Cornstove problem

I do not have a cornstove, so I cannot help you directly but I am curious as to what, exactly your problems are. Could I ask you to expand on what you said in your last post?

Hello fuifnummer

A) Location if given is helpful for you:

You have not given your location - You can do this, scroll down top lower right-hand corner of page, and click on "My Profile", enter your location, and the location auto-updates into every Post you make.

The reason for Location is simple: At present no reader knows where you are - you could be in Iceland, outer Mongolia, Easter Island, or some other remote place.

Your Location often determines who assists, if they are close to your location, they may know supplier of information required so much easier.

Laws and Regulations also vary according to Locality/State/Country.

B) Insufficient Information Given:

You have not bothered to state what your "issue/s" with the cornstove actually are.

We are not mind-readers, and have no way of assisting, unless the information is supplied.

Therefore, if you reply, with sufficient information, it may be possible to assist you.

Please reply here, at this Topic, thank you.

Kind Regards....

I have a Harmon P-68 pellet stove and it uses a horizontal feed auger and it works great! What they did was add a sliding door that opens and closes when the auger is running off a cam that rides on the auger. Every time the auger makes a complete cycle the door in the bottom of the hopper opens and then closes hence no smoke or fire in the hopper.

...and what happens if the auger motor fails with the doors open? I mean at that exact point? That could lead to the well known problem......less likely with the doors, but still not 100% perfect......

With a flat drive, the hopper can (and has done in many, many stoves from different manufacturers over the years) catch fire and even kill people who are sleeping, due to the thick smoke produced.It usually happens when the mains fails or the auger motor gets jammed or fails......

The stove types with the 45° (or higher) auger system cannot fail in this way due to the difference in vertical height between fire and fuel....see one of my previous posts for a simple line drawing of the system....

I researched this on the web before I bought a stove, very very carefully!! I am pleased that I did too!! I very nearly bought one of those stoves with the flat drive......!!

Howdy Andy Germany,

I do not represent Amaizablaize but want to point out a factor that may render your depiction of Amaizablaize auger assy moot.

It is that the bin height is dependant upon the preference of the purchaser or installer. The auger assy can be manipulated to fill the desired configuration, the auger will function which ever way the user intends.

I do not understand exactly what you are trying to tell me, please explain better. Thanks in advance.

I was saying the orientation of the auger is adjustable.

...but only at the design stage, after that it is fixed in position.

The horizontal version problems are well known and documented, at least upto 2006 when I found them on the web. (I have checked again recently and they seem to have been removed as I could not find them!!)

I was very happy that the unit I was interested in purchasing (and have been using for more than 1 1/2 years now with absolutely no problems of any sort), did not have this design failure.

Hi Andy

Thanks for your reply, I did some research myself but did not find the results you did.

Anyway, they convinced me that I should not have more issues. Well that of course remains to be seen. I will give them another heating season and if this thing keeps failing then I will see for a refund. My warranty will start on Friday when the install the new stove.

I will keep you posted. Thanks

Best of luck.

Hello fuifnummer,

Interesting post, I intended to buy an Amaizablaze after thorough research but decided to scrap the corn stove idea due the increase of cost of corn, $4bu <. Having your own corn would offset that some and the price of energy will not be falling significantly.

Depending upon the model you have be it bio mass capable I would get replacement because you have set up for the process also.

I had a Cornflame 3000 which is the same as the small Amaizablaze, or very similar. Unless you are burning propane, I don't know how you can save much money at todays corn price. I bought mine two winters ago and started out at $1.85 a bushel. I left it at the old house, when I sold it. You can burn wood pellets, but it might void the warranty. They aren't real cheap either. I had to exchange mine also, because I had some smoke seepage. The company I dealt with was very helpful. If they are willing to refund the money, I would go with a wood stove instead.

Yahoo has a cornflame group website. The members are very hellpful, and some pros participate.

In Germany, they are going to force all wood burning stoves to have a fine particle scrubber fitted.

They have also found out in Austria that a single wood burning stove can ruin the air quality for hundreds of meters around due to this fine particle exposure.

Fine particles are emmitted when a stove smokes, that smoke IS the fine particles.

Pellet stoves do not smoke (at least not when working correctly!) and are therefore exempt from this new ruling....

In Germany at least, the pellets are heat wise about half the cost of oil and are CO2 neutral, whereas oil is not.

