Sunday, July 5th, 2009
So, as I mentioned in the last post, we had three tons of wood pellets delivered yesterday. While the delivery isn’t all that exciting by itself, the fact that my mind has now turned to adding a pellet stove insert to the fireplace is.
Three tons of premium wood pellets
I have told you that I am feeling all sorts of guilty for having nice piles of cut and split firewood stacked up in the woods. I can’t just let that sit there and rot. So, I found someone to take it, and any future wood, I’m sure. This all depends on if I get the pellet stove insert for upstairs though. If not, I ain’t givin’ nothin’ away.
The pellet stove insert I am eying is the “Harman Accentra Pellet Fireplace Insert.” I would say this is arguably the best fireplace pellet stove insert in the world. It certainly is the most expensive one I have come across. The expensive part gives me pause.
Regarding the free standing wood burning stove ordeal…I did check with other manufacturers and had no luck. We just don’t have the clearance. I gathered that many stoves have bottom and rear heat shields, but the problem we are having is from the top and sides. The sales guy told me that I can put heat shields along the mantle, but that’s not really the look I am going for. Oh well.
If I do decide to go ahead with the pellet stove insert, I will undoubtedly have to order at least two more tons of pellets. I am not sure how I will be saving any money on this versus burning oil. I doubt I will, unless the price of oil skyrockets again. I suppose I could just do it to feel “green.” The problem is, I don’t really put too much weight on feeling green when the cost is in the thousands. Paying that much makes me feel blue. Hey, that was a good one.
Above and beyond the cost, I just want to feel warm this Winter.
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Saturday, June 27th, 2009
I have some disappointing news for you. There will be no wood burning stove. Not now and probably not ever. Oh well.
I called the fireplace guy yesterday and told him that I wanted to go ahead with the install. We were at the point of having my debit card in hand for the deposit, when I started digging into the necessary clearances. I hadn’t looked all that hard at these because I thought it was very straight forward…pop a free standing wood burning stove into the fireplace. Done deal. Right?
Not so fast. Apparently, the manufacturers of these stoves want huge clearances from any combustibles. We have space, but not the space the stove people want. I decided throw my hands in the air and say that I just don’t care. haha.
My new project is to figure out a way to make the existing fireplace more efficient. My brother and father mentioned to me that there was something called a “Tube Fireplace Heater.” Click here to see what I’m talking about.
Also, I wouldn’t mind getting some ceramic, tighter fitting glass doors. That would be cool. An outside air vent would be the icing on the cake.
So, even though my little project of getting a wood burning stove fell through, I still have some things to think about. And, after all, that’s what keeps me going.
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Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
As promised (almost), I drove down to the wood stove store today to check out the scene. I was having a little trouble with the price of the wood stove insert that I wanted and needed to see if there was anything less expensive. I also wanted to see what the free standing wood stoves looked like. We can easily put one of them in the fireplace.
When I got there, I did my typical “guy” stroll around to browse all the stoves and inserts. I see it every time. The guys walk in with their hands in the pockets making grunts and noises, like “hmmm” and “hmmph.” It’s so funny because I do it too. There is kind of a lot to take in. Good thing the sales guy walks out to put things in perspective. I must say, I really love wood stoves and stuff like that.
I saw the “Hampton HI300 Wood Insert” that I wanted. It’s just as nice as I thought it would be. If money wasn’t an issue, I would tell them to pack it up and bring it over. Since I really don’t want to drop that kind of coin, I am becoming more and more interested in a smaller free standing wood stove. Remember, we already have the pellet stove, so we don’t really need that much more heat. Just something to keep my toes warm, something that doesn’t use electricity and something that will burn all the wood I am cutting down so I don’t have to watch it rot in the woods.
The sales guy introduced me to the more “economical” line of DutchWest wood burning stoves. They are pretty good looking and don’t have a lot of frills. Here is a picture I just took from the brochure.
DutchWest free standing wood stove
It’s cute, isn’t it? It’s also about $1000 less than the other one. A large part of the expense comes from the lining of the chimney and the installation. Heck, if all I needed was the stove, I could just run over there with the trailer and pick it up. That’s not the way it works anymore. Now, you need to have a 35 foot piece of insulated lining stuffed down the entire length of the very tall chimney and attached to the stove. All of that extra stuff actually costs more than the stove itself. At least I managed to drop the price somewhat.
I am hoping to have the stove stand on the stone outside the fireplace. The stove is 17 1/2 inches from front to back and the slab of stone is about 20 1/2. If we can do this, I can still access the side door to put longer (up to 19″) pieces of wood. That would be good. Otherwise, I will have to load shorter pieces through the front and cut about two inches off the stove legs so it fits inside the fireplace.
