Brrrrr.... Grrrrr

I heat my home with a pellet stove. Recently, my stove started to malfunction, which is very upsetting and frustrating, especially with the cold weather we are currently having. I've tried fixing it myself, based on some help (via emails) from friends (L&T) who have a pellet stove too, and have had for many more years that I have had mine. I felt that it was not getting enough air to burn properly, L&T agreed after I emailed them a picture. T said it had a "lazy flame".

I made some progress cleaning things out. I was very surprised at the amount of soot and ash in the chimney! L&T suggested I open the sides and "fire bricks" to clean too, so I did that. After trying many things I finally had to call a repair man. Bill came out this morning and had a look at the stove, told me he doesn't usually work on pellet stoves so doesn't carry parts for them, so I would have to call Harley and have him do the job. Okay... so I called Harley and his partner, Cal came out this afternoon. He looked at the stove, I told him what was happening, including that through this whole thing the auger has stopped working, and showed him pictures. His diagnosis: there is definitely something plugging the air flow, he also said it was a "lazy flame", and thanks to the pellets building up in the burn box, therefore backing up in the chute, and stopping the auger, the auger motor is "shot". (These are my words, putting what he said into a nutshell of sorts). He's going to try to find me a good used motor to save me a wad of money, and the blockage still has to be found. Hopefully we can get this stove running soon. Thank God I do have a natural gas (NG) furnace, but it's expensive to use and I already bought tons of pellets, so don't want to leave them sitting there while I use up hundreds of dollars in NG.


These two pictures show the fire box, the "lazy flame", and the pellets that are blackened but not really burned. You can also see how the new pellets are backing up into the chute.


It is NOT supposed to smoke like this... cough, cough. This was really nasty!!

Here I have the sides opened, and the side fire bricks out (center one doesn't come out). Behind the fire bricks there was a lot of powder fine ash packed in tight, so I cleaned that all out of there. Anything I can find or get to I'm cleaning. Cal said the black on the inside of the door is a sign that there's a blockage, then when he saw the pictures of all that smoke it really confirmed this for him.
Inside on the left side, this is the blower motor and the damper.
In on the right side is the augur motor. These stoves are basically very simple (or so I've been told, haha)

So, hopefully, in the very near future I will again have the enjoyable warmth of my pellet stove instead of the "something lacking" warmth of the NG furnace.