First Burn Night

So here I sit. Down in the basement again. Laptop balanced on top of a Traeger burn pot. Opening the boiler door once in a while to check on the fire. It seems like deja-vu. It seems like it, because it is. Two winters ago, I was a new corn burner. Still... um... yeah, I have to say it, wet behind the ears (heh heh) and I was lighting my corn burner up for the first time. Looking at the owner's manual, looking at the burner, saying “I don’t know” each time the wife would ask, “is it supposed to be doing that?”

Today is the first day of the 2006/2007 burning season. We had been putting it off, the house hadn’t really been *that* cold. We had been baking a lot. Living in the kitchen and office areas. Running the gas fireplaces a little bit each morning to take the chill off and keep those spaces livable. Tonight though it is predicted to drop to 17 degrees. That’s just a touch too cold to wake up to in the morning. That’s getting to be frozen pipes temperature. So, it begins. The heating season.

This time I am down here because I am trying something new. I have the new style bottom feed Traeger burn pot in place. I need to keep an eye on it for a couple of reasons. First off, it is something new. Using corn for heat is not an exact science and so any time you make a major change to your setup, it pays to keep a close eye on it. Here, I have a new burn pot. I don't know how the corn will burn in it. Will I need to change the draft fan adjustment to allow more or less air in? I don't know.

But, second, it wasn’t a real smooth start. Traeger’s, at least of my era, have trouble with a small $4 part that senses the smoke box temperature. I don’t know if current production units use the same part or not. I expect they might. This part, checks to see if the smokebox is hot. If it is, it allows the corn feed auger to come on. If it is cold, as in, the fire went out, it keeps the feed auger turned off.




Well, this part fails, or it sticks. I am not really sure which. I replaced two of them last season before I figured out they seem to work but just need a lot more temperature than what they are rated the first time they turn on. If your furnace has been off for a while no amount of initial wood pellets will generate enough heat to kick the feed auger on. The solution is to pull off the cover to the four dollar part and jumper the two wires. Then, the feed auger is in perminant feed mode, as long as the switch is in the feed position.

No problem as long as the fire keeps burning. Here I sit, with a new burn pot, not sure how the draft fan will need to be configured for this pot, and the feed auger jumpered into continuous feed mode. Not the best start. Don't try this at home folks...

Oh yeah. One other detail.

I have the jumper wire in place. (This is pre-ductape from what is shown above) And I am jiggling the wires around because I just realized the jumper wire insulation is laying in direct contact with the hot smoke box. I touched the bare ends of the jumper against the boiler. Well, better the boiler than my finger I say, but I did blow the fuse on the Traeger control board.

So, now I have the feed auger jumpered, and the fuse wrapped in aluminum foil, and I am off and running on my corn burning adventure.

I will shut off the power to the boiler before I go to bed.
And I will buy fuses tomorrow.

All this aside, the burn pot seems to be working quite nicely. The temperature on the boiler is coming up as I sit here. The temperature is still, only 70 degrees, but higher than the rock bottom it was when I flipped open my laptop. I really hope this burn pot works out. All in all, I have been fairly happy with my Traeger but it has been much more work that what I hear other brands are. Changing burn pots every four days during the coldest part of the winter is not a fun job. This could change all of that, and I really hope it does.

I see from the Pinnacle Sales web site, the new Traeger boilers look a little different than the model I have. The smoke box seems larger somehow, and, there is an upper blower fan on the chimney pipe. I am going to drop them an email asking for some info on the new design features.

One final thing. Clean those chimneys! I like to help out when ever and wherever I can. Many times, some of my best help is by being a bad example. Thus, encouraging others to better themselves. This time I might have taken it a little too far. Spring of 2005 I pulled my chimney pipe off to run the shop-vac into the cleanout. There really wasn’t much there. 2005 was a short season for us, we only really heated the last two weeks of February, March, April. No surprise the chimney was pretty clean. The 2005/2006 heating season though was a full season. I cleaned the boiler flues out three times during the season, but I didn’t clean the chimney at all. Why do it? There was hardly anything in there the year before!



Imagine my surprise tonight when I pulled the pipe apart to give it a quick clean before lighting up. There was a small hole, about the size of a silver dollar. Other than that, the chimney pipe was full of fly ash! This was an excellent kick in the pants for me. (which I seem to need on a regular basis) But, folks, this is how people die of carbon monoxide poisoning! Buy a couple of CO detectors for your home. Use them, but also remember to check that chimney pipe once in a while! I am thinking a mid January cleanout would be a good thing, putting it mid season, since a whole season seems to plug the pipe. If you are a new corn burner, I suggest you check it a couple of times this year just to get a feel for how fast the ash builds up.

Burn pot has been running about three hours at this point. Seems to be working really well.

Good night all.