Your 25PDVC. You will be doing your own maintenance. You will do your own repairs. You will be getting your hands a little (sometimes a lot) dirty. You will not just flick a switch every morning and have heat. You will need to read the manual. You should watch the DVD supplied with the stove. It helps to have a little basic electrical knowledge and you will need basic hand tools.
If this stuff doesn’t bother you, you will most likely absolutely love this little stove and the heat it cranks out.
I’ll admit it up front….I’m a cheapskate. When I went looking for a stove a few years back, I didn’t want to sink a lot of dollars into what was for all intents and purposes an experiment. I also didn’t want to invest in a high cost installation. These 2 pre-conditions took me to the local Big Box store, Kent Building Supplies, where I was introduced to the 25PDVC.
One of the best things I did was attempt (successfully) a self-installation. No better way to get intimate with the new basement-dweller than to hump it around, cut the holes in your house (before drinking the beer), and install the vent & OAK. Disclaimer….if you’re in any way leery of a self-install, your insurance company gets cranky, or local codes require it, do your research and hire a pro. You are literally messing with fireJ.
Four years in and I can say up front I absolutely love this stove. It’s simple to operate, relatively simple to clean, and is easy to troubleshoot if you think logically and understand the basic theory of operation.
I’ve found Englands Stove Works support, both parts and via telephone, outstanding.
All that said, there’s a few things I’ve learned along the way:
Those annoying “E” codes:
They can tell you a lot, and yep, they tick you off when they appear. Approximately 1 time in 20, mine will fail to auto-start courtesy of a pellet dropping into the burn pot right in front of the ignitor hole. Hello “E2”. Usually not a big deal…..remove the pellets dumped in, press start again and off it goes….and always seems to light. BUT those pellets you scraped outta the burn pot, some may be hot or actually smouldering from the attempted start…..toss them into a metal can, not back into the hopper!
The other BIG thing on any start up or an “E2” restart….stay close to the stove during any start-up cycle. Once in a blue moon you’ll get flame….but in taking too long to ignite the stove won’t reach “proof of fire” temperature, and will shut down. The big thing here is when it shuts down on E2….it all shuts down. You now have flame in the stove with no exhaust blower running, and in my case usually not enough hot draft in the vertical pipe to suck the smoke out….it will come back into your wife’s pristine rec room. If yours shuts down with flame and an E2 like this….press “on” again & it should end up starting and running just fine.
E1…loss of vacuum. DO NOT bypass the vacuum switch to get it running again and walk away. It died for a valid reason. This stove likes to be clean, so if E1 pops up that’s where you start. It goes without saying to clean the stove when it’s cold, so if the unit’s been running let it cool. Completely. I find the leaf blower trick a savior here, coupled with a good interior clean. I leave the blower running and hit the inside/heat exchanger area with compressed air to help get the ash out. REMEMBER to disconnect the 2 vacuum switch hoses before firing up the blower.
I had a persistent E1 code I was sure could be blamed on the vacuum switch….to the point I changed it. Oooops. Turns out the metal stint where the vac switch hose attaches to the exhaust blower housing was clogged with ash. Compressed air blew that out, and it’s now part of my routine deep clean every month.
Gaskets…easy to change, important to change. Keeps things nice & tight. My door gasket lasted 4 years, but I change the hopper lid gasket every season it seems. Englands sells a complete gasket kit for the stove at a fair price.
Get and stock some spare high-temp vent hose for the vacuum switches. The tube that connects to the exhaust blower stint will harden and crack over time, sometimes causing a leak (and the E1 code). England’s sells it pretty cheap, and you get a fair amount. Make your life easier when you replace it and add a couple of extra inches. This allows you to snip off the hard crap a couple of times before you outright replace the hose.
Switch the top and bottom auger motors….I do it once a year. The bottom runs continuously, while the top is intermittent. Keeps the wear kind of even….I do it during the spring end of season deep clean. I bought a spare motor but have not yet needed to use it.
I keep a spare combustion motor gasket here (the one that goes between the motor and the housing). One cool thing is via a side panel, you can remove the combustion motor from the combustion motor housing….without disconnecting the vent. Let’s you clean the motor without much hassle….and lots of ash gunk builds up on the fins, the motor housing and the motor itself through the season.
I’ve spent an average of 100$-ish dollars per year over the last 4 years in maintaining this stove, and in return I rarely need to kick on the electric heat. Ever. I’m the guy on the street with windows open on -10C days to let some heat out. While lots depends on the actual layout of your home, in my situation this little guy is a perfect fit.
