US Stove American Harvest Multi-Fuel Fireplace Insert - Corn- and Pellet-Burning, 60-Lb. Capacity Hopper, Model# 6041I
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Us stove insert
So we have had e stove for 1 season and overall I believe this was a good purchase.Good out put of heat we normally ran it 24 -7 and mostly on 1 or 2 and had no issues other than a whistle on higher presets. We chose to get the 4 in pipe for chimney which there was some confusion when ordering had to order elsewhere. Minor electrical snafus when installing but us stove quickly gave proper remedy- loose connection from shipping. We went through just over a bag of pellets a day certainly cheaper than oil! And it looks good too!
April 26, 2013
Overall Pretty OK
I recently moved into a house with a couple of fireplaces, and wanted to add a pellet insert to one of them. Since I'd installed a Whitfield (Lennox) freestanding stove in my old house about 5 years ago, I knew what to expect. This is a multi-fuel stove, but I'm using wood pellets, and can't speak to how it works with corn. Installation was pretty straightforward, and I've had it up and running for about a month now, using it as the primary heat source for a 2100 square foot home (supplemented by baseboard hot water), though it hasn't gotten below about 25 degrees here yet. I'm between rating it 3 and 4 stars.
On startup, I found a couple of loose connectors on the circuit board (which prevented the auger from running). The agitator in the burn pot is driven by a chain, attached by a couple of sprockets. The upper sprocket was barely pressed on to the end of the drive shaft (set screw not tightened, and not even on the flat of the shaft), which I realized after the agitator stopped turning - and then then sprocket fell off. Fairly easy to correct, but there was definitely a lack of QA there. Whoever was responsible for putting the sprocket on was apparently responsible for packing the 'burnpot poker' because that wasn't in the box (not that it's all that vital, but it would have been nice to have).
Once I took care of those couple of issues, the stove ran great. It lights quickly, and the agitator is a great feature that really eliminates the clinkers. The control box is very nice as well, with error codes to help you determine the cause of any faults (something my Whitfield didn't have).
There are 5 heat settings (5 highest, 1 lowest). The stove runs great on 5-3, but it kicks off on 'low temp' on 1 or 2 (sometimes it'll run for an hour or two, and I had it run 12+ hours on 1 the other night, but mostly it craps out). I've tried to adjust (lower) the amount of combustion air available to it (running on 'auto' about all you can do is try to block off some of the air intake; on manual, you can adjust the damper), and I'd like to try adjusting the pellet feed rate on the lowest two settings, but have yet to find out how to do that (it doesn't appear to be in the manual). I'd like to let it run on the lower settings overnight when it's not super cold out, but so far that doesn't seem to be an option.
The blower is pretty loud on this stove (especially on the top three settings), too. Close to being annoying due to the layout of the room I'm using it in.
Cleaning the stove requires pulling the split pin that connects the agitator drive shaft to the agitator, and then finagling the burn pot out. Seemed like a pain the first time, but after that it was pretty easy (the burn pot stays pretty hot for quite a while after the stove shuts down, though, so watch out for that). There are also a couple of little cleanout plates that you need to pull out in the back of the stove. They're a bit inconvenient to get at and kind of small, and my shop vac hose is a bit too thick to get back in there properly. I need to get some smaller attachments for it.
The hopper opening where you load the pellets is very shallow, and it makes it tough to dump pellets in from a bag w/o getting pellets on the floor. I would probably advise using some kind of a scooper (personally, I just live with a few pellets hitting the floor). You also need to kind of pack the pellets in by hand (or, as the manual suggests, with the burnpot poker if they were kind enough to put one in the box) to really get it full. Along those lines, I've noticed that the pellets don't really drop down into the bottom of the hopper as the stove gets low, so I've needed to keep the hopper fairly full (or at least not let it get too low).
The ash pan is fairly small, but I've been impressed with the low amount of ash this stove generates (compared to the Whitfield, and using the same pellets).
As with any pellet stove, frequent (yet simple) maintenance is required.
Overall, this stove operates quite nicely on the top 3 heat levels, and the price is right. If I could get it to run consistently on the 2 lower settings, I'd give it 5 stars .
November 25, 2010
Great product
This is a great product and simlpe install. Beautiful acsent to the room quit and easy to operate. It would be better if you know what all was needed to install. We changed out a fire place for the insert and had to order online piping to hook up. These were not avalible thru our store. If you do your home work and have all the parts needed it is easy install. It looks good and works great.
November 16, 2010
This STOVE ROCKS !!!!!
I purchased this stove 2yrs ago and it's great. Installation was easy.
Love the aux auger in the burn pot, No Clickers. Great Product Steve
October 24, 2010
Great
I have had this stove about 4 months, got it up and running late november and it really is easy to use, just push the "on" button and that's all you have to do, approx 10 min's later, you have heat coming out. This is the same model as the other "6041" models, There is a difference between the different brands of pellets, they all burn good but some put out a lot more heat and use less fuel.
February 22, 2010
fireplace insert pellet stove
We have a fireplace and we hardly every burned it because most of the heat went up the chimney and we were just wasting wood. We bought the fireplace insert pellet stove and it just took a few hours to install it. We have burned it and we feel we spent our money wisely, plus there is a tax credit. The pellets in our area are $3.50 - $3.99 for a 40 pound bag. Very clean, no wood bark mess and looks great when it's burning.
November 6, 2009