Having problems getting new Quadra-Fire Mt Vernon Pellet Stove AE seviced.

[plowjockey]

Roc on supplys in Lloydminster,Alberta and they deal with Northern fireplace in Edmonton. I am just waiting for this new board hoping it will solve these issues. I love the look of the stove and if it would do what they told me I would be very happy. Oh one more thing when i had it working with whaet at the start I noticed the clink would get stuck in the pot then overfeed and not start. Is this normal? They told me it would self clean and I know it is cleaning well with the pellets now even if it is set for corn.

[blueflame]

No thats not the way it is suppose to work. My dealer has been trying different fuels through the insert they have on display and have not had any issues. He is the only other one I know of that has tried wheat. I was there Friday and they said they had not cleaned the unit is 3 weeks. The ash in the pot area was up above the firepot. The ash pan was full. But if you have issues running it on wheat Quad needs to know. They have found that they needed to change their boards after the stove came out due to the variations in the types of corn. They may have the same issues with wheat.

[blueflame]

Are you burning on manual or automatic?

[plowjockey]

tried both but really over feed on Auto but manual seemed to work some. wish I could burn it again but unable to even use man now...just overfeeds and won't speed the exhaust fan up.

[blueflame]

So at this point does it work at all?

[plowjockey]

Yes it is runing using prem wood pellets but set for corn....seems to be working good.. This is the only setting that will work of any fuels or settings

[jtp10181]

I just repaired a SantaFe-B that was over feeding and swapping the clear control module fixed the problem. Is that the part you replaced? The AE might not even have that I guess, I have not had to repair one of those yet.

[plowjockey]

New Board in and quad is running hot!!!! Hoooorayy! It has only been a few hours but looks good so far! Started on wood pellets for a day.....alll went well then switched to wheat tonight and so far seems to be more pot air and hot! had flame at -4 for pellets nut think I will increase for wheat..... My dealer never came out I just replaced myself. this is the 3rd board and I hope the last......Any more updates I hope is just usb and to add barley oats and rye to fuel options. Can't wait...Sure hope this works.....!

[plowjockey]

Well the stove is burning the Wheat good but failing to drop the clinker and clean. then of course dumps more wheat on top wasting good wheat and eventually jamming the auger. Any Ideas out there? The pot opens properly but it doesn't clean as the clinker sticks to the side of the pot.

[jtp10181]

scrape the clinkers out....

Go to page 25 of your manual. Section 10.B

3. Cleaning Firepot with Firepot Scraper
• Frequency: As needed

• By: Homeowner

• Task:

a. The appliance must be in complete shutdown and cool
and the exhaust blower off.
b. It may be necessary to use your fi repot scraper to
chip away material that has built up on the sides of the

fi repot and to push out any clinkers. Larger clinkers
may have to be removed from the top of the fi repot.
Corn clinkers can be especially diffi cult to break up.
c. After scraping the fi repot and inspecting the holes, turn
off the power and then restore the power. The auto
clean system will then clean itself.
d. The firepot floor plate must be fully closed when

fi nished.

[apm]

i am getting more depressed every response i read.no one seems how to repair or trouble shoot these stoves.how do the dealers get away with this?

[plowjockey]

Hey JTP I know how to clean the pot as the manual says but it doesn't say I would have to clean it manualy every time it cleans. This of course means that I bought a stove that will not operate over night and that is not what was sold to me. New board is in and it is working .....But the issue now is clinker ALWAYS getting stuck in firepot.......stove seems to need a full time baby sitter..Maybe I should use Pam on it??? not sure if a hotter shorter burn with quicker clean is better or longer burn but that would give me more of a clinker I think????

[jtp10181]

plowjockey: dirtier fuels give more clinkers. Try burning straight pellets and you should notice you have to clean it manually a lot less. You could try calling technical support and ask if what you are experiencing is normal.

apm: Pellet stoves are new to a lot of people. Many dealers including the one I work for did not really start selling them until the huge commotion last year. Right now I am the only person there who really knows how to work on them. Each call I get I am going with the service person and basically training them on site on how they operate and how to troubleshoot. You send a guy out that's worked on direct vent gas fireplaces for 5 years and all those wires and stuff going all over the place in a pellet is a little scary. As we have said before on this forum, buying the latest and greatest technology is not different in fireplaces than in any other industry.

I have a 2004 Chevy Malibu, with the new body style (they changed halfway though the year). The power steering light kept coming on during a drive back home from a vacation and each time it would the power steering was gone. We stopped at the next town and found a dealer. They popped the hood open and were totally baffled.... where is the power steering pump / fluid. We sat there for like 20 minutes while they figured out what the heck was going on. They came back and said our car has a new technology, electronic power steering with wires and pulleys, no pump or fluid. They had never worked on it before and had no clue what to do. Whoever they called said it would be fine to drive it home like that and we could take it to a dealer at home. Turned out there was actually a recall on some sensor in the power steering system so we got that done and it fixed the problem.

Also if you heard about this... think back to XBOX 360. Didn't they have all sorts of problems with it over heating?

My point is, every time something new comes out it takes at least one revision to work all the bugs out. Unfortunately the consumers end up being a giant test lab. They test the things as extensively as they can but nothing compares to real world testing.

