I bought a ton of pellets from Lowe's at the same time. The pellets are made in Strong, Me and so are a local fuel. They were on sale for $187, which is a bargain. The hopper could probably take a full bag but we didn't see any need to stuff it. So there was a little left over. This was a common complaint, but so far I don't care.
The first burn began at 2:50pm, a future post will indicate how long the pellets lasted.
I also bought a masonary mat which measured 28"x32" which gives the correct clearances for this stove. I purchased the stove pipe (PL, 3 inch) individually instead of the kit. I can't guarantee that what I did is up to code. The International Building Code defers to the manufacturers instructions for pellet stove installation. That's the building code we use here, though there's a lot of information and a number of the pipe parts came with installation instructions also. I took all of this information and the information from several folks who had had pellet stoves installed and tried to make the most reasonable decisions regarding installation. You'll notice below that I installed a CO/Smoke detector right above the pellet stove. I'm fairly certain my installation is legit, but its not worth dieing over. There's an additional CO/Smoke detector installed at the top of the stairs (which are near the stove) as a further precaution.
On with the installation.
Nothing too pretty here. This house still has lathe boards under the sheetrock so its hard to find studs and so also just cutting a pretty circle in the sheetrock is hard. Fortunately the 'thimble' that the exhaust pipe travels through pretties up this mess.
We're eventually going to reside and insulate the exterior of the house so I don't feel bad just ripping through this old and brittle vinyl.
You can see that due to the brittle vinyl there was some breakage as I tried to cut out a rectangle for the exterior component of the thimble. You'll also notice its right next to a window. All instructions mention that the exhaust of a pellet stove should not be within 4 feet of an operable window. We're not going to operate that window. Its also within 4 ft of the front door. Its almost four feet but not quite. So what's the deal? I've heard of experienced installers doing the same. The code is well intentioned but let's be realistic, what the hell are you doing opening your window while running your stove?
Now we can see how nicely the interior component of the thimble covers up my horrific hole in the wall. Initially the pipe was about 1/8th of an inch too high to connect to the back of the stove so I had to take off the interior component and angle the hole a bit lower. Not hard. Apparently there's linoleum over the plywood over the hardwood floor, all of which is under the carpet....sigh.
The stove is heavy, very heavy. I'm fairly fit and all I could do is rock it and walk it. You will not pick it up, even if you have friends as there's no convenient place to hold it. Below its sitting on its masonary board.
The first time you operate the stove you take it for a dry run. You plug it in and turn it on and let it go for 20 minutes. You do this with NO fuel. Its just to test out the machine. After 20 minutes it will shut off automatically. The lower auger bit will continuously (but slowly) turn and that will be visible from the front window. The upper auger will turn periodically (not all the time) and will be visible with the hopper cover up IF YOU DEPRESS THE HOPPER LID BUTTON, visible below. I didn't realize this and spent 40 minutes on hold waiting for tech support to tell me I was an idiot.
You see, I had the hopper lid up and didn't see any auger movement. So I took off the back of the stove and took out my voltmeter and checked for any potential drop across the leads. The lower auger motor had the expected 120V but the upper motor had a drop of 0V. This is because when the Hopped Lid Button is extended it cuts off any current from going to the upper auger motor. Once its depressed current will flow. Its a safety mechanism. I'm not pretty familiar with the internal guts of my stove since I took it apart and checked electrical connections. There's a DVD included with the stove and it does a good job of walking you through the repairs. Its not bad.
Below we see the stove installed and running. It takes about 5 minutes for the pellets to ignite. You'll notice a small glowing circle which is the heating element heating up. The pellets will be drawn in from the lower auger and will pile up while this occurs. Then finally it'll like and you'll have a lovely fire. It then takes about 15-20 minutes before the fans begin blowing out hot air. We noticed a funny smell at first, but different than the smell exiting the exhaust outside. The CO/Smoke detector is 3 feet above the stove and has nothing to say and we should all be dead by now if there was a problem. We reason that it must be the paint or dust or some 'new car' smell if you will.
You can see a certain goober in the window below making funny faces.
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