Hey Jeff, I just finished doing a lot of tests and modifications to my pot and came up with a design that works very well for me. My stove runs full blast 24/7, some days almost burning 3 bags in 24 hours. I also had a lot of ash accumulation in the burn pot after 24 hours. To the point that the flame was so lazy that I was just basically wasting pellets. A lot of people burn only a bag or less in 24 hours, so they don't have this issue and will just tell you CLEAN YOUR STOVE REGULARLY. Which I agree with, but I am someone who refuses to leave any performance or efficiency on the table with anything.
I am currently waiting on a new burn pot to be shipped so I can build a cleaner version of my "test pot" It functions flawlessly, but there was a lot of welding, drilling, welding, drilling done so its no visually pleasing. I plan on making it very clean by tig welding the holes shut and laying out the holes evenly spaced. My test piece was mig welded and the holes location was based off of where ash was building, and varying hole sizes to accommodate for where more or less flow was needed due to the factory router of intake air.
I can assure you that simply drilling additional holes in the bottom will not produce a great result unless you significantly increase the volume and speed of the air (I am working on a set up for this as well by increasing exhaust fan speed). In all of my tests, the majority of factory holes must be welded shut.
I can send you pictures and rough numbers of hole size if you are interested. But don't judge my welds, I didn't feel like spending tons of time prepping and tigging just to possibly drill it back out lol.
Here is some pictures of after my final mod. This was 48 hours running full blast. I also have an excel sheet and word file explaining the progression of the modifications and comparisons to stock.
Edit: Also, don't think of this as a "never clean your stove again" type of modification. As you can see, all the ash that would typically build up in the pot is now piled up inside the firebox like some higher end stoves. I still vacuum every 2 or 3 days, but its a 2 minute process. I let the fire die down, open the door, and vacuum all the cool ash out from around the pot and firebox, shut the door and let it go back to normal. Opposed to shutting down, vacuuming, pulling the burn pot, scraping for 15 minutes, and turning back on.
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