[plowjockey]

well so much for working well..Stuck clinkers is one thing...But The Beast has gone back to its old tricks and is over feeding the wheat and jacking up in feed tube. wondering if it has something to do with having to unplug power and plug in again to get the Firepot to clean. This should be an option on the control pannel rather than unplugging. When you unplug the settings and code should default and reset but I noticed mine did at the start but not any more...stays on wheat...should default to corn..... I think there is junk code left in mem or not resetting right. Am I missing something? Any more ideas?

[jtp10181]

Are you letting it shut down before unplugging? Or just yanking it out while burning. Could try unplugging it for 10 or 15 minutes to let the memory clear and hopefully reset it all back to defaults. Why don't you have the dealer come work on it?

[plowjockey]

done burning usually in error code state. Last few times 20-30 min before plug in but doesn't change. phoned Phil today from quad and he says that my dealer is going to update my control software with the usb cord and all the fuel tables will be updated. It is quite warm here for the rest of the week...good thing....

[jertfunk1]

I am having problems with my mt vernon ae stove as well. I should have known something was up when the first one I picked up from the dealer looked like it got dropped upside down when I opened it up. The casting was broken, the hinges to the hopper door were broken and the pins for one of the doors were missing. Then I waited almost a month for another stove to show up. I got it home and installed it and everything seemed except for this loud hum upon cold start up, it sounds like someone blowing across the top of a soda bottle but 10 times louder that actually shook the wall behind the stove. I e-mailed quad and they said to lower the flame height but I already had it on -5. I was using premium pellets and had it on that setting. I have it installed in my basement. Then 2 weeks later I came down because the house felt very cold and looked at the thermostat and it said the convection blower was jammed. I thought that seemed weird so I unplugged it for about 15 minutes and plugged it back in and it cleaned and restarted so I thought it must have been a glitch or something. Oh yeah this is also the same day I went to buy 1 ton of corn. It worked for about 24 hours then the same message came up again. So at this point I was pretty upset because I had a ton of corn sitting there with a broken stove. So I took the side panel off to check the fan, I reached in and spun the fan with no resistance so i figured it must be a loose wire or faulty connection. So I unplugged it again and restarted it and it fired up. I waited until the fan started blowing and started wiggling the feed wires and feedback wires from the circuit board to the fan and nothing happened. Then I shook the fan a little which is easy to do because it doesn't feel like it is mounted to much and the fan kicked on and off. If I slowly move it it doesn't happen just when I give it a jolt. So I moved it around a little and let it run. It will now run sometimes for days without the error popping up but eventually it always does. It also stops while it is blowing for a moment and makes a weird sputtering noise but only on low speed, it has never sputtered on high speed. So I called the dealer and they are supposed to have ordered me a new convection fan, we'll see how long this will take. So Saturday(week 3 of having the unit) I started burning my corn. I can't seem to get this thing to feed right. Tonight I tried it on corn setting manual medium high -3 flame height and all hell broke loose. The fire was smoothered out by too much corn being dumped in, first it was burning it somewhat but the firepot got so full the corn started backing up into the chute. Then it finally made a clinker so big it smoothered the fire out. So the code low firepot temp came up and I hit retry and put it on manual low and it restarted. Then I came to the computer and found this message board and was reading. Then I started smelling something and looked up and the whole family room was filled with smoke! Apparently the stove didn't clean before it restarted or the firepot was too full and jammed and it kept pouring corn in and just burnt it and never ignited it so it made one huge stinky smoke bomb. So I had to open the door and dig out the firepot and clean it myself. I now have it running again on auto mode -5 flame height and it seems to be doing ok for now but I am afraid to leave it burn overnight without a babysitter. It's not that it is dirty either I cleaned it once a week and just cleaned it on Sunday inside and out. Hold ON!! I'm back the blower was sputtering again and I had to go shake it and it started working again.

I don't know I spent three grand on this thing to lower my heating costs but it now looks like I just added three grand to my heating costs cause I will probably be turning the furnace back on. Oh yeah plus the $170 dollars of corn I have stored here.

sorry for the long post but I have a lot of anger to vent. You would think something this expensive would have better quality control. I saw this link was forwarded to quad so I thought I would add my problems and hope they see it too.

[Scottnjtjk]

Deleted - Posted 2x

[Scottnjtjk]

My wife and I have been looking at the Harman XXV and the Quadra-Fire Mt . Vernon since we reached a new high on our propane bill (600.00 for 30 days - ouch!). I liked the purported reliability of the Harman and she likes (actually we both like) the looks of the Mt. Vernon with enamel finish.

I was going to hold off buying anything until next season, especially given the shortge of pellets on west coast, when I went on the QuadraFire website and found the great financing deal currently offered. With that in mind, we packed up the kids and went to the dealer 40 miles away.

Dealer said, don't buy the Mt. Vernon AE - Too many problems right now. For me, it seemed to burn OK at dealer but fan hummed rather loudly. Started researching and found this thread. Whew!!! Guess he was right on problems with new Mt. Vernon.

So, here are my questions.

Does anyone have any idea how long these problems will take to address?

For the pro's out there, is anyone having luck with the Mt. Vernon AE line?

Also, which is the ultimate question, can I reasonably expect a dramatic savings in heating costs with a pellet stove?

Thanks for the help.

[techmadness]

I've a friend with this stove who also can not get more than 5 hrs of runtime on the unit.

Here's my question - Does anyone have this stove operating? If so, please post the fuel type and the settings you are using to get this stove operational.

I am from New England and yes, I happen to be at his home yesterday when the tech arrived, and the tech was (is) completely over his head on this - I don't blame the tech though this stove is a technology marvel/nightmare.