it without getting this stuff all over yourself and everything you touch. We never had this problem with the P38. I clean my stoves frequently, we use Golden Fire fuel, we have a short exhaust pipe, and we're at a moderate 2300 feet elevation. We have tried every adjustment on this thing ... it still produces this glue-like black soot.
Beyond this ... we thought the Absolute 43 would be easier to clean ... it's not. Whereas the P38 had a deep ash can, this stove has this skinny one which when removed leaves only this narrow opening to get at vital components. And when you reach in there, your arm comes back out looking like you poured lamp black all over it.
The stove heat exchanger is much less efficient than the accordion styled one found in the P38 ... it's just a flat piece of metal and to get the air coming out of it really hot you have to have a blast furnace going ... whereas with the P38 a medium fire was all you needed.
We could probably live with the "other stuff" but the lamp black soot is a deal breaker. It's not so much on the glass, but everywhere inside the stove so that any form of cleaning means getting this stuff all over the place despite all care.
I can't recommend this stove ... I won't call it junk ... just poorly engineered ... a surprise coming from a trusted brand like Harman.

 

[fmsm]

Hello,
There aren't a lot of Harman Absolute 43 stoves out there ... we recently bought one ... serial number 008 ( or maybe it has been sitting in the showroom for a long time ). Our previous stove was a Harman P38 ... it worked for us for over ten years all winter long. We decided to "upgrade" to the "state of the art" Absolute 43. HUGE MISTAKE ...
This stove is so bad we are going to demand replacement with the P43 ... the modern version of the P38. We can live with a lot of things, but there is one thing that we won't ... and that is black lampblack SOOT. It's everywhere inside this stove ... you can't clean it without getting this stuff all over yourself and everything you touch. We never had this problem with the P38. I clean my stoves frequently, we use Golden Fire fuel, we have a short exhaust pipe, and we're at a moderate 2300 feet elevation. We have tried every adjustment on this thing ... it still produces this glue-like black soot.
Beyond this ... we thought the Absolute 43 would be easier to clean ... it's not. Whereas the P38 had a deep ash can, this stove has this skinny one which when removed leaves only this narrow opening to get at vital components. And when you reach in there, your arm comes back out looking like you poured lamp black all over it.
The stove heat exchanger is much less efficient than the accordion styled one found in the P38 ... it's just a flat piece of metal and to get the air coming out of it really hot you have to have a blast furnace going ... whereas with the P38 a medium fire was all you needed.
We could probably live with the "other stuff" but the lamp black soot is a deal breaker. It's not so much on the glass, but everywhere inside the stove so that any form of cleaning means getting this stuff all over the place despite all care.
I can't recommend this stove ... I won't call it junk ... just poorly engineered ... a surprise coming from a trusted brand like Harman.

Harman replaced mine with an Accentra, my dealer Kirley Masonary of Mansfield, MA went to bat for me.

 

[kenjacq]

Could someone with the Absolute 43 and a kill-a-watt meter put the 2 together and get some readings. I would really like to know how much power they actually draw as I want to put one in my off-grid solar house.

Thanks.

I have checked the power consumption of the Absolute 43 using a kill-a-watt meter. I checked it on two settings, '1' and '2.5'.

Manual Mode:

Setting '1' (11-hour continuous run test) consumed 0.7 kWh.
Setting '1' would therefore consume 1.53 kWh per day if on continuously.

Setting '2.5' (2-hour continuous run test) consumed 0.22 kWh.
Setting '2.5' would therefore consume 2.6 kWh per day if on continuously.

Note: Your total electricity consumption results will vary depending on your stove setting and how long the stove is 'on' - which itself depends on the size of the area that you are attempting to heat, the insulating properties of that space, and the temperature outside.

 

[xraydog]

Hi All,

I am a newbie pellet stove burner this year. I installed a Harman Absolute 43 and have been burning it 24/7 since mid october.

I saw the post by astroman regarding the 'black soot' inside the stove, not on the window. I would use the same description to describe the ash inside the stove when I clean it. Being a newbie, I didn't know is the was usual color or appearance of the ash. I have been using only one type of pellet (Instant Heat). Is this a pellet issue or stove issue?

I don't have any issues with operation. seems to put out plenty of heat and the wireless thermostat is working great. How do I know if there is a problem? What color should the ash in a pellet stove be if there is efficient burning?

Rick D