I was under the impression that modern wood burning stoves burned very clean, much as pellet stoves. Also that some of them have catalytic converters. The scrubber would be a good add on though. I think the EPA has some tough regulations on new stoves. Would appreciate further info. I am considering a stoveworksusa.com stove It does not have the modern features, but will burn wood, corn, pellets etc. and is low in price. It requires no electricity.

I may not have written it quite as clearly as I should have, the scrubber is not (not at any future time seen at the present anyway) required for pellets burning, only for wood burning stoves.

When the scrubber is used on a wood burning stove, it makes the stove then even cleaner than a pellets burner.

It uses electrostatic methods to "scrub" the smoke and removes then approximately 90% of all fine particles.

Sorry that I did not state it more accurately the first time....

Check page 6 of the following .pdf for more details:-

KINA20962ENC_002.pdf

I have never had a corn stove, but I have had a pellet stove. I would like to point out some facts about pellet stoves for anyone considering buying one. THEY ARE ELECTRICALLY POWERED!! They used forced air to feed the fire (meaning fans) and the auger runs off of electricity. If you live any place where power losses are common (usually due to weather around here), I would shy away from them. You might think that you can hand feed the fire pot with pellets, but without the forced air, the pellets do not burn worth beans. Luckilly in our situation, we also had a real fireplace which allowed us enough heat to keep from totally freezing our rears.

If you don't have electricity problems though, the things work great!! They are so warm and toasty and cozy...

Bill

They have UPS (battery) back up systems you can buy for you pellet stove that will keep then running durring a power outage.

Seems to me that if you lose your power that offen you should have a back up generator(do you use well water?) I live in the northeast (USA) and have lost my power only a few times in the last 35 years

Very true, but once burning, they need very little electricity to maintain combustion. Its only the startup process that needs about 200 watts( at least mine does) to start. Running its about 15 watts....depending upon temperature selected.

Its still far cheaper than burning oil or gas here in Germany and is CO2 neutral.

If you can get corn at $5.00 per bushel (56 lbs) you get 1 MBTU for around $11.93. Wood pellets have 15% more heat per lb and at $175 per ton that figures out to be about $10.98. This is still cheaper that propane and fuel oil which is over $20 per MBTU.

The St Croix Aubourn stove is the best pure corn stove for all around performance and cost. It will not burn higher ash pellets but can burn wood pellets. Harmon, in my opinion, is an excellent pellet stove as is the Mt Vernon by Quadra fire. The Dell stove is higher price but offers automatic battery backup, all DC motor and can burn almost anything. It has three augers on the bottom of the firepot to remove ash. If I had 5 grand that would be my next stove.

The Amaizing stoves patents or rights were sold to multiple manufactures and some are better than others but as a whole have few good features in my book except that they have a large hopper that holds lots of fuel.

What is good about most biomass stoves (not pure wood pellet stoves) is that they have a method of removing ash. This will allow the burning of lower grade pellets that will become more popular in the future.

Russ

Where do you get your pellets for $175 a ton I pay $280 per ton IN MA

I live in MN and found pellets all year at Menards (similar to a Home Depot) at 3.48 per bag. They may offer a discount if you buy a ton - not sure - I usually buy 10 to 15 bags at a time. $280 seems high.

Russ

In the midwest pellets can be pre-ordered every fall in 1 ton amounts for 185-199 per ton. This is the way I get the best deal on pellets. 3 tons take up about all a 7 X 7 feet shed wants to hold. Keep them dry and you will be fine. Check the farm stores in your area!!!!!!!

Thanks I'll look into pre ordering

The good pellets are $5.75 a bag 40# and you can get the cheep stuff for $5.50 or so.

I store mine on my deck and there great, covered with a tarp they stay dry verry easy to carry and load. I burnt wood for years when I had free wood and a lot younger and liked the cutting and spliting, not anymore getting old.

The Swedes have invented a container that you can put into a regular log fireplace and burns pellets. It has baffles and stuff that allows for a good airflow and a very attractive fire. This avoids carrying in messy logs and is a lot cheaper than those fake wax logs. I don't have a name or site for the product but Bengt may be able to help. His email is bengt@afabinfo.com .

Russ

Get a total refund after using the stove all winter.

Purchase another one next fall. Repeat the process annually. Let everyone else pay for your stove. If that makes your world turn, go for it. It makes my head spin when someone states he has issues but doesn't define a single issue.

