My Stove
I have a two story 2000 sq ft colonial style house. All the bedrooms are upstairs. We also have a family room down in the basement.
We wanted to locate the pellet stove on the main floor but we didn’t want a big stove just sticking out from the wall. We decided to go with a Harman Accentra pellet fireplace insert. It has a maxumum BTU rating of 42,000 BTU/hr.
I knew the stove would have no problem heating the main floor. It’s about 1000 sq. ft with a fairly open floor plan. To help circulate the air around we do run a ceiling fan and the air handler from our central air unit. By running the central air handler we can get some heat downstairs to the family room. We still need a small space heater downstairs on the coldest days.
The stove is able to heat my upstairs as well by convection. The upstairs will be about 10 degrees colder than the downstairs, which is fine for sleeping. We do have to run the heat for some of the bedrooms during the coldest nights.
At first I was a little dissapointed the stove did not have the capability to be set back at night to a lower temperature. The salesman recommended that we just run it as normal during the night since it will just take more BTU’s to heat up the room again in the morning anyways.
We typically used 1-1.5 bags per day. On the coldest days we would use two bags per day. Pellets contain about 328,000 BTU’s/bag. Running at full capacity for 24 hours my stove can output about 1 million BTU’s/day. At this rate it would consume about three bags of pellets.
Here is a picture of my pellet stove insert. Looks pretty nice and the dog likes it too !
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Tom Bauman said,
August 20, 2007 @ 8:05 pm
I have the same stove and im getting a black tar creasolt on the left side of the burn pot it ran down the back and under the ash pan any ideas
thanks Tom
admin said,
August 20, 2007 @ 9:35 pm
Are you burning wood only or are you also burning corn pellets ? I never had anything happen like that, and I have burned about 10 different brands of pellets.
G.M. said,
October 17, 2007 @ 1:59 pm
Make sure that the left cleaning port on the stove is cleaned correctly. The brush that come with the stove can be inserted all the way up to the end of the handle. If this is not done and you just insert till it stops (usually 1/2 length of handle) you will have a plug in there that can cause a black tarry residue coming out of this pipe.
john said,
February 11, 2008 @ 2:50 pm
Agree with GM - you must clean these ports very well. I had the same problem you describe and my left port was indeed blocked. If you have a blocked port you will notice that the stove gives off more heat from one side than the other, and the ashes piles will be higher on the side of the working port.
It was a knuckle scraping time to clean the blockage!
I also findif I block one port with a towel and turned on the stove, then reversed the order then I know all blockages were clear.
Frank M said,
February 12, 2008 @ 3:11 pm
Question to G.M. or john. Just recently got my Harman Accentra pellet fireplace insert. Cleaned the stove twice, usually after I burn one ton of pellets. When you guy’s talk about the left port, are you facing toward the stova or away? When I cleaned the two ports I was only able to get half handle inserted in. I did not want to force it to hard or break anything! How much force is needed? I do not have any black tar coming from the ports, then again I have only burned two tons of pellets. Any information would be get!
Have you ever heard of ultra premium pellet? I have been buying pellets from the dealer where I bought my stove and he states they are ultra premuim. Is this true? Two brands I have used Cubex and New England wood pellets. I like the cubex better, higher BTU.
Thank you
admin said,
February 12, 2008 @ 3:56 pm
I think they mean the tube in figure 27 here
http://www.harmanstoves.com/maintenance/accentrainsertcleaninginstructions.pdf
I used to do steps 6 & 7 (heat exchanger and burnpot) every two weeks. This season I cleaned after burning two tons. It wasn’t too bad. I think I was able to stretch it out a bit because the pellets I currently use produce very little ash. Cleaning every ton does sound like a better schedule. I still have my local shop come out once a season for the big clean.
Frank M said,
February 13, 2008 @ 12:36 pm
Thank You for the link. Will take your advise and have my local shop come out to perform the big clean. Thanks again! Have ever heard or used the pellets the Cubex or New England Wood. I found both produce little ash, but the cubex I get a higher BTU.
This site is great!
Frank M said,
February 29, 2008 @ 12:38 pm
When using your stove what mode do you use? (Stove temp. or Room temp.)What mode do you recommend?
admin said,
February 29, 2008 @ 12:43 pm
I have always used Room Temp. I never quite understood how stove temp worked or why I would want to use it.
There are times when the fan noise is pretty loud and I’m wondering of I switched over to stove temp if it would quiet the fan down during movies, dinners etc…
Frank M said,
March 1, 2008 @ 1:48 pm
I use both modes. For watching T.V. or having company over, stove mode is good. You could lower the fan and it is quiet. I tried using stove mode of a month and found it to be hard to keep a constant temperature. You have to constantly adjust the temperature dail to the weather conditions outside. It never really warmed the house up.
I have been using Room temperature mode and like it alot better. I leave the temperature dail between 3.5 and 4. The house temperate rangers from 76 degrees F to 65 degrees F.
The only thing I don’t like about Room temperature mode is temperature change between degrees. It does not hold a constant temperature, but the house is warmer using this mode. Do you have his problem? Should the temperature probe be moved from under the stove to another part of the room.
