Piazzetta Monia opinions

[NHMtns]

I was thinking a board problem too...

Did any of the reps use a magnehelic on it when they were checking settings?

No, neither of them used that.

 

[NHMtns]

I want to thank all of you for your responses. It has validated for me that we have done everything we could to make the stove function properly. It's a shame that the dealer and reps were not educated enough to do the things you all suggested. The dealer didn't ever bother to get the training, but the reps should know better. The customer service has been the worst Ive ever experienced in my life.

I wanted to love this stove. I wanted owning a pellet stove to provide a hassle free, WARM, and cost effective addition to our home. After running a wood stove for 25 years, I was looking forward to ease of pellets. Right now, I'd gladly go back to the low tech wood stove, mess and all.

At this point, I want the LEMON removed from our house. I don't think that we could trust that this stove will continue to work properly, even if they managed to fix all of the issues.

 

[Mt Bob]

don't give up on pellets.If you had a good unit you would be very happy.

 

[Lake Girl]

Did you get documentary evidence to show to Pacific Energy - burnt pellets in the hopper, pellets piling up, unburnt pellets in the burnpot? Start working on that if not... Keep on bugging the district rep... or take it higher.

Keep us posted.

 

[Pelleting In NJ]

See if you can get Scott Williamson to take a look at your stove. He knows pellet stoves, and is familiar with some of these Italian stoves. Search the forum for smwilliamson, pelletstoveservice, he is in Mass. (508) 507 9201

 

[Mt Bob]

See if you can get Scott Williamson to take a look at your stove. He knows pellet stoves, and is familiar with some of these Italian stoves. Search the forum for smwilliamson, pelletstoveservice, he is in Mass. (508) 507 9201

I think the biggest problem is that he is 18 months into a 24 month warranty,parts and labor,with a unit that has never worked properly,and has caused house damage.If it was me,would contact pacific one more time,then a lawyer.

 

[Pascal_Maertens]

There are many good stoves,and many opinions.If you like that style,read up on the enviro mini or ecoteck stoves.

well here I have an opinion the Enviro mini or maxx Stove are very poor on adjustment if you realy like the look of Piazzetta an cant get any service out of them there is also Raveli that looks quite the same but the more important thing is also to get a good dealer they are to many ..@²¦*%/".. out there cause the Piazzetta is a very good stove I'm just sad for the service you are getting.

 

[Pascal_Maertens]

Thank you. It's amazing to me that no one here that we have dealt with knows this! They keep trying to blame the issues on the pellets. The dealer sold us hardwood, the first guy said use a mix of hard and soft, and this last guy said only use softwood! They even told my insurance agent that the reason we had smoke damage was because we were burning the wrong pellets! Amazing!

I'm so sorry to had more to this for now I'm burning a Sabrina in the store with soft wood a Sabrina at home for 2 years with hard wood and now a P-962 with hard wood and after seeing that we can run the Sabrina at the store for all winter long on soft wood ill try this at home next season here soft wood go for 2,99$ can and hard wood 5,13$ for 40 pounds so I used 3 palettes of 75 sac this year so that's 480$ more then soft wood at this moment I would not recommend my customers to use soft wood but when I will have try it next year at home then Ill have a better opinion but for now I would say that there is not much of a difference beside the price.

 

[NHMtns]

Did you get documentary evidence to show to Pacific Energy - burnt pellets in the hopper, pellets piling up, unburnt pellets in the burnpot? Start working on that if not... Keep on bugging the district rep... or take it higher.

Keep us posted.[/quote

I cannot get a picture of the pellets backing up because I could have to open it while it's burning. I can see it through the very top of the glass that isn't black. I did take a picture of the pellets piled up and the hot coals, after I had gone through the shut down 6 times. I showed it the guy from Northeast Distributors who came out. We did not think to take pictures when the hopper was smoldering. We were trying to keep it from catching on fire.

What is Pacific Energy?

 

[Pascal_Maertens]

The temp for mine is supposed to be set to 113 degrees. I don't remember what he lowered it to. I've been telling them that I felt it was a motherboard/sensor issue for a year now, because it's obviously not working correctly when there are flames or substantial hot coals in the chamber and the fan shuts off. I'm guessing that expensive to replace and they are waiting for my warranty to run out and then suddenly they will come up with the diagnosis. Ugh.

The last rep from the distributor cleaned everything before he fired it up. I don't know if he cleaned the sensor.

please do you a favor see if you can borrow or rent that magnehelic from your local dealer and give me a call this will be your last service call 819-623-5336 I live in Quebec, can I'm off Monday and Tuesday from 8:00am to 9:00pm so be free to call me and will see how we can fix this or [email protected] I'm not going to charge you anything for this and the only thing I expect is just that you finally be satisfied with you stove.

regard's
Pascal

 

[NHMtns]

please do you a favor see if you can borrow or rent that magnehelic from your local dealer and give me a call this will be your last service call 819-623-5336 I live in Quebec, can I'm off Monday and Tuesday from 8:00am to 9:00pm so be free to call me and will see how we can fix this or [email protected] I'm not going to charge you anything for this and the only thing I expect is just that you finally be satisfied with you stove.

regard's
Pascal

That is a very nice gesture but unfortunately our local dealer is part of the problem, and until that back plate is fixed/replaced we would not have proper air flow to get an accurate reading. The dealer we bought it from never bothered to do the training to work on the Piazzetta stoves. We can't get them to come service the stove. Which we suspect is because they have no idea what to do.

