harmann xxv not heating house

[jcleary47]

One thing I found when running my pellet stove, especially these past few nights where it has been really cold, is I can feel the cold air being sucked up out of my basement through the gap in the door to my basement (it doesn't sit flush with the floor and there's nothing on the bottom to stop air leakage.

I mean, I could really feel it being sucked upstairs under the door, like there was a fan on the other side blowing through. I plugged it up with a towel and I think it helped a little bit. I was amazed at how much cold air was being brought up into the living space.

My only concern is maybe the stove needs that air since otherwise my house is airtight. Didn't notice any difference in the burn though I guess.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

One thing I found when running my pellet stove, especially these past few nights where it has been really cold, is I can feel the cold air being sucked up out of my basement through the gap in the door to my basement (it doesn't sit flush with the floor and there's nothing on the bottom to stop air leakage.

I mean, I could really feel it being sucked upstairs under the door, like there was a fan on the other side blowing through. I plugged it up with a towel and I think it helped a little bit. I was amazed at how much cold air was being brought up into the living space.

My only concern is maybe the stove needs that air since otherwise my house is airtight. Didn't notice any difference in the burn though I guess.

An OAK will take care of that.

 

[P38X2]

One thing I found when running my pellet stove, especially these past few nights where it has been really cold, is I can feel the cold air being sucked up out of my basement through the gap in the door to my basement (it doesn't sit flush with the floor and there's nothing on the bottom to stop air leakage.

I mean, I could really feel it being sucked upstairs under the door, like there was a fan on the other side blowing through. I plugged it up with a towel and I think it helped a little bit. I was amazed at how much cold air was being brought up into the living space.

My only concern is maybe the stove needs that air since otherwise my house is airtight. Didn't notice any difference in the burn though I guess.

An OAK will take care of that.

And/or one of these. Walmart run!

 

[kinsmanstoves]

Just to fuel the fire. I do not have OAKs on both stoves at the house and only one out of the three in the store.

Eric

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Just to fuel the fire. I do not have OAKs on both stoves at the house and only one out of the three in the store.

Eric

I see, like those BTUs going up the flue.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

And/or one of these. Walmart run!
View attachment 90731

Both in fact.

 

[daffonce]

So it was down to 60 this morning. I had stove set to stove temp setting 7 and feed rate at max overnight. Stove only ate about 20 lbs of pellets. That is very low. So i Decided it was time for a full clean or what I could do in an hour that included burn area comb fan and esp. Will do it a bit more thorough cleaning this weekend. Went to work it ate over a bag of pellets and it is now 65, had it back to room temp mode during the day. Feel it ate the proper amount of pellets now, so reduced temp now seems to be a factor of undersized stove. Time to chase down some drafts if there are any, good thoughts on outlets and basement door. Windows and exterior doors seem tight from my experience. But house as a whole is new to me also.

 

[daffonce]

Oh and I wondered about an oak an improving stove efficiency, anyone got an idea of how many btus we waste without one?

 

[P38X2]

Without knowing how many hours elapsed during the 20# consumption it's hard to say if that was normal or not. If it was 8 hours, that's LOW. You should've ripped through that bag on room temp 7.

U gotta OAK that thing! Much more efficient especially if your house is tight.

 

[boosted3g]

If your only burning 20 lbs of pellets overnight it dont sound like your getting all of your output. Im assuming by overnight we are talking about 8 hours and at 50k btu over 8 hours we are talking about 48 lbs give or take. Sounds like that little stove cleaning woke it up some since it ate more while you were at work. Maybe a thorough cleaning will let it put the pedal to the metal.

 

[john193]

Check the ESP, I have a feeling that thing isn't reading right because of the carbon build up.

 

[boosted3g]

Check the ESP, I have a feeling that thing isn't reading right because of the carbon build up.

My thoughts exactly

 

[New Hampshire Jim]

Oh and I wondered about an oak an improving stove efficiency, anyone got an idea of how many btus we waste without one?

