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Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Mystery of the missing purple glove: A Pellet Stove ODYSSEY!

     Another home maintenance issue came up this morning.  Wesley & I got up to the wonderful situation of the pellet stove on the main floor of the house not running, and it was only 64 degrees on that floor.  As soon as I got up, I remembered waking up earlier and grabbing my sheet and comforter to pull it up to my face, so when I came downstairs, the thermostat for the stove was the first place I went!
     "Auger Jam" read the error screen.... trying the 'retry' button to no avail, I reached for the pellet stove user's manual, plus fired up the laptop, anticipating a needed search for how to remedy the situation.  After turning on the furnace and turning up my pellet stove in the basement, to help warm the house while I worked on the problem (AFTER getting Wesley to school), I set off to my usual morning routine of everyone's breakfast and preparing Wesley's lunch.
     Within a few minutes I found both the error message information and schematics for the parts that I needed to work with, and told Wesley that I had to remove a cover from the stove to work on it later.
     One youtube video search later and approximately an hour (the same as the video's creator had estimated) of tedious but easy work, and I had heat again!
     I assumed that the stove had the same problem as his... pellet dust build up blocking the auger and it's eye, but low and behold, as I removed the auger from behind the burn chamber..... I HAD SOLVED THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING PURPLE GLOVE!!!

     As usual, I took photos as I went through the steps of removing pellets, removing the wiring and the auger.... and THE GLOVE CAUGHT IN THE AUGER!  The above photo shows the twisted shape of the metal auger with the glove twisted up in it, and the auger motor and wiring harness in the lower left corner.
     I was both surprised and greatly relieved that I may have solved the problem so quickly, and hoped that I hadn't damaged any of the wiring while I did it.  I sent Michael another text message (yes, I've begun texting him since we found that it SOMETIMES reaches his phone from our home) that I had 'made fire', and posted on facebook that I thought I deserved a nap. 

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