Before we bought the lot I cut on, we bought a new (at the time) yankee pellet stove. We had something go wrong with the computer/control board after having it a month but they came out and replaced it at no cost, the second problem we had was many years later when the auger had some buildup of some sort in the back of the stove. I don't think they make them anymore but they still make parts if I understood our Lopi dealer.What kind of pellet stove do you have? I've had three different ones and they all failed miserably in the durability/reliability aspects. The aluminum auger broke in the first one (a $1,200 stove), but we replaced the auger.
Some other issues made us buy our 2nd one, (a $2,800 stove) and the exhaust fan stopped working before it was a month old. It smoked up our house so bad that the fire department said our smoke detectors saved our lives (@ 1:00am).
Our third pellet stove was a top of the line Quadra Fire insert (cost over $4,000) that developed a short in one of the augers and ignited the pellets in the hopper.
Bye bye pellet insert! Hello Fisher Mama Bear! I don't trust pellet Stoves after having two different stove develop possible life threatening issues. None of it was operator induced.
I would rather clean a wood stove, the pellet stove can be a pain but when it gets cold like it did last night, it's worth the extra work. Ours is in the basement so I think we get more ash in the pipe compared to a direct vent.