Anyway, I’ll get into all that stuff later if I decide to get this stove. I’ll make my decision by Saturday.
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Sunday, January 18th, 2009
I hope you forgive me for typing this post with dirty hands. I just got finished cleaning out the St. Croix Prescott EXL pellet stove.
Actually, I gave it more than a regular cleaning, I gave it more like one of those seasonal cleanings that everyone says you should do, but no one does. I even took some pictures.
The reason for this post is really to follow up from a comment left by “Linda” over at my original pellet stove post.
Apparently, many fine pellet stove owners out there are having issues with their #2 light blinking. I received tons of great comments on my other post regarding this. We have all been looking for the answer. Linda offered a lot of insight, so I decided to give her ideas a try. I think the main point of her comment was to say that cleaning out behind the “ash clean out covers” is very important. I thought I had been doing that, but she mentioned that what I was doing, wasn’t enough.
Okay, so let’s get going. I am going to show you some pretty interesting photos in this post…photos that are hard to find. Sure, there are tons of good pellet stove shots out there, but usually when people start cleaning out their stoves, they forget all about the camera. Not me, my friends. Not me.
I first went downstairs and shut the stove down. When it cooled itself and shut all the way down, I unplugged it. That’s very important, so make sure you do it. After that, I gave it a quick once over to make sure there were no large piles of ash anywhere. I didn’t give it a good cleaning, because I just did that yesterday. It didn’t need to be done again. I did push some ash into the ash pan and empty it though.
What I want to show you here are those ash clean outs that the owner’s manual talks about so much. I just realized this morning that there are about 4 warnings to keep these things clean. I guess it’s pretty critical. I have been doing this every time I clean the stove, so I really didn’t think I needed to do it again. Linda mentioned that we should be cleaning these out with a bottle brush or something like that to really clean them well. Good thing I had bought one of the bottle brushes from Lowe’s a while back. It’s really made for a fireplace or stove, but I was using it to clean bottles for my home brew.
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Left pellet stove clean out cover – closed
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Left pellet stove clean out – open
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Cleaning the pellet stove clean out with a bottle brush – straight up
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Pushing bottle brush into pellet stove clean out – towards center
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Right pellet stove clean out with ash showing
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St. Croix Prescott EXL exhaust fan
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Fan blades of a pellet stove exhaust fan
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St. Croix Prescott pellet stove exhaust vent
Notice how there really isn’t too much ash in there? I’m talking about inside the hole. I just vacuumed this out yesterday, but I can imagine what it would look like if someone never cleaned these out. Probably like a packed wall of ash.
I didn’t take pictures of the right side, because it is identical to the left side.
By pushing the brush straight up, I didn’t get all that much ash to come out. There really wasn’t all that much up there. By pushing it sideways, I got a little bit more. I’ll show you in the next photo.
To get the pile of ash in the photo above, I basically pushed the bottle brush straight through, from the left side to the right side. I actually saw the brush coming through the right side.
I figured that was done, since I saw all that ash coming out. I decided to move on to clean out the exhaust fan. This is one of those things the book tells you to call the dealer for. It took me about 15 minutes to do the whole job, so it’s up to you.
To remove the fan, I took off the 6 nuts that surround the motor. I believe I used a 9mm 6-point tall socket. I also removed the vacuum hose and took off the vacuum switch wires as well as the fan wires. After everything was removed, the motor and fan popped right out.
With the fan in hand, it was easy to clean the blades (if you call them that). You can use an old paint brush or a rag or something like that. Just get the ash off the blades. The owner’s manual says this fan does not require oiling.
I also decided to take a photo of the rear part of the exhaust vent. This is one of those things we always wonder about, but unless you have taken a pellet stove apart, you will most likely will never see.
As you can see, there wasn’t really too much ash buildup on either the fan or the exhaust vent. I brushed them off and put everything back together. I lit the stove up and watched it burn for a while. I haven’t yet put the wires back on the vacuum switch. I still have them jumped. I’m not sure I have the heart to go through that again, since the stove has been running so wonderfully the way I have it now.
Questions, comments, concerns?
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Monday, September 22nd, 2008
First of all, let me just tell you how much I hate the word “obsolete.” I hate it almost as much as I hate the words “green” and “organic.” Gee, how much can we overuse these words? I didn’t use one of my lights today, therefore I am running a “green” company. Hmmm.
Basically, everything is obsolete these days. I mean, is my car obsolete just because there is something better out there? Is my telephone obsolete just because there is a new model? Ok, I’m sorry. I don’t want this blog post to sound like a rant, even though I can rant with the best of ‘em.
I was in the pellet stove place the other day waiting to talk to someone about when my pellets can be delivered. Remember, they aren’t answering their phones? By the way, the delivery was scheduled for today, but no one showed up. Basically, the day was spent working and looking out the window. I might stop by to visit them again tomorrow to see what they have to say about this.
