The reason many people end up dissatisfied with this stove is poor documentation. The stove really will efficiently burn wood pellets, cherry stones, corn, and other biomass fuels. The problem is that the manual explains virtually nothing about how to adjust the stove to get an efficient burn out of any of these fuels.
The fuel/air mixture is controlled from a digital keypad on the side of the stove. It is rather cryptically labelled with the digits 1-9 and the letters A, B, and C. The manual says that A controls the auger speed which means it controls how fast fuel is fed into the burn chamber. B, it is claimed, controls blower speed. C stops the auger for 90 seconds.
Where we run into problems is that all the default settings, in my experience, have a fuel/air mixture that is too rich. That is to say that there is too much fuel and not enough air. The result is that the stove burns poorly, produces a lot of soot, and doesn't heat well.
If you go to the keypad and simultaneously press and hold the A down arrow and the B up arrow for 5 seconds the display will flash; this means you can adjust base auger speed and base blower speed. This is where the manual really falls down.
Now press A. The LED above A will light and you will see numbers in both the A and B displays. 7 and 7, for example. What the booklet doesn't tell you is that this is basically a decimal display that means 7.7! You can adjust auger speed by tenths all the way from 1 to 9.
Press B and you can do the same thing with blower speed.
The booklet also confuses the blower issue. There are actually two blowers at work. B adjusts the blower that forces air into the burn chamber, not the fan that blows hot air into the area you want heated.
With a clear idea of what the keypad actually does, you should dial auger speed way down and blower speed up. With premium wood pellets I usually have the base auger speed set at around 2 and the base blower speed set at around 8. From there, as you adjust the heat level up and down, you just have to adjust the damper accordingly.
The manual notes that you should add chicken scratch to corn to avoid clinker formation. I've found it's a good idea to add it to any fuel that you are using.
Finally, avoid the temptation to run the stove with the damper too far open. This gives a blow torch look to the flame. You want to avoid it because it promotes clinker formation and because it blows a greater amount of fly ash around the inside of the stove than necessary.
With respect to fuel types: Wood pellets produce the greatest amount of heat and the smallest amount of fly ash. Corn and cherry pits have to be burned in greater volume to keep the house at the correct temperature and they produce greater amounts of ash. This means, in practice, that the stove has to be cleaned less frequently with pellets than with other fuels.
Overall, this stove works very well and would have a better reputation if American Harvest had put any effort whatsoever into producing a manual that explained how the controls function.
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I have had my stove for a year now. It cost about $300 to heat my 1600 sq ft basement heated. The additional benifit is that because the heat rises, my floors are warm on the first floor, and the air in the family room which is also the room with the stairs to the basement is warmer.
There are a couple issues that you must take into consideration:
Dry corn is a must. I buy corn from a local farmer with a moisture content of about 14 14.5%. This is a little higher than recommended by the manufacturer, so I add 2 lbs. of wood pellets per bushel of corn. I also add about 1/2 lb. of oyster shell (chicken scratch) per bushel to virtually eliminate klinkers.
The stove needs to be clean. I shut the stove down once a week for cleaning. Empty the ash bin, vacuum the firebox area, the heat transfer tubes, and the chimney clean-out.
Noise is about equal to a normal box window fan in good condition. The noise I hear is tha actual air blowing more than anything else. The firebox does lift up and drop back down on occasion, but this happens on average about once every hour or so, less immediately after a cleaning, more after 5 or 6 days of running.
Power. You must have electricity to run. If the power goes out, so does the stove. This will not keep you warm during power outages. We have lost power while the stove was running, but all that happened was the stove went out. No fumes seemed to back up into the house, but I had closed the air intake vent immediately. I would imagine that if you didn't close it, it would smell a bit until the fire died out.
It is much more work than just turning up the thermostat, but I have saved more than half the cost of the stove in propane compared to last winter. I am thinking about purchasing another one for the upper level.
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I bought one of these American Harvest beauties from the local farm supply store for $1280. I have had it hooked up and running for about a month now and am thinking about selling it. Here is what I do not like about it:
1. Its noisy.
Today it started to rattle. It sounds like the fan that circulates the heated air.