Thank You
Steve M said,
March 16, 2008 @ 8:03 am
Is anyone very pleased with a recent stove purchase other than a Harman? It appears the Harman stove are what every post is talking about.
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March 26, 2008 @ 1:36 pm
electric fireplace cabinet…
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Gregg M said,
July 1, 2008 @ 5:18 pm
I currently have a double sided fireplace in which I am looking to install a pellet insert. Do you or anyone make 2 sided?
Mike said,
July 2, 2008 @ 1:42 pm
We are interested in buying a wood pellet insert. We presently have a Keystoker coal stove, but in view of the pollution with coal, we wanted to switch to wood pellets. However, we are hearing that the price of wood pellets will be rising quickly due to increased demand and the fact that the building industry is stagnant so there aren’t as many scraps of wood. Also, we have read there could be shortages of wood pellets. Has anyone heard anything more on this subject? Is everyone in general pleased with the Harman Accent Insert? Thanks.
Charles said,
August 11, 2008 @ 9:50 am
When I was a kid we use to have a fireplace and used it all the time for heating the house. I remember loading it with my dad as a child and him teaching me how to split wood. Which became my primary duty well into my teens.
So for the past 20 years now I’ve been living in a nice rural town using oil to heat my home and now my wife and I have been thinking about switching to a pellet stove to lower our costs. We really don’t have a space for an insert, which looks like it would be a nicer option than a freestanding unit, judging from the picture you’ve shown.
So I have to ask a few questions if that’s okay. Nobody near me knows anything about pellet stoves, and I’m not sure if I can trust these sale reps.
1: Do you by chance have experience with a freestanding units?
2: Are all the units pretty much the same, or are there better ones?
3: Do you, or anyone near you know anything about Ecoteck pellet stove?
http://www.ecoteck.us/
This is the brand I’ve been looking at, but it’s really expensive, but very pretty.
If you can help me out at all I’d really appreciate it.
Paul said,
October 23, 2008 @ 11:15 pm
I see you posted 3 months ago but I thought I throw in my 2 cents. I’ve had a Harman accentra insert for 4 yrs now. The Harman brand is superior to many-there are a lot of cheap stoves out there which will mean more maintenance. They have an accentra free standing unit that does 68,000 btu. That’s huge. The Harman is friendly to work with automatically senses temp. in the room. Not the cheapest but it is a very effieicent system. You get what you pay for..good luck.
Dana said,
November 6, 2008 @ 10:25 am
You can connect a thermostat to a Harman Accentra. The info comes from
Harman. It is a kludge, i.e. you set the thermostat high say 85 degrees during the hours you are home, pellet stove set on real temp you want.
At night you set the thermostat to the “set back” temp, i.e. temp you want
the stove to come back on. It works by having the thermostat wired into
the stove’s probe. During the day the stove runs off the probe because the temp is set to 85. At night the thermostat opens the wire from the probe to the stove, i.e. stove thinks it is has a problem and shuts down. At the set back temp, say 65, the thermostat closes and reconnections the probe and stove comes on. As I say, it is a kludge. I had to read it a couple of times before understanding it. It was an official Harman tech bulletin. A Harman dealer can get it for you.
Dana said,
November 6, 2008 @ 10:44 am
This is the info I used to wire up a thermostat.
As I say, claims this comes from Harman. Seems to work for me.
http://oatstoves.com/files/pellet_stove_tsta_tinfo.pdf
admin said,
November 6, 2008 @ 11:46 am
I’ll take a look at this. It may be worth it to try to squeeze as much out of each bag of pellets as possible.
Frank M said,
November 12, 2008 @ 10:24 pm
Has anyone ever used there Harman Accentra in room temp mode and switched the igniter switch to manual after you have established a good fire. The stove never turns off, it burns at a min rate and uses the room senor probe. Not sure about fuel consumption, if it is better to keep the stove burning at a min. rate or have the stove turn off and restart. Any input would be great. Thankyou
admin said,
November 13, 2008 @ 9:43 am
I let mine run at the min rate. The auto igniter doesn’t always work 100% of the time. Certain brands of pellets seem a little finicky when it comes to the auto igniter. Also it depends on how well long it has been since the burn pot was last cleaned.
Ron Kent said,
November 13, 2008 @ 5:10 pm
I have a tp300 freestanding pellet stove (bought used) by traditions my problem is the pellets in the hopper are getting very hot to the point that they are burning and the odor from the casing is all through the house. any help would be appreciated thamk you
Frank M said,
December 2, 2008 @ 8:13 pm
To Admin,
How often do you clean the ESP Probe on your Harman accenta insert?
Note: Brand of Pellet that I am burning is Cubex!
Thank you
admin said,
December 2, 2008 @ 9:28 pm
Frank,
Harman recommends the probe is cleaned once a year.
The first year I had my dealer come out to to the annual type cleaning. This year I decided to do it myself. I swear I was the first one to remove some of the covers including the exhaust cover near the esp probe. My probe was very clean and I think I can safely stretch out a major cleaning to every two years.