It’s not uncommon for people to think of the worst case, most expensive scenario when their pellet stove is not working correctly. Sometimes thinking the control board is bad on a pellet stove is little more than a guess and usually just jumping to conclusions. I get a lot of calls from people thinking they have a bad control board on their pellet stove and seven out of ten times it’s something else.
- Many pellet stove problems are due to poor quality pellets. Burning high quality pellets on-sight often convinces the pellet heater owner to switch to a higher quality fuel. ELIMINATING 'FALSE FIXES' AND MAKING CORRECT DIAGNOSIS Often a part is switched out, improving the stove’s performance enough to overcome the true problem.
- Most pellet stoves are built exactly the same with few differences. In my 10 years of repairing pellet stoves, I don’t remember every working on one with an auger motor that wasn’t installed this way. I hope this helps. Unplug your stove from power. If your stove is free standing you will need to remove.
- The Avalon Astoria pellet stove is a medium sized stove with a huge capacity hopper at 115 pounds. At its lowest feed rate, the Astoria is rated for up to a 68 hour burn time. More 13 reviews; Rating: 65571 Views.
Troubleshooting guide to the Avalon Camano AGP Pellet Stove.
How to know if the control board on your pellet stove is bad. Usually when the control board fails on a pellet stove the stove just won’t do anything. This accounts as the symptom for 90% of all control board failure. At this point people are looking for a blown fuse or something else less worse but usually if nothing is turning on it’s a bad control board.
A slightly less common symptom is if one of the components on the pellet stove is not turning off or turns on/off erratically. It’s very unusual but you can have a relay fail on a circuit board and get stuck “on.” But usually when something is not turning off it is just the low limit sensor that has gone bad.
If you are turning a knob up and down and there is no change in motor speed or fuel feed and it use to change before, that is probably a bad control board problem.
Avalon Pellet Stove Auger Problems
If you have a Whitfield Traditions or Whitfield Profile 20 or Profile 30 that is not feeding properly or stops feeding for no reason you should first replace your Photo Eye and if that does not fix the problem then replace or have the control board repaired.
My company does repair pellet stove control boards and we sell new boards too. Just go to eBay and search for your brand stove and the word “repair” and if we fix that brand you’ll see a listing show up where you just simply read and follow the instructions on how to have your board repaired.
October 05, 2013
Pellet Stove Igniter Maintenance & Replacement : Do you have a spare?
Avalon Pellet Stoves Parts Manual
I have sold and replaced many wood pellet stove ignitors that failed. Here are some tips on care and replacement and how to test for failure.
Obviously if the stove does not start on it's own anymore, then most likely the ignitor is bad, but here is really what to look for and how to make it last longer!
Remember the ignitor's job is to superheat the air coming into the ignitor tube. This hot air will set the pellets in the fire pot on fire.
To ignite corn the wattage of an Ignitor must be very high such as 525 watts. Otherwise most ignitors that are between 250 and 350 watts only light wood pellets. In the case of corn and a lower wattage ignitor, wood pellets must be used to start the fire.
1. Regular periodic maintenance called PM in our workshop.
When doing your annual stove cleaning, it is good to pull the ignitor.
To do this, just unclip the electrical wires and use the correct wrench to loosen and remove the ignitor from it's housing.
See pics 1 & 2 (Magnum Baby CountrySide and other stoves use an open end wrench. Englander uses a socket wrench and other stoves use an allen wrench)
You can test the ignitor two ways
a. Put a multi-meter on it and measure approx 40 to 50 ohms
b. Use a AC test cord and plug the ignitor into the wall outlet, then check to assure it glows. See pic 3 (Be careful it does get hot enough to burn your skin!)
If it does not light or measures infinity (Open Circuit) the ignitor should be replaced.
See our web site pages for your ignitor replacement
Just because the Ignitor works, it may not be good enough to light your pellets properly.
Therefore you must also do the following.
1. Clean the Ignitor
I use a wire brush to remove any buildup and acetone to clean it off. (See pic 6)
Since the Magnum Baby CountrySide igniter was straight, just cleaning it brought the startup time down to 6 min 30 secs and barely any smoke!
It took much longer before cleaning and the firebox filled up with smoke!
2. Check straightness and in tube alignment. If not straight or aligned there can be much more smoke during start up.
Check the ignitor alignment and how straight the ignitor is. (See pic 4 & 5)
The ignitor must reside in the center of the ignitor tube so if it does not then check the following:
a. The ignitor is bent at the end and must be replaced
b. The nut or bolt that holds the ignitor in must be loosened and ignitor straightened and the bolt be retightened.
I have seen the alignment be off on the Englander 25-PDV and 25_PDVC units,
so it takes a lot longer than 4 or 5 minutes to set the pellets on fire or not at all!
Also do not forget to clean the ignitor tube and air inlet hole
Clean the ignitor tube with a small bottle brush. (See pic 7)
Clean the air inlet hole and/or air inlet hose with a pipe cleaner. (See pic 8)
As one final test to check the performance of your ignitor:
Time how long it takes from pressing the pellet stove's on button to the time the pellets ignite or fire starts.
Usually 4 to 5 minutes is really good but it can take up to 8 to 10 mins. It is best to check your time with another stove of the exact same make and model.
Since ignitors can burn out at anytime, like on a snowy cold weekend, it is great to have spare ignitor on hand.