November 2010
Steady increase in the consumption of pellets but with a huge number of bags to get through it was quite welcome to make a bit of space in the garage. One morning I noticed a pile of pellets and sawdust under the hopper. The auger screw had screwed into the plastic base of the hopper and a sizeable hole had appeared. I pulled the auger feed pipe out of the base by about an inch and sealed the hole with strong tape. Will get it fixed permanently when I can empty the hopper in the summer. The tape will hold it for now.
The carbon monoxide alarm triggered one day . Opened the garage doors fully to vent the area and it stopped. The smell from the chimney is not a sweet as before - slightly acrid but maybe it is due to the change of pellets!
December 2010
Got around to wiring up the backup immersion heater. Just in time as a couple of days later the boiler cut out with an over-temperature alarm. The electrics held the temperature up but it is not quite powerfull enough for heating and hot water running together. Discovered when wiring it up that it isn't a 6KW heater but a 4.5Kw version instead. The documentation states 6 or 13Kw but it seems that the newer versions are only 4.5kw however it is cabled for 6Kw so may be able to uprate it if there is a need to.
Talked to the supplier who advised me how to reset the system. It started running again but a few days later it cut out again. Carbon Monoxide alarm sometimes goes off when it is running. This time I noticed a smell of smoke coming from the hopper so quickly disconnected the feed pipe. It was full of compressed soggy pellets. This blockage had triggered the cutout. After discussion with the supplier it was recommended that I give the boiler a good clean out.
Up until now I had been following the only housekeeping advice that was given at installation. This was mainly emptying the ashpan and giving the chimney baffles a shake to dislodge ash. It states in the documentation that it only needs this a couple of times a year but I discovered that it needed doing once a month. When I opened up the burner door there was a huge pile of soggy ash in the burner chamber. This is what was causing the unit to overheat. I cleaned this up and removed all the ash from the firing areas and the boiler started running again. If the level of soot in the boiler gets too much there is high condensation level in the boiler gases which causes the soggy ash problem. Since then I have added a monthly cleanout of the burner unit to the housekeeping. It only takes about 45 mins to thoroughly clean the boiler and had I known about this we may not have had the problems we had.
No problems for the rest of the month and the consumption of pellets increasing considerably as the days get colder. However compared to equivalent gas usage for this month it shows a huge cash saving..