Dear Cornstoves,

Your comment is not appropriate to my forum question. I have purchased the stove from a respectable dealer and I am not complaining about the dealer nor am I complaining about Nesco. They have treated me with the utmost of service.

However: I have driven a Toyota Camry for 12 years and apart from normal maintanance I have had zero issues.

I accept maintanance as a normal aspect of any instrument. I do not accept 3 mayor issues in a 18 month period. I think the replacement of my stove by Nesco is very appropriate and so is my question.

Fuif

All

Because I have had several request to ID the issues I have had, here they are.

1. Auger bearing got stuck after 1 season

2. Parts of the stove did not have paint and the stove now has large rusted (ugly) areas.

3. The fuel dial response stopped working.

Fuif

I read the same book! Thats too much!

We have a full gas central heating (gas tank not piped) of course so we are not cold if it did not work.....but I would be most annoyed....

I feel that a corn or pellets stove, with only minor (vacuum, without disassembling anything) maintenance, should run at least 2 years without a problem.

I have a slightly simpler Pellets/corn model from Kalor Italy of 8.5 Kwatts on max, that does not heat water in any way, it was bought to heat our huge kitchen primarily and also to put a basic amount of warm air into the middle of our house of 135 Sq meters.

It does a fantastic job of it too.

It has taken probably €300 off our gas bill per year and when the house gets fully insulated on the outside ( in one months time) I expect to see a further large saving on heating bills in general of at least a conservative €200-300 per year. Hopefully even more. Our gas bill at the moment is around €600 per year and pellets cost about €100 per winter....

Our one and only problem was that we needed a new igniter after only 18 months of usage. I got sent two for free from the manufacturer and have also found the original version on the web from that manufacturer too, they only cost €35 each, so it will cost me €35 plus postage every 18 months (I still have one free spare at this moment!), big deal!!!

Andy,

I have burned my Quadra fire for 5 years and I bought it used. The previous owner had it for 2 years. My only break down was the heat exhanger fan. It was full of dust balls so it was my fault for not cleaning it. The ceramic tube they put into the firepot for proof of fire is the only weakness. They only last about one year when burning 4 to 5 tons per winter. Oh I did have to replace the door casket also this year. I hope it keeps up for awhile longer.

Russ

That is reasonable I feel.

But that other Guy with an Amaizablaze having fallouts of a week here and there is not acceptable I feel, especially as it was brand new.....

Some of the problems come from the fuel itself. Corn has 1.2% sulfur content that when combined with moisture turns into sulfuric acid which can cause rust. Wood pellets do not have this issue with sulfur so a blend of 4-6% moisture wood pellets lowers the moisture level of the exhaust gasses and the sulfuric acid level. Corn also has a way of gunking up onto stirators and the mixture of wood or biomass pellets will help eliminate that issue.

Russ

Hi Fuif

I was just researching cornstoves and found this tread. My friends had similar issues with the Amaizabaze stove. It's in the workshop doing nothing. So if you still can go for the refund.

Jason

I second that, just get rid of it completely and save yourself a lot of future problems, especially when the company goes "tits up" when all the customers complain!!!

If you still have it then, you will be in real trouble.....no parts and it doesn't work!!!

All

The new stove has been installed today and it runs like a champ. Thank you Amaizablaze and let's just call the first stove a Monday morning glitch.

Fuif

Just as a matter of curiosity, what fuels can the Amaizablaze burn? I was under the impression that it was to be re-fitted so that it could accept fuels other than corn. Fuels such as wood pellets. Is that correct or is that an unfounded rumour?

It is not warrantied to burn pellets, but does just fine with them, or a mix. At least my Cornflame 3000 did. It is similar to an Amaizablaze. Pellets are not cheap, but could be if made and distributed locally. The machinery is available, and could be a great business for an entrepreneur. Better be mechanically inclined though.

No its not good to burn wood pellets with this type of stove only corn. Wood pallets will ignite in the storage behind the stove.

Fuif.

BRAVO!!! I will forward this to the new owner of my Cornflame 3000.

Your insight into shell corn as a quality fuel is amazing. How does corn burn at 98.6% combustion efficiency? Is that 1.4% the aggravating clinker left in stoves? No stove can burn any fuel above 85% efficiency without a condensor that condenses water vapors from the exhaust. I have never seen a water line draining water off of the condensor on any corn stove.

