I bought a used 4100 three years ago to replace a wood stove and I have been rather disappointed with it. The first year I got it I installed the negative draft kit and it just never heated my 1800 sqft home really. The wood stove it replaced was about 25 years old and inefficient, yet had no problem making it unbearably hot in the room with the stove. With this stove, the room that is in, is barely warmer than the rest of the house running full blast pretty much all the time. I ran corn the first year but pellets last year and this year with not much difference in heat. Yesterday I clipped a candy thermometer to the front of the upper vent and the air coming out was only at 135 f. Is this typical? It uses about a bag and a half a day on full blast. How does that compare to other's stoves? I am I expecting too much from this stove?

Skeptic, Sorry you are cold. I can give you an idea what to expect. I put a stack thermometer from the old wood burner in front of room air vent touching no where except for a clip to hang from lip to thermometer wire about an inch away. For my 4100 1.5 bags would be a low burn, air would be 150/160 and front above door would be 250. The feed would be set on 2. This is where I would be in spring and fall. In cold weather I run the feed from 4 to 8 and air vent will run from 205 to 230 with fan wide open which I do all the time. The most pellets I can get through it is 5.75 # an hour or 140 # day on the bitter cold days. Your stove is loafing

tfgrower wrote:


i get about the same out of both of mine

tailboardtech wrote:

tailboard,Did you mean the same as his or mine, I'm assuming mine I'm wondering if skeptic has cleaned behind back baffle or if somewhere else is dirty?

yours, might be i have actually had to take some brazing rod and jam down the back baffle to clean it out. it will bridge itself in there and the ash vac wont suck it out, if your a little lazy on cleaning it out

So after reading these replies, I cleaned out the whole thing really well. behind the baffle and all around the top tubes. this was much more cleaning than I normally do. started it up and was only about 5-10 degrees warmer. So i started adjusting the throttle adjustment screw on the back. at first I tried closing it a 1/4 turn, waiting, and measuring the temp. This however made things worse. so i started opening it. i found that i could not make it any hotter than i already had it.

I am thinking this is primarily a feed issue. now that i think about it, the first year i had i burned corn, and i could not turn it up to 10 b/c it could not burn it fast enough and the feed chute would eventually back up and clog. with the pellets, I am not even close to that. I had thought this was due to switching to pellets but now I am not so sure.

my only other thought is that something is way wrong with the flow. and the heat exchanger is not having enough time to work because all the heat is getting sucked out the chimney.

Here is video of the stove running full blast. the fire never gets much higher than what is in the video except when I first light it and the whole firebox is full of unburnt pellets

Well Skeptic I couldn't burn corn more than about 6 or 7 without buildup but got alot of heat. The way the sparks fly straight up it looks like an awful lot of air. Of course the sound can be misleading but it sounded like an arc welder.
What was the temp I was looking at and the settings etc when pic was taken?

Hi Skeptic
Sorry to hear that your stove is not producing as it should.
I don't know alot about these stoves, but just done
a complete maintenance on one about a month ago.
We also put the negative draft fan on the stove.
While we had it we also modified the auger.
The new augers have continuous fliting, no gap
in the auger.
You might check yours.
The guy we purchased the fan kit from told us we could
just cut the welds on the old auger and move the fliting
ends together and re weld.
The stove we done runs really great on pellets.
When we installed the stove we also made sure it
had the fresh air piped outside.
We also found that tube / chamber behind the fire
pot was full of corn and pellets which blocked the
air to the fire pot.
Hope this helps!!
olf20 / Bob

tfgrower wrote:

I'd like to know the opening of air valve behind burnpot. If you take a dowel and put it straight in along edge and rub carefully the edge of cylinder you will mark dowel and be able to measure opening of valve. I do not mean flap of burnpot but valve opening in the stove itself. Be very careful to be accurate, in 32nds of inch.

Olf20, You may have something there