Monday, November 24th, 2008
I have been writing on this blog since August of 2006. I am close to 1000 posts and 1500 comments. I am proud of this achievement, especially since I started this blog back in the day, only to talk about my flight lessons. Obviously, I got off track somewhere along the way.
Out of the 1500 comments, 99.9% of them have been very favorable. There are a few posts on my blog that have really helped people, especially the “Plugged In, Not Charging - Windows Vista + Laptop” and the “Installing Our New Harman P38 Pellet Stove” posts. Between those two posts, I have 266 comments (at last count). I really like it when a conversation starts that I don’t have to be involved in. The more that people add to it without my input, the better it gets.
Every so often, I write something or link to something that someone doesn’t like. I either get a “not so nice” comment or I receive a personal email. I read these comments and emails and either delete them (if you are just venting) or I end up thinking about them for a few days.
By the way, I placed my personal email address on the new “Contact Page,” just in case you want to express your feelings to me in private.
If your message moves into the “thinking about it for a few days” pile, I usually respond.
My first reaction is to fight. I say something to myself like, “What the heck is going on here? What did I do? This person obviously has a problem that has nothing to do with me.” I get all pumped up and start typing a response. Then, usually after the first or second sentence, I delete whatever I am writing. I relax and give it a few days.
This is when my mother’s side kicks in and the guilt takes over. Thanks mom. The light begins to peek through and somehow, some way, I start seeing the most minute way that I might possibly have had some part in the exchange. I know, I know, it’s hard to believe, but there have been times in my life when I have actually been the cause of a few teensy weensy little issues.
Usually, I don’t mean to offend people with the things I write. I simply express what’s on my mind. When I start typing, I am usually thinking of a few readers. These are the folks I know who read this blog. What always amazes me is the number of people who I don’t know who come here to read. I never met them, never had any type of exchange with them and probably will never get to know them.
It’s a tricky place to be.
I mean, here I am, typing, typing, typing about all the things I like, don’t like, things I enjoy and things I don’t care for all that much. I am bound to write something that annoys someone every so often. For all I know, you work for an oil company and I like pellet stoves. Who knew?
I really do try to appeal to people’s good sides and am always trying to create more interest than not, so I did a little research. This might also help out all those new bloggers I know out there who are just getting off the ground. If you are interested in learning more about how to write, what to write and blogging etiquette in general, check out the following sites:
- The Rules of Blogging by Snooze Button Dreams
- The rules of blogging by Justinsomnia
- Blogging Rules Of Engagement
- Blogging etiquette - For Bloggers and Readers
- Blogging Etiquette - The Unwritten Rules
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Posted in Blogs, Ramblings | 1 Comment »
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…
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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Wednesday, November 14th, 2007
I am a little hot. I just finished bringing the remaining two tons of wood pellets downstairs to the basement. There were one hundred forty pound bags. I don’t even know how many trips I made with the wheelbarrow. I brought down six bags per trip. I am sure if I did a little math, I could figure it out. Nah, that’s asking too much.
So there we have it…three tons of wood pellets for the season. I am guessing that we already went through about fifteen bags, give or take.
Things with the pellet stove have been going pretty smoothly, except for that one small hiccup. It’s half way through November, so that’s not too bad. I say this every year and then it hits minus twenty in January. That’s when most of the pellets get used up.
Big props to you and your family.
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Friday, November 9th, 2007
Last night, I started a little fire in Harman P38 pellet stove. I usually fill the little area with pellets, squirt some gel on them, light it and start to eat dinner. It usually takes a few minutes for the gel to get the pellets to start burning.
Well, Laura and I got into a good conversation and I totally forgot about the pellet stove. The door was open and the pellets were kind of smoldering. I got up to close the pellet stove door. After I did that, the stove was burning fine. Here’s the problem…after a few minutes, I noticed that the auger wasn’t turning to feed more pellets so the stove would keep burning.
I got the flashlight and started poking around some things in the back of the stove, to no avail. I tried a few times to restart the fire, just to see if things would kick in normally. Nothing. The pellets just kept on burning normally, but they would eventually burn out, because there was no replenishment.
I looked up some things on Google and came across this site, with a page titled, “Harman Accentra Pellet Stove Problems.” There were some good posts there, but nothing that helped me. I decided to let the fire burn out and call the place I bought the stove from today. Also, just as a kicker, I lost the user manual. I think someone stole it…yeah, that’s it.
At this point, the fire was completely dead and all the fans on the stove stopped. I decided to go for it one more time. I filled the burning bowl with pellets and squirted the gel on. I lit it and quickly closed the door. This time, as soon as I closed the door, I heard the auger turning. After that, things were fine. The fire has been burning all night.
I am thinking that since I left the door open too long the first time, the switch that starts the auger never flipped. Something like that. After I let everything die, things were reset. Who knows.
So here is an update on how the pellet stove is working this year. I bought three tons of pellets at about $600 and change. This is more than enough for the season. The thing cranks out heat. It doesn’t make any dust or mess because I caulked the exhaust pipes (high temp). I heard someone, on the radio this morning, say that they already spent $3000 on heating fuel this year, and that is only going to last until December. Must be nice to live in a 60,000 square foot mansion. Anyway, you would think they would consider alternatives at this point, instead of calling radio stations to complain about how stupid they are. For $2000, they can have a brand new pellet stove…installed. Oh yeah, they also mentioned that they drive an hour each way to work every day and are spending $95 per week in gas. How do you spell H-Y-B-R-I-D? Ahhhhh. Why do we even bother?