 

[Mt Bob]

Pacific energy fireplace products is the usa importer for these units.Will leave another link. http://www.piazzetta.com/

 

[NHMtns]

Pacific energy fireplace products is the usa importer for these units.Will leave another link. http://www.piazzetta.com/

I have been to this site and left messages three time. They sent the message to Northeast Distributor, the guys that we've been dealing with.

 

[Mt Bob]

I have been to this site and left messages three time. They sent the message to Northeast Distributor, the guys that we've been dealing with.

Just noticed no phone contact info. at that site or pacifics.Must be real proud of their service.Reccomend you call pascal tomorrow,he can talk to them direct.I am becoming more unimpressed with this company.

 

[Pascal_Maertens]

That is a very nice gesture but unfortunately our local dealer is part of the problem, and until that back plate is fixed/replaced we would not have proper air flow to get an accurate reading. The dealer we bought it from never bothered to do the training to work on the Piazzetta stoves. We can't get them to come service the stove. Which we suspect is because they have no idea what to do.

not to be pretentious ( I turned to be a dealer for Piazzetta I had no training at al,l I started to sale Piazzetta in oct 2012 ) I bougth my stove a Sabrina end of October good looking stove wow I was very happy about the deal but then came the problems I had no clue on how to fix then until I get access to the parameter menu code and finally get a technician manual to understand dose modifications that where possible to do ( I'm a passion freak ) when I get on a case and from there I made so many test first to get that stove to burn less then 40 pound a day (( hey it's f... -20 to -40 around here)) and from one test to an other I have fix many of dose problem that I ear from in france, Canada, quebec, and now in the states peoples are always talking about the same problem but it seems that I'm the only one that have no such problem anymore (( hey listen I haven't sold 500 unit of this )) but I can swore you that all of my customer, all off them are definitely satisfied. Fanaly whit all the problems that others dealer had I was invited to discus on how I solved the problems and what where the adjustment I made, all that at the head office of my distributor witch deals with Pacific Energy. I had to deal with some installer and technician that had many years of experience in stove installation so it was kind of hard for me to be credible with my little 6 years of experience but all of the problem they where talking about are the same all over the planet; stake of pellets unburned, lake of heat, black window, bread of ash in the grate, ect... I think that they just don't have a Piazzetta at home and I think that this is what made the difference. I think that years of experience is one thing, but being interested in what you do is an other, anyway once you get that baffle back just let me know I'll be more then glade to help you out.

my boss told me (( un vieux singe ne fait pas de nouvelles grimaces)) relating to guys who have many years of experience lol.. an old monkey do not make new grin

 

[NHMtns]

Not sure why the image is sideways, but this is the pic I took to show the rep. This is after only 12 hours burn time, and turning it on and off 6 times to get it to vent the smoke.

 

[Lake Girl]

That's a heck of a mess. Can't believe no one has been able to sort this out unless the baffle plate is throwing it off all the time. When the techs work on it, does it burn well until next cleaning or shorter period of time?

Bob - telephone numbers are a closely guarded secret only the dealers can know

My question - Does Pascal do road trips?

 

[chken]

View attachment 131275 Not sure why the image is sideways, but this is the pic I took to show the rep. This is after only 12 hours burn time, and turning it on and off 6 times to get it to vent the smoke.

Holy cow That's an unrecognizable mess.

 

[chken]

That's something I'd watch for the first hour after starting to see why the pellets are overflowing like that. And look at the soot pattern created on the air wash deflector. That's a bit strange too.

 

[krooser]

My two cents… I think you have either an air leak causing poor combustion causing the pellets to overflow in the burn pot OR you have an obstruction in the exhaust. If you have burned more than one ton of pellets thru the stove you need to completely disassemble the stove, clean the combustion and room fans, clean all internal passages that move exhaust out of the stove plus clean your vent pipe.

Try this and you may be surprised… do you use the 'leaf blower trick'?

 

[p962man]

Just noticed no phone contact info. at that site or pacifics.Must be real proud of their service.Reccomend you call pascal tomorrow,he can talk to them direct.I am becoming more unimpressed with this company.

For anyone interested, look on the back cover of any Pacific Energy product manual, you will find the address, phone number, and email address for Pacific Energy. Additionally, check the back cover of any current Piazzetta manual, you will find the same info as well as a decal with your serial number so you don't need to go hunting for it while talking to tech support. If your Piazzetta manual does not have the P.E. info on it, that means the stove was purchased before Pacific Energy partnered with Piazzetta. You would just need to go to www.piazzetta.com and download any pellet manual to find the info. Pacific Energy is a stand up company that takes a lot of pride in their product and stands behind it 100%. I have had the privilege of being a P.E. dealer for quite a while, and now Piazzetta as well. This problem with NHMtns is frustrating, but what is more frustrating is the fact that he is not getting proper support from his dealer. It makes all the dealers look bad when you hear these stories and it also gives the product line a black eye. If I was within somewhat of a reasonable distance from this problem, you can bet I would be making the trip to get it straightened out. I'm going to find somebody fix this thing...