Corn is safe - well corn dust has blown huge cement silos into rubble. Molds found in corn (aflotoxins) have sickened and killed animals and people. The rats and mice that can feast on corn can carry a multitude of diseases. Set out rat bait and you will smell the house up for months (and probably chase your wife away also).

No matter what anyone says, wood pellets are by far a superior solid fuel for thermal heat. There is many times less chlorine to form hydrochloric acid and no sulfur to create sulfuric acid. The ash content is 1/4 the amount and is soft. The wood ash is light enough to avoid using stirators and constant cleaning need for corn stoves.

Most importantly, shell corn is much more expensive than wood pellets. Even getting it from the grain bin at $5.00/bu corn that equals $175 per ton. With wood pellets having 15% more heat per lb you are really losing. Now throw in issues such as cobs or bolts plugging augers, wet corn that doesn't burn well and the ever present bees wings to mess up the house why would you want to burn food that can feed people?

When corn was almost free it was maybe worth the bother but now it may not be.

What is this about cresote and wood pellets? Wood pellets do not form cresote because there is not enough moisture in them to create cresote.

Premium wood pellets also burn cleaner than corn. You can look at the snow banks around houses that burn corn and compare with wood pellets.

Proof that wood pellet is superior -let people with biomass stoves burn wood pellets instead of corn for 2 weeks and they will never go back. I seen it many times and never the reverse.

Russ

Creosote is formed ONLY when certain products like wood (and probably wood pellets too) are incompletely burnt at too low a temperature with too little air, a condition that cannot happen in a proper pellets burner with forced draft!!

After over 18 months of burning pellets, there was only a very small amount of dead black soot that was completely dry in the pipe from the stove to the chimney behind my pellets stove.

People do not realize that a wood burner for example, without a controlled forced draft has smoke, you can see it (but not in pellets stoves, the pellets burn totally invisible or smoke free).

It is this visible smoke that contains the creosote AND those fine particles that can damage peoples lungs. As I have said somewhere else either in this blog or another, wood burners in Germany and Austria must soon have an expensive electrostatic smoke scrubber attached to their chimney because of this.......Pellet burners not.

In the US there are certain areas such as parts of Colorado, Idaho (I think) and California where communities are in valleys. The air quality is poor and all solid fuels are banned, even wood pellets. It would be better if they would allow solid fuels if the appliance can meet their standards of air quality. There are rumors that this ban could spread to other areas of the US also. The particulates that they are concerned about are not even visible to our naked eye.

What our bureaucrats fail to realize is that no fossil fuel can burn as clean as wood pellets (not sure about Natural Gas but fuel oil and coal or much worse). I wonder if most corn stoves burn as clean as wood pellets.

As far as creosote from wood pellets goes, if the moisture isn't there it can not form. But if one is burning cereal grains with wood then there maybe enough moisture to form some creosote. Not sure? My corn is always around 10% moisture and I always blend pellets so I have never observed any issues in my 5 years of experience.

Russ

I do not understand why you feel a need to have water/moisture in the fuel to form creosote. There is no need at all, just a low temperature incomplete burning will cause creosote to be leached out and it will condense somewhere in the chimney when it is cool enough. Then it will seep through brickwork into the house.

(Wet wood will burn badly, and that is the reason a lot of people think that extra moisture is needed to form creosote, as the conditions for complete combustion are simply not met. Creosote by the way is highly inflammable and does not contain any water at all!!)

This is basically how a refinery "Cracker" works in distilling out the various fuels at different levels and temperatures.

This is also why in Germany, they recommend a metal tube in the chimney for wood burning stoves.....

Any fuel is basically a form of hydrogen and when burnt, combines with oxygen to form water vapor. When burning petrol or diesel for example, more than a gallon of water is produced for every gallon of fuel burnt.

Even burning dry wood produces water vapor as a product of combustion.....the exact amounts I have no idea per Kilo of dry wood, I was not able to find anything detailed enough on the web...except this:-

Government Publication #452

Look for the following lines:-

Combustion always produces water vapor. Water vapor is not usually considered a pollutant, but it can act as one. It can result in high humidity and wet surfaces. These conditions encourage the growth of biological pollutants such as house dust mites, molds, and bacteria.

There is no need for the wood to be wet to allow water vapor to be produced as many erroneously think in this blog!! Its a chemical process between hydrogen & oxygen when burnt....first year chemistry?

