I just traded ,sight unseen , my old S10 pickup for a pellet burning woodstove.
The stove apparently isn’t very old but has a problem with going out in 15 minutes.
Do some pellet burners have some sort of ignightor(sp)/.
What tells the stove when to add fuel?
As you might have guessed I’m less than a novice when it comes to woodstoves.
I’ve got one.
To get it started, you put a handfull of pellets into the bowl and light them. There are, apparently, briquets (sp?) that you can light and let burn until the pellets start to burn but I use a propane torch. Once the pellets are good and hot, you just turn the thing on. Our stove goes through an initial 10-minute cycle where it burns at the “high” setting before settling down to whatever you have the dial set at. There is a small conveyor which runs from the hopper down to the bowl, the speed of which is controlled by how high you have the stove set, i.e. the higher the setting the quicker it feeds pellets into the bowl. Essentially, all you have to do is keep the hopper filled.
Pellets are pretty cheap. I bought 2000 pounds last fall for about $200 and it should last me two winters. We generally only use the stove during the evenings and on the weekends. It can keep the house uncomfortably warm.
We had all of the major components replaced on ours last year and it came to almost $800. But ours is a Flamm…something or other… and the company has gone out of business. Therefore, we can only get refurbished parts at a huge markup. But it should run another ten years.
I use a pellet stove as our exclusive heating source. Sounds like either the pellets are not sufficiently ignited, or it is not getting enough fuel. After it goes out, are there still pellets in the burn box? If so, they probably didn’t ignite sufficiently. I use a commercial fire starter, which is like a loaf of sawdust soaked in paraffin. I break up a walnut-sized chunk into raisin-sized pieces, and mix it with a handful of pellets, then break up some more fire starter on the top. Light the fire starter, then wait until it is burning well before closing the door and turning on the blower and fuel delivery mechanism.
If there are no unburned pellets in the burn box after it goes out, something is wrong with the fuel delivery system. Mine is an Englander stove, which uses a dual auger design. Could be the motor, or some other component that is failing to deliver fuel to the burn box.
I use about 3 tons of pellets each winter, and paid $254 per ton this year, up from $226 last year. The demand has really gone up, and currently outstrips production. Hopefully, new plants coming online this year will level off the price. I also have a propane furnace, but pellets are still cheaper to heat with.