Anyway, while I was there pretending to look at some stoves, I noticed a sales guy walking by. He asked if he could help me when I said yes. I asked him what the little door in the floor of the fireplace is and what it is used for. He replied, “Well fireplaces are basically obsolete…everyone is getting inserts.” I felt like saying, “Look you little pissant, I didn’t ask you whether or not fireplaces are obsolete. I asked what the little door was.” But, me being me, I didn’t way that. I just kept my charming smile and got an answer after he tried to sell me an insert.
Just in case you wanted to know what the little door in the floor of a fireplace is, it’s a clean out. Instead of shoveling the ashes out of the fireplace, you can just open the door and push them down into the hole. Then, you can go downstairs and shovel the ashes out down there.
I think the word obsolete is obsolete. So there.
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Tuesday, August 26th, 2008
Well, the guys came over yesterday to install the new St. Croix Prescott EXL pellet stove. As you might recall, our previous pellet stove was a Harman P38. I was a little nervous about switching brands because I had gotten used to Harman. Also, Harman has very good reviews. The reason I couldn’t get a Harman this time is because they are all backed up and we may not have even gotten one this season.
It took the installers about 3 hours to finish the installation. When everything was in, they fired it up to make sure everything was working properly. One of the installers noticed one issue…the auger wasn’t turning, so no pellets were falling into the burn pot. the auger motor was working fine, just not the auger itself. We made an appointment for the service guy to come out today. By the way, I could have fixed this. It was easy. I actually was almost done fixing it when the doorbell rang. That’s me beating my chest.
Today, the repair guy came out and fixed the auger issue. The small set screw on the auger shaft wasn’t tightened properly, so it wasn’t catching on the auger motor.
I must say, this unit is very nice. It has auto-light, which was very important. I am going to hook up a thermostat, so the pellet stove can shut down and start up on its own. Also, the auger and fan is much quieter than the Harman. The whole system just seems to be more elegant. For a few hundred bucks more, I am happy that I went with this model.
Here are some photos…
St. Croix Prescott EXL pellet stove
St. Croix Prescott EXL pellet stove control panel
St. Croix Prescott EXL pellet stove inside venting
St. Croix Prescott EXL pellet stove outside venting
What’s nice is that the outside venting is under the porch. The necessary clearances are 24″ away from the porch and 12″ off the ground. Also, since we used the fresh air kit, the clearances from windows and doors is only 9″. I would say that’s one of the huge benefits of pellet stoves.
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Saturday, August 23rd, 2008
Last Saturday, the pellet stove installer came out for a site visit. He checked out the location of the installation and took a few pictures for the file. It’s good to have a site visit, just to make sure everything will be OK for the installation.
He gave me some papers to bring down to the town office for the permit application. Things are a little different here in CT than in NY. Here, you have to fill out the permit information and then, the project needs to be approved by the inspector. This took a few days, because I am sure this fellow is out inspecting all these new pellet stoves people are putting in. In NY, I think I remember just handing the guy the paperwork and him looking at it and giving me the green light. Back in the old town, you could pretty much put up a housing project on your front lawn and get it approved.
Oh yeah, permits here go by the cost of the project. The more expensive the project, the more you are going to pay for a permit. It might be that way in NY…I don’t remember.
By Thursday, the permit was approved by the inspector. I gave the pellet stove company a call to set up an install date. We settled on this Monday coming up, which isn’t bad. I just want this thing in so I can stop thinking about it. I also ordered four tons of pellets. Boy, those pictures are going to be fun.
This blog post is over. At this point, I have nothing else to add.
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Tuesday, August 7th, 2007
I am in the wood pellet mood. I am a planner, like an old farmer or something. Better yet, like a caveman. There have been times when I have wanted hair like a caveman…ok, I’ll stop there.
Anyway, I was doing some searches on wood pellets and came across a great post on a new idea, grass pellets. Check it out.
I really like the way people are always trying to come up with a better way to do something. The pellet stove is a great idea. It keeps the house nice and toasty and really doesn’t cost that much to run. I mean, I just spent about $630 for the whole season of heat. That’s not bad. It certainly is better than the three dollars per gallon of dirty oil fuel that I used to get. Not to mention all the diesel they burn in the truck to get it to my house.
If they can make stoves handle burning more types of pellets, that would be a good thing. I think the main factor with burning a lot of things is the ash content. People now mainly burn wood pellets and corn, but you need a special stove to burn the corn. I only burn wood pellets, so I don’t really know what type of heat the corn gives off.
Keep up the good work and keep thinking. There are quite a few people out there like me who search this kind of stuff all day while at work. HAHA.
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