Lets just say you live in a house that is 1500 sq. feet If my math is right with 8 foot ceilings that would be12,000 cubic feet
And lets say your stoves combustion blower Is 120 CFM =7,200 per hour
SO every hour and a half you are taking ALL the air in your home and using It to burn your pellets and then up the chimney
Without an OAK all the air that is being used for combustion WILL be replaced through all the nooks and crannies you forgot to insulate
This air coming In at lets say 5 Deg. is replacing all the air you just spent good money to heat up to 70 Deg.
How many BTU are wasted? I don't know and my head hurts from all the math I just did
Jim

 

[daffonce]

Couldn't see the esp, but it didn't come out easy. Had to twist and rotate to get it out. Couldn't see it in its natural habitat as the stove is kiddie corner. Overnight I was expecting to burn 40-50 lbs so when it only burnt 20 I knew something was up. The house is warming up now. Think I found where my combustion air is coming from: under basement door, under inside door to garage, and down through the propane fireplace chimney (doesn't seem like I can fully close the dampener, and boy is it chilly around it) I think tightening up those areas will help. An oak is probably on the agenda over the summer when I have some repair work to do around the area where the stove is installed. I did wonder why installer wasn't big on oak, I have to imagine I am loosing big btu.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Oh and I wondered about an oak an improving stove efficiency, anyone got an idea of how many btus we waste without one?

You have to know what the inside temp is, the outside temp, the CFM of the combustion blower at the heat setting the stove is at, along with the volume of air in the area you are heating, but it can be a good amount of BTUs per hour. Find a heat loss calculator that handles infiltration losses and you can get quite close.

Combustion blowers can top out over 100 CFM a lot are less than that.

 

[john193]

You have to know what the inside temp is, the outside temp, the CFM of the combustion blower at the heat setting the stove is at, along with the volume of air in the area you are heating, but it can be a good amount of BTUs per hour. Find a heat loss calculator that handles infiltration losses and you can get quite close.

Combustion blowers can top out over 100 CFM a lot are less than that.

A quadrafire rep a while ago had sent me some information when I inquired about it. She had indicated that the Mt Vernon AE's combustion blower is rated at 45 CFM. Now I dont know where this number came from specifically or how it differs today, but the lower that number the better, I suppose, for those of us without OAK

As a side note, the distributor blower is rated at 180 cfm...again from the same rep.

 

[daffonce]

I just did a calc for 50 cfm of 70f room temp air being replaced by 15f fresh air and you get ~3,500 btu/hr. This assumes the stove pulls in 50 cfm of 70f room air for combustion and that this air is made up for with 15f fresh outside air. Or 6.5% of my Harman xxv's heating capacity. Will rock an oak this summer.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

The air is going to be made up 100% from ambient outside temperature air there is no way out of this. It will have to be overcome by something somewhere in the system.

This has a number of consequences one is the loss increases as the outside temperature drops or you increase the inside air temperature.

There is another that is a bit more interesting and it deals with conflicts between multiple combustion devices inside the same shell. But what the heck, this gets a bit complicated.

john193, there are so many different combustion blowers and even the blowers on a particular stove model have been known to change that I'd be leery of anything said about airflow rates unless it was from the actual blower maker using the numbers from the motor and the size of the impeller.

In other words trust but verify.

Well this cold spell has located a couple of small air leaks that are now on the list for things to play with this year.

 

[lessoil]

The feed rate does not HAVE TO BE AT 4. 4 is the default. I had a customer that had the same feed rate setting for the last year and wanted more heat. He said he left it where I set it. It was not single digits when I installed the stove. The feed rate needs to be adjusted every so often. That is why it has a dial and not just part of the computer.

Eric

I thought that setting was the max that was available IF the stove needed it and not a target??

 

[gbreda]

Keep in mind you're trying to heat your entire house with a space heater. If it works for you 99% of the time, great, and it's very important to keep that in mind as well. I'm in the same boat as you. 2400' with a 43kbtu stove. It's been all I need since I've owned it, with the exception of these last few very cold days. I knew this would happen when I chose my stove, but it happens so infrequently that it's almost trivial. If you have to use your boiler a couple days, so be it. You'll be supplementing your stove so you're not gonna use that much oil anyway. Its fun to say "screw you" oil, but you gotta be realistic. You're still saving a ton of money.

X2 This weather is making the oil monster run to keep the upstairs bedrooms warm. If I dont heat the 2nd floor, it is noticed big time on the first floor as well.
Thjere is no way that even a P68 will take care of a basement and 2 floors above it right now. But overall it is bearing the brunt of the workload.

I thought that setting was the max that was available IF the stove needed it and not a target??

Same here as I have had to up the feed rate to almost 5 in this weather. As Eric mentioned, it is adjustable for a reason.

 

[kinsmanstoves]

I thought that setting was the max that was available IF the stove needed it and not a target??

No