Your pellet stove is in the corner, or the center, of your room and it is doing the one thing that you need it to do, heating everything. However, as you go to sleep you may shut it down for the night to save on pellets and electricity, making your morning freezing and uncomfortable. Raising the question of whether or not you could leave the pellet stove running 24/7.
You can easily leave your pellet stove running 24/7, shutting it off for a few hours each month to clean out everything and ensure everything works properly. Most pellet stoves around the world are constantly being run, allowing the home to stay warm and ready throughout the day and night. This is why pellets are sold in 40-pound bags, allowing you to fill the stove and forget about it.
There are several things that you need to ensure are there and ready to work when letting your pellet stove run 24/7, not just the vents being cleared, but the ash being right and the pellets being dry. A lot of people forget about checking these when they either start the stove on for the first time or simply let it run. Having a properly running stove is vital to ensuring that you won’t have to use too many pellets to keep things hot.
What is needed to have it run smoothly for 24 hours?
You will need to have proper dry pellets that will not die out while having your pellet stove thoroughly cleaned before you light it. Keeping a stove perfectly clean will be a challenge, which is why you need to do the monthly cycle of cleaning it, checking vents, and throwing out waste ash. Doing so will ensure that your pellet stove is always running at full capacity and that nothing goes wrong.
Apart from maintenance, you will have to check on the level of the pellets in the stove regularly, never allowing the pellets to go below a certain level. One of the best ways to do this has a bag ready next to the stove, with which you are constantly refilling as needed. A mistake most people make is not filling the pellet stove before going to bed, causing the pellets to run empty in the middle of the night.
Other than pellets and good maintenance nothing else is needed to have your pellets stove constantly running. Most people enjoy the experience of having it always on and giving them the warmth that they need inside their houses. A good reason to get a pellet stove in the first place is to have something that never needs to be shut down, causing you to always have the heat that you need.
Why should you shut it off once a month?
You should shut off your pellet stove at least once a month to do all the proper checks and maintenance. This includes emptying the gathered ash and brushing off the intake vents, as these can cause smoke to start billowing and greatly decrease the efficiency of your pellets stove. You must do the proper maintenance for your stove to always be working properly.
Different people shut their stoves off at different times, with many preferring to have their stoves stay on until the days become a bit warmer. This is because the stove needs to be off for an hour or two to allow you to clean everything, as the ash can be hot and the stove can burn you if your start cleaning too soon. To overcome this some newer stoves allow you to remove the ash while the stove is running, allowing you to quickly do everything without losing the heat.
However, it is vital to remember that when the stove is off you need to check on the working parts of the stove as well. These would be the fans, the auger, and the element that works as the igniter, most stoves can have these running perfectly fine for the first few seasons. However, as your stove gets older it will require more work and maintenance to be done.
Can you leave the pellet stove running when not at home?
As much as we would all like to work and live from home full time, where we are comfortable and warm all the time, this is not the case. Most people have to continue working straight through the winter and will not want to come back from work to a cold home. With most modern HVAC systems, you can control auto functions, allowing the home to warm up before you get home.
However, with pellet stoves it is different and knowing how long you can leave the system on its own without anyone there to check on it is important. Most people learn through experience how long they can leave their stoves, however, there are recommended limits, and knowing what these are can be vital. Further, as technology has advanced it has become unnecessary to always leave it on just to come home to a warm house.
Short periods
Short periods are anything from a trip to the shops or a day at work, all of which is perfectly okay, as many people around the world leave their stoves running when doing these. This allows their homes to stay much warmer throughout the day and prevents them from wasting energy when they have to restart the stoves again.
This is the biggest reason for leaving your stove running, having it die out and then restart only a few hours later uses a significantly larger amount of electricity than leaving it on. This is because the stove usually keeps the fire going by adding more pellets, instead of using the electric igniter to start the fire again. Pellets are worth a lot less than the electricity needed to start the stove again, with most people barely noticing the cost at all.
Longer trips
This is the one that causes the most conflict in the world of pellet stoves and how to use them, as most people insist you can just leave the stove on for several days. However, most pellet stoves do not have feeds large enough for this, and wasting that amount of pellets is not advised. If you are going to be gone for more than just a night or day then you should shut the pellet stove down before you leave.
Not only will this save you a lot of electricity and pellets, but it will also give you peace of mind knowing that the stove can’t accidentally break while you aren’t close enough to fix it. This is the reason that most people are now seeking out Wi-Fi-connected pellet stoves, allowing them to start the stove up before they reach their homes.
What are the signs that you need to shut off the pellet stove?
If you do leave your pellet stove going 24/7 there will come a time when you simply need to shut it off to ensure everything is still okay. Knowing when this is will decide your maintenance schedule and how hot you are going to be burning the stover whenever you are using it. Most people prefer to do this once a month, but smaller pellet stoves may need more maintenance.
These are the three signs that you need to shut off your pellet stove and clean everything out, especially with some of the smaller stoves that can easily become a lot less effective the dirtier they are. Some of the best pellet stoves allow you to clean them while running, but these are expensive and usually pellet stoves built into a wall.
- Smoking: Unless you have been doing no maintenance at all on your pellet stove, the only reason it will start to smoke is because of ash buildup. This is when it will most likely start to smoke because the ash is still smoldering, and causing smoke. Cleaning out the ash is usually that is needed to stop a good working pellet stove from smoking.
- Low heat: If the heat settings on your pellet stove are too low, and the pellets are even slightly wet, then the pellets will not start burning all the way. Some will burn while others are smoldering. This can cause a lot of headaches and many pellet stoves can be damaged when this happens.
Conclusion
Pellet stoves can easily be run for 24 hours each week, allowing them to keep your home at a constant temperature that will be both comfortable and effective. As the pellets are used up and the stove is used you may need to do some cleaning, but otherwise, it should be happy to keep working. It is important to still keep your maintenance schedule to ensure the best heating result for your pellet stove.
Whatever you are doing, don’t stop and start the pellet stove every time you leave the home, this will cause it to use more power.