Heatilator PS50 auger not powering on

[Wb99]

Hi all,

New here and I’ve done a bunch of research but need additional help. Forgive me for the length of the post.

Recently, my pellet stove from 2016 had issues starting up. I’d clean/vacuum the baffles but it got progressively worse. I chalked it up to a dirty chimney since I hadn’t cleaned it since last season. I cleaned it out(wasn’t too bad) but still had issues starting up/getting the auger going. Sometimes banging the hopper lid helped.

From searching, the most common problems were door seals(mine new in 2020) or a one of the switched. I jumped the vacuum switch and sure enough, the auger started dropping pellets. I ordered a replacement vacuum switch, was sent the wrong one. When I went back to install the old vacuum switch, I forgot to cut the power and when I was mounting it to the bracket, it caused an arc . I know stupidity just potentially caused me more problems.

So now, I can’t get the auger to feed even when jumped. I wound up jumping the 3 snap switches, the lid and vacuum switch. I have power on the exhaust motor at startup, the control board fuse is in tact, the blue led on the board flashes twice for a few min on startup like it should. Everything appears to work. The convection motor works when I jumped the wire. I pulled the auger motor and connected directly to an outlet. It still gets power and turns but when I connected it to the stove, it doesn’t work, even when I left the auger unbolted to rule out pellets causing a bind.

Any thoughts on what it could be? My last resort would be control board. Just got two tons of pellets so I really don’t have the money right now for a new control board unit.

Also would like to mention that ignitor is glowing red on startup and I cleaned the thermocouple cover.

 

[Wb99]

Finally got my pellet stove working.

What wound up happening was when I put the original vacuum switch back in, the arc fried just the auger control on the control board. I got a new control board and everything is working again.

The real issue I had was a blocked chimney vent. I clean it every season with an 21 foot flexible rod w chimney brush. I figured that couldn’t be the issue, it turns out it was. My house was built in 79 and must have originally had a fireplace. The pellet stove was put in by the previous owners in 2016. Whoever did the install used the original chimney but ran a flexible metal liner from the stove to the top of the chimney. Every year I’d clean the chimney liner from the roof and stove end thinking I was good after seeing the soot collecting on the outside clean out at the bottom of the chimney. Well the liner doesn’t terminate above the chimney junction, it runs directly to the stoves rigid pipe inside the house. Inside is a 3 foot vertical run to 90 bend into a 2 foot horizontal run from the pellet stove, then the flex liner does a 90 going up the chimney. I had to take off the pipe stove side and could see big deposits of creosote collecting at the elbow section from the chimney side. I broke up the pieces, vacuumed it all out and it looks as good as new.

A valuable lesson learned and I’m lucky the vacuum switch did what it was intended to do, this could have been much worse.