my first smoke out

[chrisasst]

well I was messing around with the stove today, put the damper pretty much all the way in. Left for 5 hours got home and house full of smoke. The pellets were piled up in there. Kind of scary I must say..

 

[pelletwise]

When you say you left the damper in, I am assuming you closed it of most of the way, if this is the case you were restricting the air that the fire was getting and depending on how drastic this was, semi burnt pellets were probably smoldering in the burn pot and couldnt burn all the way through in time to be blown out of the pot before new pellets drop in. This would lead to the fire looking like it was "on top of the burn pot" with lots of glowing orange underneith it, which would be those semi burnt smoldering pellets. The reason for all the smoke was probably because it just kept feeding and feeding (as it would and should do undr normal conditions) and eventually started to smother the fire. The pellets would burn but probably not catch on fire. the reason for so much smoke is sorta simple. If you imagine a cigar or ciggerette (or whatever you prefer to smoke) you can notice that if you actually lit it on fire it would burn with out nearly as much smoke as it would if burned normally. The pellets were probably doing the same thing.
Clean you stove thououghly, and open you damper a little and start the stove, once it is burning consistantly, open your damper and slowly close it until you can get the most intense hot flame, not a tall lazy orange one, but not open so far that you will blow the pellets out of the pot too, cause that's sorta wasteful.
hope this fixes it