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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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Tuesday, August 7th, 2007
I just placed a phone call to the local Agway to pre-order my wood pellets for the year.
Every year, (I have been doing this for two years now) I like to get my pellets in August. I always think I am beating the rush. I guess I am, but there are quite a few people ahead of me this year. The lady on the phone told me that there were three truck loads to be delivered before me. I am thinking, “Ok, like three pickup truck loads?” No, three tractor trailer truck loads. There are twenty two tons on each truck. That’s a lot. I am going to get my delivery after those go out to the other people who pre-ordered.
I ordered three tons on discount, because it is before the season. The price goes up after the season starts and the demand is higher. I paid $199.99 per ton with a $30 delivery charge. That’s not bad. I only ordered one ton last year and kept finding myself at various stores buying bags of pellets. I didn’t want to run out this year.
The pellets I am going to get are made out of hardwood saw dust and come from Pennsylvania. It is recycled from the lumber mill. Apparently, this is the good stuff. I was advised that the softwood clogs up the stove, which reminds me that I have to clean my stove out for the season. They say that you should do that after every one ton of pellets burned. Hmmm…maybe I will write a post about how to clean your pellet stove.
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Saturday, October 14th, 2006
I will keep this short…
Last night, the tempurature dropped into the 30s, so I thought it was a great time to get the new Harman P38 Pellet Stove kicked into high gear.
I think I will get the knack of getting the fire started soon enough. I filled up the pellet tray and squirted some starting gel on the pellets and lit the fire. I think the directions say that you should turn the fan on level 1 and then close the door. I did this and the fire stayed burning for about 5 minutes and then went out. After it went out, I applied more starting gel and mixed up the pellets a little. This time, I turned the fan on level 1 and kept the door open. This way, the fan is sucking out the smoke, but it’s not so strong that the breeze puts the fire out. After a few minutes, the pellets were glowing red hot, so I closed the door. I heard the screw turn to release more pellets into the tray and then the second fan kicked on to blow the heat around the room.
The stove heated up the room in no time, but I did smell some exhaust. I had already sealed up two joints in the exhaust pipe, but two more need to be done. I got in back of the stove to smell the suspect joints and sure enough, they stunk. A project for today…
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Saturday, September 9th, 2006
Last year, in the middle of winter and after the second delivery of heating oil, I made a vow to myself. I said that I would get either a wood burning stove or a pellet stove. I said that I would get it over the summer as to avoid the rush. Well, August rolled around and I happen to remember my vow. I really tried to avoid it because I just didn’t want to drop a few grand for a stove, but I kept thinking about how it would feel in the middle of January as I enjoy the warm flame.
I had recently cut up about a cord of wood, so I was really trying to find a good woodstove. I found one at a local dealer and was about a day away from getting it delivered when I found out that I would need more chimney pipe than anticipated. I didn’t want the look of all that chimney pipe sticking out of my roof in the front of the house and there was no other suitable place to put the stove in the interior, due to all the clearances required by the local building code. I decided to purchase a Harman P38 Pellet Stove instead. The clearances are much tighter and the exhaust vent is much, much smaller, as I will show in a few photos below. Here is a great post Paul wrote on woodstoves vs. pellet stoves.
I had the stove delivered along with a ton of pellets so I wouldn’t have to worry about that for a while. I picked up a piece of Bluestone from a dealer up in Mt. Tremper, NY. The piece is 36″x36″, which would cover the clearance I needed. It also saved about $200. I cut a 6″ hole in the wall behind the stove for the exhaust pipe and installed the wall thimble. I attached the Duravent pipe to the wall thimble and ran the pipe through to the outside. One note: I could have installed this stove much closer to the corner (2″), but since both walls of the corner were outside walls, I was forced to have a 12″ pipe clearance from the inside corner and an 11″ clearance from the outside corner. After the pipe was installed, I put the stainless steel turbo vent cap on the outside end of the pipe (photo below).
After everything was installed properly I started up the first fire. What an amazing machine! The stove gets to a certain temperature and the fans kick in to blow warm air out into the room. Also, the exhaust is barely visible and not all that hot. I had the building inspector come over a few days later to give it a passing grade.
The stove manufacturer calls for an outside air vent if you have a smaller and especially well insulated home. We can actually feel the suction when we close the doors in the house, and being only 1150 square feet, I felt that an outside air vent would be a good idea. This takes the air from outside, burns it and sends it out the exhaust pipe, without using any air from inside the house. The kit for this is about $100. $100 I didn’t want to spend, plus, I enjoy making things myself.
I decided that a piece of automotive exhaust flex pipe with a 2 3/4 inside diameter pipe would fit perfectly on the intake adapter.
I cut a hole in the sheetrock so the pipe would just fit through. I then cut a similar hole outside through the vinyl siding and plywood.
Then, I secured the flex pipe to the intake adapter using a sheet metal screw.
After that was set, I went outside the cut off the excess pipe and to attach the custom cover I purchased (dryer vent cover). From the photos below, you can see the exhaust vent (top) as well as the intake vent (bottom). All I have to do now is caulk the sides of the intake vent on the outside and paint and caulk the pipe on the inside and I will be ready for nice cold winter air to be pulled into the stove for clean, efficient burning.
One last note, you can see that I planted a few Arborvitae and a nice little Lilac bush in front and on the side of the vents. In a few years, they will grow large enough to cover the corner of the house and the vent covers.
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