I keep finding more reasons to hate wood pellet stoves, and I don’t even own one. Neighbor D is back in the hospital, more infection trouble AND somehow he managed to catch the flu, and Neighbor L is on her last nerve from stress. So naturally her pellet stove, the principal source of heat in their big house, decided to act up again.
Now mind you there couldn’t possibly be anyone who puts more effort into stove maintenance than L. That thing is partially dismantled and thoroughly cleaned daily. And yet it still finds ways to get gummed up. So she decided it had been a while since the stovepipe had been cleaned, and maybe that was affecting the stove’s draft. She called me last night and asked if I’d come over in the morning to help clean the pipe. She knew how it was done in principle, but it was always primarily D’s job mostly because getting the pipe sections apart requires a certain level of upper body strength not normally found in people who’d have to drink a six-pack to top 100 pounds. And as we already demonstrated last month, D and L had pretty distinctly divided up the household chores between them and did not cross into one another’s territory without very good reason. So she could – and routinely does – field-strip and repair the pellet stove but the stove pipe was D’s business.
So I went over this morning, expecting it to be a trip wasted except to settle her mind because I’ve always imagined that those things run clean, right? How much soot could there really be in that 4-inch pipe? Which goes to show how much I know about what I don’t know.
Yeah – there was a lot. I’m morally certain that pipe was clean at the beginning of the season because this is D&L we’re talking about. The OCD Twins. But this pipe really did need cleaning and I left – once again – wondering what the advantages of a pellet stove even are. How do normal people even keep them running?
Having used a pellet stove for a winter, I’ve got to concur with you. Mine worked okay, but the interior got sooted (a hard, difficult to remove soot) up fast and I got pretty tired of using it. It’s a bit like my customer’s Ferrari – fun to drive, but lots of work to KEEP it running.
My PS was red, too…
I had always heard that pellet stoves burn so clean and cool that you could exhaust them through a 2inch pvc pipe. I used a Lopi insert for 30years , clean the chimney twice a year ,pull it out every couple of years.
The advantage of pellets is you can load them in the morning, and then forget about them all day. In theory that is. The will keep a constant temp.
Do the quality of the pellets differ from supplier to supplier, or are they all the same?
I have a monster fireplace insert from Jotul (pronounced Yodel) from Scandinavia. 500 pounds of cast iron, but if I want to heat even part of the house, I have to regularly add wood. I can’t set it and forget it…
Joel. Thank you for being their friend. Reciprocity (a word I HATE) is really the secret to a good life. I remember being dismayed (understated) to their opinions about unvaccinated people. It it seems they love each other and their animals and you:-). Thank you from r being their friend.
…travel down the road and back again…
I have an ancient (30yo) Whitfield II, the model T of pellet stoves, as my main heat. Other than replacing the electric fans, it has been absolutely rocksolid. I oil all the bearings and do a thorough cleaning of the flue and behind the firebrick each year before starting it up, and that’s all (apart from ash removal every 20h of use).
I do try to use the best pellets I can find.
While I’m far from an expert in pellet stoves, I think the culprit is the quality of pellets they are using. Just like with fireplaces and wood stoves, the better the quality of the fuel, the better it will run with fewer clogged up fans, blowers and less chimney pipe issues.
Mike, that’s the funny thing – they went through a few different pellet brands before settling on what they use now, and they still run them through a strainer before putting them in the stove. It really shouldn’t be that. (Not saying it definitely isn’t, because what do I know, but still.)
Maybe it’s oversized. Regular woodstoves and pellet stoves will both produce more crud when run very low, because compleat combustion ‘n all. Theoretically a pellet stove will do better that way, but not all stoves are created equal.
“Maybe it’s oversized.”
Very well could be the problem. As a rule, “throttling down” a wood-burner – of any type – produces more gunk in the exhaust and keeps the flue cool enough that the gunk condenses on it. Go small so it uses less wood and burn it hot enough to keep the flue clean..
Are they using only hardwood pellets? Pellets made from soft wood like pine will be dirtier than hardwood.