When it starts getting cold, you may want to keep the pellet stove on for much longer, with the temptation to leave it running throughout the night quite close. Pellet stoves can keep almost any home warm, but it takes quite a long time to get hot enough to make a difference. When you go to bed one night, especially in the heart of winter, you may wonder if you can leave it on throughout the night.
Yes, you can, and should, leave pellet stoves on while you are sleeping, as these stoves are created specifically to heat a room through passive heat. Which means it needs to constantly run to be effective, most pellet stove owner never shut down their stoves throughout winter, leaving the stove to run and heat the home even when they are working.
Knowing why you can leave a pellet stove running throughout the night and how to ensure that it is effective no matter what, even if you are not there, can save a lot of time. Most pellet stoves only become effective at heating a room after several hours, with larger pellet stoves taking longer to become heated. There are several things you have to learn about pellet stoves and keeping them running for months on end.
How long can a pellet stove be run without turning off?
Usually, a pellet stove can be rung for up to four weeks without having to be shut off for a few hours to do basic maintenance. Most users will have their pellet stoves running throughout the winter months to heat their homes constantly. In more expensive pellet stoves, the stove can be left running while you are busy emptying the ashtrays that the stove has.
Pellet stoves have this unique advantage above all other types of heating that they become less expensive to run when they are constantly on. As the ambient heat from the pellet stove ensure that more pellets do not have to be burnt up to heat the room. If you are still looking around for a pellet stove, you will notice that this is why people always have their stoves running.
Pellet stoves can easily take up to one whole day to heat larger rooms, which may force you to have it burn at its top heat levels, which causes more pellets to be burnt as things go on. However, if the room is always kept hot by the pellet stove, it can be set to a lower setting and simply left to do the work of keeping the room and some parts of the house warm and toasty.
Are the fumes from a pellet stove toxic?
The fumes that a pellet stove releases into a home are never toxic, as these are just the warmed air that helps to heat the house. However, the fumes that are released through the vents to the outside of the house are toxic and should never be breathed in by humans, with the most dangerous immediate gas being CO2.
A lot of stove owners ensure that the vents are away from anywhere that people would most likely be walking around their homes while also ensuring that a large majority of the vent is safely working at all times. There are instances where the vents are leaking, and some air can enter a house. However, in these instances, the toxic air will quickly be noticed by the smell of burning wood.
If your pellet stove has been working flawlessly for hours on end, or the smell of burning smoke never dissipated, then you need to find the leak in your pellet stove vent system. A lot of pellet stoves can develop leaks from wear and tear, and a few simple fixes will ensure that the pellet stove is working exactly as it should within a few minutes.
Can you put pellet stoves in the bedroom?
You can put smaller pellet stoves in the bedroom where it will easily heat the room to a perfectly controlled temperature that will ensure you are never too cold. Pellet stoves that are kept in rooms have to be different than the ones you will be using in the main areas of your home. Most of the time, people prefer to have ventless pellet stoves in their bedrooms to allow for a sleeker look by having the vent hidden away.
Further, pellet stoves that are kept in a bedroom or just a smaller room need to be smaller than the ones you would keep in your main rooms. This is to ensure that optimal efficiency can be reached. Smaller pellet stoves use fewer pellets and can produce more than enough heat to heat these smaller areas. When you are using a full-sized pellet stove, the heat produced can be overwhelming, causing you to have them set to a lower temperature.
This causes an issue as the pellets are not burnt properly when being used and can cause smoke to start building up in the pellet stove. There are instances where larger pellet stoves that are built into walls can be made to heat a large open area as well as a bedroom. This will mean that the room is heated simply shared the wall space with the open area that you are heating. However, this too can be overwhelming if the bedroom is too small.
What are the signs that a pellet stove needs to be cleaned?
The first and most obvious sign that a pellet stove needs to be cleaned will always be the smell. However, there are other more subtle signs that you can look out for. Knowing what these signs are will allow you to enjoy not having the smell of smoke going through your home from unburned pellets or just heaps of ash.
There are five signs that you should learn to identify that will mean your pellet stove needs to be cleaned and maintained. A lot of people around the world start assuming that these are natural things for a pellet stove to do when in actuality, they are signs that the pellet stove just needs to be shut down for a while and cleaned.
- Smoke: If you are running the pellet stove and there is an excessive amount of smoke being pushed out of the vents, then it may mean that the ashtray is getting too full. This usually starts to happen because as the ash starts becoming a pile, the residual heat causes everything to smolder and smoke.
- Low efficiency: If you need to constantly turn the temperature of your pellet stove up to get the same level of heat, then it means that the inside has become caked with soot. Further, the filters cannot provide enough air pressure to keep the flames roaring. Shutting everything down and just giving it a clean will greatly help to ensure it continues to work.
- Noise: Two parts of your pellet stove can make some noise, the fan and the auger. If either of these two is becoming loud enough that you can hear the stove from across the room, it needs to be cleaned. Usually, both of these are entirely quiet and should not be heard at all.
- Slow to light: If your pellet stove is taking more than a few minutes to start a fire that heats the world, then you need to clean out all the filters. This is the best way to ensure that everything always works perfectly, just cleaning the filters allows the entire stove to work much more efficiently.
- Long run time: If everything is working perfectly, but you have been running the pellet stove nonstop for more than three weeks, it will greatly benefit the life of your pellet stove if you just stop. This is the best way to ensure that the stove stays working and perfectly okay for as long as you have the stove.
Conclusion
It is always safe to leave a pellet stove running for weeks on end. These stoves are specifically designed to run nonstop throughout the winter. As long as you clean and fix it as needed, the stove will last well beyond your lifetime, with many people finding that the only good way to use a pellet stove is to have it running constantly.
Allowing the stove to be started and stopped is the same as a car. You use a lot more fuel without accomplishing anything more than getting things to start up.