Dry wood burns far more efficiently anyway......AND STILL MAKES WATER VAPOR IN THE CHIMNEY!!!

Thanks for the 'Chem test'!! I always hated that class.

These fuels we are talking about are carbon based fuels and the oxygen combines to form CO2 and CO and heat. I never thought about the H molocules floating around. When does it form into H2O - when the gasses are cooling? Geez, I hate chemistry!

Russ

Thats exactly what happens, so you are not as bad at chemistry as you seem to believe!!

As I mentioned earlier, creosote has no water in it per se, nor is any needed to make it (though it is possible that it gets polluted with water), it is just an inflammable chemical that if not burnt with the wood or coal in a correctly controlled environment, will escape unburnt as a vapor and distill out at some cooler point, probably somewhere in the chimney.

Unless of course the fire is so inefficient that it manages to waste a vast amount of heat to only go up the chimney, then it might escape to pollute the air around the house!!

Chimney fires are usually started by an excess of Creosote deposited there and then at some point an extra big fire heats it up above its flash point!!

Sadly this happens with many simple wood and coal burners......

Please click on this link to find out why Creosote is so dangerous and is now a mostly banned substance, it also causes birth defects in animals, but no tests have been made as to the possible effects in this manner it can be to humans. It is known to be carcinogenic though!!

Creosote

Creosote and/or soot will fall to the ground within 200' after it exits the chimney.

Its nice to know that the person causing the problems will get most of the downfall (hopefully) too......

Hello Andy Germany

Our 2 year old locally designed Ethos woodburner uses a coaxial metal chimney, which the inner flue passes the flue gases upwards, while preheating the incoming air to some 250 degrees Celsius, or more.

In the Operating Instructions, they do state the wood must be cut a maximum of 100mm diameter, and dry as you state in your above Post and elsewhere.

We did try "damp" (not fully dried out) wood, to check, and that non-dried wood did produce a small amount of visible smoke, and not nearly so much heat - the heat was used in drying the wood out, in the firebox, before it burned to warm us.

When properly dried wood is used, the firebox temperature in the Ethos woodstove is such that the smoke actually passes through the heat zone several times, before passing up the inner flue, to preheat incoming air.

Here we have requirements that open fires and coal burners are being phased out, with Government incentives to assist the changeover.

But incredibly, they are still subsidising diesel and LPG fired heaters, which IMHO is absolutely crazy.

Wood here is a renewable resource, and if carefully dried, and used intelligently, does not waste much of the heat content.

Wood Pellet fires are also subsidised, as a replacement for an older type of fire, but if there is a power outage, most except the woodfire go out, because of electricity requirements for auger motors, controls for gas or diesel.

We decided for the woodfire, firstly because of the non-electric requirement, and because although the Pellet fire is slightly more efficient, the fuel pellets are obtained from a single source.

We note the pellet price has increased since that pellet maker was purchased by the State Coal Corporation, who expect to make huge profits from the Pellet Fire installation, and have all those captive customers for the pellet fuel too.

As advised in a previous Topic, my firewood is riverbed driftwood, mostly quite dry when collected, which costs a small amount of diesel fuel, plus chainsaw operation to collect and use.

I would use an axe, instead of the chainsaw, to cut the wood into lengths, but I am not as young and fit as I used to be, mind you, I still split it, when it arrives at our home.

Kind Regards....

In a study here, it has been shown that even the best wood burners are still "dirty" and they will have to be retrofitted with an electrostatic smoke scrubber withing the next 2 years.....at cost to the owner. Then they will be even cleaner than a correctly set up pellets stove.

A correctly set up pellets stove is about 90% better than a good wood burner......

If you read around the web, it would appear that most/some responsible governments are starting to realize that this does need addressing. Canada is getting active as are many European countries....there are several US Government papers on the subject.

Ultra fine particles and other unburnt chemicals are the problems.....smoke is the visible sign of trillions of ultra fine particles. I only found that out myself recently too.

Any house issuing smoke will be easily detected as NOT having the equipment, also as the equipment goes on the chimney outside the house, not having one will be fairly obvious.

Personal health should be foremost in everyone's mind.....and for neighbors within 200'...

I saw a graph a year ago on the enternet stating that one traditional wood stove produced more pollunants than 56 wood pellet stoves. Quite a large reduction. Are there any products or plans or needs to lower pollutants from wood pellet stoves?

