P61 using more and more pellets in room temp

[alternativeheat]

Last Friday I changed tires on my sons bike. It was 15 degrees in the garage. He raced on Saturday in Southern New Jersey. No snow and 45 degrees in the woods. Monday they got 8 inches.

We hit the 40's here for a bit on Sunday, then an inch of snow the next day in the mid 20's and 13 degrees overnight last night. Right now it's 23.

The big flame came back in about an hour, it was not particularly cold around and the wife even had the oven on in the kitchen. It started doing just what it did last night, first tall shoots of flame and taming down, one could consider that normal enough. Then taller, OK still acceptable if it tames down but really the room conditions are not calling for this.. Then I was at my piano looked over and basically a wall of flame in the stove right up to the heat exchanger but not rolling off of it. So I flipped it to Stove Temp mode 5 ( didn't move the temp dial), feed at 4, blower on high, the flame cut in half almost instantly. We ate supper like that, the dining room went to 74 deg. while we ate ( was 72) and that with the oven now off. I still want to know where that heat is going with the tall flame in room temp mode. Obviously up the chimney, why ? This is strange to me. So tonight I will leave it at about stove temp 4.5 and the rest as it is ( high blower, feed at 4). It's throwing great heat right now. It used to flare up like this in near 0 weather in Room Temp but even then it cut back eventually and burn maybe 60lb of pellets overnight. Last night was 13 and it cleaned the hopper out, if I hadn't gotten up it would have run out.

Could the room temp probe be defective ? Thinking back, It did fall on to the flag stone and cement hearth from the mantel about 3 weeks ago . Because the stove is working well in Stove temp mode.

 

[alternativeheat]

We hit the 40's here for a bit on Sunday, then an inch of snow the next day in the mid 20's and 13 degrees overnight last night. Right now it's 23.

The big flame came back in about an hour, it was not particularly cold around and the wife even had the oven on in the kitchen. It started doing just what it did last night, first tall shoots of flame and taming down, one could consider that normal enough. Then taller, OK still acceptable if it tames down but really the room conditions are not calling for this.. Then I was at my piano looked over and basically a wall of flame in the stove right up to the heat exchanger but not rolling off of it. So I flipped it to Stove Temp mode 5 ( didn't move the temp dial), feed at 4, blower on high, the flame cut in half almost instantly. We ate supper like that, the dining room went to 74 deg. while we ate ( was 72) and that with the oven now off. I still want to know where that heat is going with the tall flame in room temp mode. Obviously up the chimney, why ? This is strange to me. So tonight I will leave it at about stove temp 4.5 and the rest as it is ( high blower, feed at 4). It's throwing great heat right now. It used to flare up like this in near 0 weather in Room Temp but even then it cut back eventually and burn maybe 60lb of pellets overnight. Last night was 13 and it cleaned the hopper out, if I hadn't gotten up it would have run out. Could the room temp probe be defective ? Thinking back, It did fall on to the flag stone and cement hearth from the mantel about 3 weeks ago . Because the stove is working well in Stove temp mode.

Rethinking my comments above I moved the probe before going to bed. I moved the probe off to the side of the stove, tucked the wire into the back cushion of my wife's reclining chair, leaving the probe end exposed in mid air. I watched the flame for the better part of an hour. Before going up to bed I told my wife if the flame sticks way up on high to just flip the dial to stove temp before she came up ( she was staying up to knit for a while). So in the last 12 hour period the stove burned exactly 40 lb. That is acceptable, the house is 72, the outdoor temp is still 23. That puts me back on my 2 bag average.