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3 years ago, our pellet stove started giving off a 'smell' when it was running. My assumption was that since the pellet stove was a really old manual model that something was defective and that it needed to be replaced.
We stopped using it as it seemed a little dangerous and I went and bought a new one (Englander 25-pdvc). I loaded it up on my truck, brought it home and parked it on the back patio and ignored it until last week when I thought, gee, it'd be nice to actually use a pellet stove for auxiliary heating and to make it easier to just take the edge off the cold in the mornings.
First thing I discovered was that rats and mice had gotten to the brand new wiring in the brand new stove and made a mess of the base of it. Well I cleaned it up, ordered a couple of replacements parts and replaced the wires. Actually was not too bad of a job, except for the cleaning, yuck.
You can see here they liked some wires better than others.
Next up was to get rid of the old one, which really wasn't too bad as it wasn't near as heavy as the new one.
Once I got it out of the house I noticed that the vent for the pellet stove appeared to be almost completely plugged with ashes and mostly burnt pellets. The old one was installed with only a flex hose going directly from the stove to the rest of the exhaust stack that went through the old fireplace chimney.
So, apparently the biggest problem with the old stove was that the vent was plugged and it works just fine. I guess I should have figured it needed to be cleaned? But I assumed it had been installed correctly. Why I would assume the previous owners did this right when experience would suggest that every DIY project they did was done in as jury rigged/cheap manner as possible.
So I ordered up a proper clean out fitting for the new stove and went to install it when I discovered that they had actually installed the pellet vent system 'backwards' I had to remove the vent from the old chimney and invert it so that I could connect things up correctly.
That wasn't so bad, just kind of a head scratcher.
But I have to say, after spending all morning and a little time this afternoon, Its all working correctly and I know more now than I did before about proper installation, operation, and maintenance of a pellet stove. The new one also has safety features that will not allow it to run if the the vent stack is plugged, so theres that. And now I have a spare working pellet stove that I just might install at some point somewhere else. I also have a little more room on the back patio.
I do have to say that the Englander stove was super easy to work on and knowing what I know now will make future maintenance relatively easy.
Stay warm Y'all!
We stopped using it as it seemed a little dangerous and I went and bought a new one (Englander 25-pdvc). I loaded it up on my truck, brought it home and parked it on the back patio and ignored it until last week when I thought, gee, it'd be nice to actually use a pellet stove for auxiliary heating and to make it easier to just take the edge off the cold in the mornings.
First thing I discovered was that rats and mice had gotten to the brand new wiring in the brand new stove and made a mess of the base of it. Well I cleaned it up, ordered a couple of replacements parts and replaced the wires. Actually was not too bad of a job, except for the cleaning, yuck.
You can see here they liked some wires better than others.
Next up was to get rid of the old one, which really wasn't too bad as it wasn't near as heavy as the new one.
Once I got it out of the house I noticed that the vent for the pellet stove appeared to be almost completely plugged with ashes and mostly burnt pellets. The old one was installed with only a flex hose going directly from the stove to the rest of the exhaust stack that went through the old fireplace chimney.
So, apparently the biggest problem with the old stove was that the vent was plugged and it works just fine. I guess I should have figured it needed to be cleaned? But I assumed it had been installed correctly. Why I would assume the previous owners did this right when experience would suggest that every DIY project they did was done in as jury rigged/cheap manner as possible.
So I ordered up a proper clean out fitting for the new stove and went to install it when I discovered that they had actually installed the pellet vent system 'backwards' I had to remove the vent from the old chimney and invert it so that I could connect things up correctly.
That wasn't so bad, just kind of a head scratcher.
But I have to say, after spending all morning and a little time this afternoon, Its all working correctly and I know more now than I did before about proper installation, operation, and maintenance of a pellet stove. The new one also has safety features that will not allow it to run if the the vent stack is plugged, so theres that. And now I have a spare working pellet stove that I just might install at some point somewhere else. I also have a little more room on the back patio.
I do have to say that the Englander stove was super easy to work on and knowing what I know now will make future maintenance relatively easy.
Stay warm Y'all!
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