Is 200' far enough away to limit exposures to fine particulates?

I would say 200' is not far enough away, especially if the wind is strong and in your direction!!

As far as I can tell, this knowledge about micro particles is only fairly recent, in the last 10 years of so. Or does anyone know better?

The problems with regard to Creosote are well known, but full testing with humans has never taken place. Wikipedia has a good amount of infos if required, and they say it is definitely Carcinogenic.....

Most soot will fall within the first 50', wind may carry upwards of 200', recognize the falling is due the material has cooled and becomes heavier than air as it has gathered to itself other matter.

I am a firm believer that pellets are a good way to go, but that they are , so far, a lot more expensive than burning wood. Pellets should become very reasonable in price when there are more manufacturers. Ideally a small entrepreneur should be able to set up a plant on a farm or woodlot. New appropriately scaled systems are in the works.

Another technology is briquette making, but I imagine the particulates would be as high as wood burning. Does a catalytic equipped stove still have high particulates? Do you have any references for the wood stove exhaust scrubber you mentioned earlier?

We are producing a pelletizer for want of a better term; designed for individual usage with the suggestion that rural or suburban users plant fast growing hybrid trees as their pellet farm.

bwire, What is the status of the pelletizer project? i know several people that would like to purchase a full order of individual pelletizers. There is no competition for an individual home-sized pelletizer that will pelletize paper, garbage, table scraps, waste, grass clippings, wood, leaves, limbs, hay or anything except plastic, dirt, water, and metal.

Click on this link and read pages 5 & 6. That should answer your questions I feel:-

Electrostatic Chimney Scrubber.

I would also like to point out that I already mentioned this in an earlier post!

As that earlier post from me was also logged as a "Good Post", you have not even taken the time to read all of those (8 or 9 from various people!!)

May I suggest that you read everything though before posting in the future?

Not reading through a Blog fully, before jumping in with questions etc. can cause annoyance to others, please be aware of that important point!!!

I keep taking the tablets!!!

Have a good day.

The buletin has reference to combustion effluents from wood, kerosene, and gas. Each effluent and the combustion thereof is unique and different from corn combustion.

Well Cornstove man, you throw a lot of wind out there but don't back up much of your talk with little more than more talk. If you put your hand on the backside of your exhaust pipe leading out of your corn stove you will feel heat coming out and going up the chimney. That is losing heat not delivered to the home owner. Yes 98% of the kernel burns but not all the heat goes into the house. 25-50% goes up the stack on normal corn stoves.

As far as fine particulates, my stove produces less that 1 gram per hour. What does the corn stove produce?

I am with you Russ and I am just so glad my car did not come with this much instructions on each part that is in the car. And I am pretty sure that even if the only thing I do is change the oil every 5000 miles it will run for at least 5 year. Granted its not good but I am pretty sure the car would not leave me hanging.

If you burned corn you wouldn't need to change oil; it wouldn't get dirty (:

Lubricity can go out to 50,000+ miles.

Cornstoves don't have stacks nor chimneys. Wood pellet stoves may or may not, depending on the stove.

Do you advocate wood pellets or wood pellet stoves? We would like some figures and locations. How much does it cost per year to heat 2000 sq ft with wood pellets? What is the cost of the wood pellets? What is the electric bill before and after switching to wood pellets? Also the gas or oil bill for heating supplement?

Previous statements indicate you heat 2000 sq ft with about a ton of wood pellets per season. Correct? During the 150 day/yr heating season, according to your figures, you collect 20 pounds ash per season from the ton of wood pellets or about 1% ash. That is pretty good for wood pellets. What kind of wood pellet stove do you sell? Lots of people are interested in one of those stoves, or is it the pellets, if you can verify previous claims stack up to be true.

None of the heat goes up the stack on a corn stove. Unfortunately, too much heat does exit the exhaust. Corn stove heating efficiency is model specific. Corn stove combustion efficiency is 98.6% efficient according to Va Tech EPA certified testing results. The limit on stove design efficiency, no matter the fuel, is location specific. A common trait of all fuels limits design efficiency. Liquid condensation in the exhaust indicates overdesign that must be rectified location specific.

Careful just when you've built steam he'll inject water...

Cornstoves,

On your remark;

"The paint disorders indicate either the stove was a reject, return, or rebuilt"

Are you saying that the dealer sold me a used stove?