Stay warm & stay safe!
If this stuff doesn’t bother you, you will most likely absolutely love this little stove and the heat it cranks out.
I’ll admit it up front….I’m a cheapskate. When I went looking for a stove a few years back, I didn’t want to sink a lot of dollars into what was for all intents and purposes an experiment. I also didn’t want to invest in a high cost installation. These 2 pre-conditions took me to the local Big Box store, Kent Building Supplies, where I was introduced to the 25PDVC.
One of the best things I did was attempt (successfully) a self-installation. No better way to get intimate with the new basement-dweller than to hump it around, cut the holes in your house (before drinking the beer), and install the vent & OAK. Disclaimer….if you’re in any way leery of a self-install, your insurance company gets cranky, or local codes require it, do your research and hire a pro. You are literally messing with fireJ.
Four years in and I can say up front I absolutely love this stove. It’s simple to operate, relatively simple to clean, and is easy to troubleshoot if you think logically and understand the basic theory of operation.
I’ve found Englands Stove Works support, both parts and via telephone, outstanding.
All that said, there’s a few things I’ve learned along the way:
Those annoying “E” codes:
They can tell you a lot, and yep, they tick you off when they appear. Approximately 1 time in 20, mine will fail to auto-start courtesy of a pellet dropping into the burn pot right in front of the ignitor hole. Hello “E2”. Usually not a big deal…..remove the pellets dumped in, press start again and off it goes….and always seems to light. BUT those pellets you scraped outta the burn pot, some may be hot or actually smouldering from the attempted start…..toss them into a metal can, not back into the hopper!
The other BIG thing on any start up or an “E2” restart….stay close to the stove during any start-up cycle. Once in a blue moon you’ll get flame….but in taking too long to ignite the stove won’t reach “proof of fire” temperature, and will shut down. The big thing here is when it shuts down on E2….it all shuts down. You now have flame in the stove with no exhaust blower running, and in my case usually not enough hot draft in the vertical pipe to suck the smoke out….it will come back into your wife’s pristine rec room. If yours shuts down with flame and an E2 like this….press “on” again & it should end up starting and running just fine.
E1…loss of vacuum. DO NOT bypass the vacuum switch to get it running again and walk away. It died for a valid reason. This stove likes to be clean, so if E1 pops up that’s where you start. It goes without saying to clean the stove when it’s cold, so if the unit’s been running let it cool. Completely. I find the leaf blower trick a savior here, coupled with a good interior clean. I leave the blower running and hit the inside/heat exchanger area with compressed air to help get the ash out. REMEMBER to disconnect the 2 vacuum switch hoses before firing up the blower.
I had a persistent E1 code I was sure could be blamed on the vacuum switch….to the point I changed it. Oooops. Turns out the metal stint where the vac switch hose attaches to the exhaust blower housing was clogged with ash. Compressed air blew that out, and it’s now part of my routine deep clean every month.
Gaskets…easy to change, important to change. Keeps things nice & tight. My door gasket lasted 4 years, but I change the hopper lid gasket every season it seems. Englands sells a complete gasket kit for the stove at a fair price.
Get and stock some spare high-temp vent hose for the vacuum switches. The tube that connects to the exhaust blower stint will harden and crack over time, sometimes causing a leak (and the E1 code). England’s sells it pretty cheap, and you get a fair amount. Make your life easier when you replace it and add a couple of extra inches. This allows you to snip off the hard crap a couple of times before you outright replace the hose.
Switch the top and bottom auger motors….I do it once a year. The bottom runs continuously, while the top is intermittent. Keeps the wear kind of even….I do it during the spring end of season deep clean. I bought a spare motor but have not yet needed to use it.
I keep a spare combustion motor gasket here (the one that goes between the motor and the housing). One cool thing is via a side panel, you can remove the combustion motor from the combustion motor housing….without disconnecting the vent. Let’s you clean the motor without much hassle….and lots of ash gunk builds up on the fins, the motor housing and the motor itself through the season.
I’ve spent an average of 100$-ish dollars per year over the last 4 years in maintaining this stove, and in return I rarely need to kick on the electric heat. Ever. I’m the guy on the street with windows open on -10C days to let some heat out. While lots depends on the actual layout of your home, in my situation this little guy is a perfect fit.
Stay warm & stay safe!