It makes frequent "bangs". When using corn large "clinkers" form in the burn tray. There is a bar inside the burn tray that rotates and keeps things mixed up. These "clinkers" wedge against the rotating bar and cause the burn tray to lift up and drop back down again...Bang! Luckily I can sleep through anything. The wife on the other hand hasn't slept much since we got this. :-(
2. Requires frequent cleaning.
The burn tray has holes drilled in. Corn is dropped into the burn tray and gets burned. The resulting ash is forced through the holes into the ash drawer, or that is how it is supposed to work anyway. In actuality, the spent corn is forced out of the burn tray into the pit that surrounds it. After a couple of days you need to shut the stove off for a couple of hours then vacuum out the pit. You need to let it rest for a couple of hours to make sure that it is completely burned out or you will start your vacuum on fire. I have tried using fireplace utensils to clean the pit but that doesn't work very well. The manual that comes with the stove recommends adding chicken scrath to the burn mixture to get a more complete burn. That doesn't seem to help mutch. They also recommend buying low-moisture corn. I asked the guy at the farm store what the moisture content of his corn was. You can probably guess how well that worked out.
The window requires frequent cleaning. This stove comes complete with something called "fire wash" technology that is supposed to keep the window clean. It doesn't work.
3. Difficult to regulate tempurature.
The stove has two controls. One controls the heat output and the other controls the blower for the heated air. The winter in my location is generally pretty mild so we usually run the stove somewhere between 1 and 3 (9 is the highest). I think the stove was designed to run at a higher output than this. This morning I was getting ready for work and noticed that it had completely burned out. Evidently, on a setting of 1 it doesn't add corn fast enough to keep itself burning. I relit it and bumped it up to three. Hopefully it will still be burning when I get home.
You also need to be careful what setting you leave the blower fan on. Set it too low and the stove will overheat and make your house smell funny. You really need to keep the fan set on at least 4 or 5. Sure its loud, but at least it smells better.
Honest reviews on American Harvest 52,300 BTU Pellet Stove with Exhaust Blower
I have owned this stove for more than a year. It has been nothing but a head ache. It smokes up my house and has shut down for countless reasons. I take a lot of care in running the stove and cleaning it...more than the average person would care to face. Their customer service is horrible. I find it hard to believe they own the stoves themselves with how they blame each and every problem on the customer. According to them they have no "problems". I love the idea of burning corn for fuel but I would definatley try out a different model and different company. Anyone interested in this model should research the difficulties other people face. I am definately not the only one wouldn't you agree?
Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for American Harvest 52,300 BTU Pellet Stove with Exhaust Blower
I have owned two pellet stoves before ordering this one, a Harmon Accentra and an old Whitfield. The Whitfield worked about as well as the Harmon and I came to realize they all operate on the same principal so I was not concerned about ordering the 6039.
When I went to install the stove I ran into a problem. I could not attach the 'T' fitting to the stove exhaust outlet. The outlet pipe had been jammed so tightly against the stove sheet metal that there was no gap for the 'T' to fit. I called the company at about 4:25 PM and was on hold for 25 minutes. The person I spoke to was rude and unhelpful but, best of all, she hung up on me at 5:00! I decided to just repair it and worry about the warrenty later.
As for the operation of the stove, I have used pellets only and it does pretty well. The fan is no louder than the other stoves I've owned. It does have to be cleaned weekly but all pellet stoves should be cleaned that often. In fact, some of the older stoves had to be cleaned daily. After 2 months I checked the 'T' fitting and it was virtually clean so I'm assuming the burn is efficient.
This stove does not have an auto ignitor which I was not sure would be a problem. My method is to use a propane (MAP gas) torch to lite the pellets, it works great and is fast and clean.
I have had a problem when it runs out of pellets. The stove will show ERR2 and normally you just add more and restart. Lately however it will just keep shutting down. I removed the side panel and jumped out the low temp switch to keep it running and after a few hours it was back to normal.
I would only recommend this stove based on it's price and only if you are confident you can repair it yourself. Customer service is worse than useless. As far as parts, it looks like they used off the shelf motors you could interchange with ones from Grainger to save some money.