Secondly: you did not address the fuel dial issue. My dealer says its the timeblock that went south. Please advice on how to prevent this failure.

Thirdly: as you can read in the follow-ups of this forum it's mostly agreed that the issues should not have occurred in this short period. And the to-do list (which I of course will follow) seem extensive for the simplicety of the stove.

Don't get me wrong I definitely hope that Amaizablaze will have a bright future! However I fear that unless the quality is number 1 on the radar of it's management this company will follow the car industry (Detroit) and will fall in the hand of either the Japanese or the Chinese manufacturers.

Fuif

Corrosionx treatment of the auger will prevent failure of the control switch and the auger.

Corrosionx treatment of the corn chute and divider pen will help the corn slide faster and prevent stoppage in the corn chute.

Corrosionx treatment of the burner will enhance combustion air flow and prevent the black particulate from forming and collecting or depositing outside the exhaust. If there is black soot, the air flow is not properly adjusted. You can not get too much combustion air flow in a corn stove. No way. Impossible. Give it all the air you can.

Obviously I am a casual observer with no specific information. If I took delivery on a brand spanking new car that had repaint repair, I would return the car for the new one I bought.

I do not work for Amaizablaze nor have any reason to protect corn stoves just because I use the cornstoves handle. It was my opinion freely offered at no cost and zero benefit. The nameplate data on any product tells the whole history with dates and model numbers. The questioneer has not been thorough enough nor forthcoming with specific information. The model number or mfg date has not been specified. There is no way to intelligently comment on the condition, style, features, or efficiency of any product without specific knowledge of the model number and year of mfg. Three corn stoves of various model numbers could all burn the same amount of corn and produce varying BTU's heat depending on model number. There is more to efficiency other than combustion efficiency. Two identical stoves could have different cleanliness concerns or combustion problems. The stoves must be leveled and the divider pen properly adjusted. Do not attempt this at home by yourself. Let the dealer do it. If he does not do it for free, find another dealer.

There are over 350 different types of corn stoves. About half of them copied the NESCO Amaizablaze patent. None of them were perfect copies. I can not be sure the stove in question was even purchased from Amaizablaze. It may be built in Asheville, North Carolina, Bean Station, Surgoinsville, China, Chattanooga, Michigan. Many of those copied the Amaizablaze name and model numbers. Some were recalled for using the UL nameplate in a factory that was not UL approved. Although one feels his stove is "just like it", for certain, no two corn stoves are alike from the same factory. Different factories turn out corn stoves of various names that can hardly be run by a retired engineer with full time attention. Most use the word "flame" or "blaze" in conjunction with the word corn, heat, or burn.

Any failure of any product should occur within two weeks of operation. New stuff sucks. A $3 switch can disable a $3000 product and make the whole thing go south. Once the christening period is complete, a good corn stove should last a lifetime with minimum care. One can always MAKE something fail. Failure to properly operate or maintain will make any product fail.

You can purchase a whole case of corrosionx from www.corrosionx.com Or you can contact one of the listed dealers.

Anyone using a corn stove that is lubricated with graphite or oil is nuts!!! The auger will freeze. Just a matter of time. Corrosionx will free up a frozen corn auger and make it run like new. Without corrosionx, during the off season, the auger will freeze and soon fail. Auger failure causes the control switch to fail.

The probable reason the corn feed switch failed resulted because the auger failed. Excuse my assumption. When a motor freezes and fails from excessive load, the controls will also fail from electrical overload. The switch you believe bad is only bad at one spot that just happened to be the spot of the setting at the time of failure. Unfortunately, failure may have occurred repeatedly at various settings rendering the switch bad at an equal number of settings. When the corn hopper gets low, the auger gets hot, expands, and freezes. Corrosionx will not prevent the overheat but will prevent overload and freezing.

Another method to prevent auger failure is to install the induced draft fan kit. Fortunately for Minnessota, the corn stove will burn wood pellets. Why anyone would stoop that low is a big question to me. Why run regular fuel in a high test engine if high test cost less than regular? But if one just is bent double on burning wood pellets, the induced draft fan should be installed on the corn stove first. Otherwise, keep the hopper topped off and do not let the hopper run low.

Any corn stove will burn wood pellets.

No pellet stove will burn corn.

Either will burn up to a 50/50 mix of wood pellets and corn. But why would anyone go there?