 

[Lake Girl]

Dealer concept can be good when it works ... but not all dealers are created equal. NE Distributor should be in contact with PE by now as OP has had 2 service techs out over the same issue.

 

[chken]

The temp for mine is supposed to be set to 113 degrees. I don't remember what he lowered it to. I've been telling them that I felt it was a motherboard/sensor issue for a year now, because it's obviously not working correctly when there are flames or substantial hot coals in the chamber and the fan shuts off. I'm guessing that expensive to replace and they are waiting for my warranty to run out and then suddenly they will come up with the diagnosis. Ugh.

The last rep from the distributor cleaned everything before he fired it up. I don't know if he cleaned the sensor.

I just looked at the Parameter sheet in the Programming Manual for the Piazzetta and the spec for both the Sabrina and Monia is 109F. Unless the spec has changed. And, according to the manual you can drop it 3Celsius to 40C, which is about 104F.

Your comment and the photo makes me think that the combustion fan is shutting off when its running. How else to explain half-burned pellets, and an overflowing pot?

Seems to me that the fan is shutting off, the pellets continue to drop, but since there's no air, the pot just smolders, leading to half-burned pellets. The pellets continue to drop, until you get a mountain of half-burned pellets filling the whole ash pan, and looking exactly as your picture. Leading to smoke, and pellets up the chute, and the strange smoke staining on your air wash deflector.

So, your combustion fan is turning off, not only early in shutdown, but during its run phase. Either the fan is flaky, or the leads aren't connected tightly, or the motherboard is sending out spurious signals, or the exhaust temp sensor is sending bad readings to the motherboard.

You can check the leads that connect the fan to the mobo. And, you can check the exhaust temp sensor, but checking if it's giving the correct temp readings.

Hold button 6 on your control board down for 5 secs. That will get you into the main menu. Once you're in the main menu, push button 5, twice. That will put you into Stove Status. Push button 3, and that will cycle three readings, combustion fan speed (1900 to 2500rpm), augur feed secs (3 to 8 secs out of a 12 sec cycle), and exhaust temp reading. When the stove is up to speed and running, the exhaust temp will generally be between 200F and 250F, depending upon which feed rate you've chosen.

You should check the Stove Status when it's running to see if the combustion fan is stopping, because that's what I suspect. And, check the temps to see if maybe the temp readings are wrong, sending a shutdown signal to the mobo, and thus the fan.

I'm going to try to embed a jpg of the Programming Manual settings for the Monia:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ta98nidpy0pkqjx/Monia.jpg

If you have dropbox acct, I think you can access the jpg at the above link, if the embedded image doesn't show.

 

[chken]

For anyone interested, look on the back cover of any Pacific Energy product manual, you will find the address, phone number, and email address for Pacific Energy. Additionally, check the back cover of any current Piazzetta manual, you will find the same info as well as a decal with your serial number so you don't need to go hunting for it while talking to tech support. If your Piazzetta manual does not have the P.E. info on it, that means the stove was purchased before Pacific Energy partnered with Piazzetta. You would just need to go to www.piazzetta.com and download any pellet manual to find the info. Pacific Energy is a stand up company that takes a lot of pride in their product and stands behind it 100%. I have had the privilege of being a P.E. dealer for quite a while, and now Piazzetta as well. This problem with NHMtns is frustrating, but what is more frustrating is the fact that he is not getting proper support from his dealer. It makes all the dealers look bad when you hear these stories and it also gives the product line a black eye. If I was within somewhat of a reasonable distance from this problem, you can bet I would be making the trip to get it straightened out. I'm going to find somebody fix this thing...

Thanks, the back cover of the manual is how I found out that PE was the importer, but my local dealer told me that the unit shipped up from NH, which turns out to be NE distributor that NHMtns has mentioned. Since PE has almost nothing about the Piazzetta on their website, I was distinctly worried that something had happened, and that they were no longer doing business with Piazzetta and that perhaps the NE distributor was selling leftover inventory or something. I'm glad to know that's not the case.

However, since a couple dealers are in this thread, I thought I'd ask a question. I installed my Piazzetta Sabrina myself. Inside the firebox I found the EPA card. If you look at it, the specs on the card are rather odd:

The Heat Output is 8.8k BTU to 37k BTU?!? The card is for the Sabrina not the Monia. What's up with that? I asked my dealer, and he asked if I had gotten a Monia in the box and not a Sabrina, and I said no, since the size difference is obvious, and he seemed satisfied. I still think it's extremely strange to have the EPA card state the wrong range of BTUs. And, while I know the efficiency is asterisked, it is odd that it's about 10% off what the stove is rated for.

Any thoughts? Is this normal for the EPA card to be so off?

 

[Pascal_Maertens]

at the end of your chimney is thee a grid you need to take it out and clean it and don't put it back on this grid is causing air restriction