Our pellet stove started having issues a week ago.
The first symptom was a very slight, almost unnoticeable smoke smell in the room – really faint.
Then the thermostat began showing incorrectly high temperatures for the room – instead of, say, 65 degrees F it showed 80 degrees F.
We saw that a small metal panel on the back had opened up a bit due to a screw popping out, leaking heat near the stove’s external temperature sensor, which is on the back of the stove. Remounted the panel and the temperature returned to normal values.
Then we noticed the flame wasn’t correct – the “flame guide” had become deformed. Upon removal, the steel flame guide literally broke apart in our hands. Guess 15 years of use and high heat had an effect!
We replaced that. But upon restart we now received a message “Warning Door Open”. At this point, we turned to AI assisted search for ideas, which pointed to a leaking door gasket seal.
A test with a sheet of paper showed that the door gasket was no longer sealing. So we replaced the gasket.
Started it up and a little bit later, “Warning Door Open”.
Giving an AI chat bot the stove name and model, and a description of the problem, the AI immediately found the solution.
The stove uses an internal pressure sensor to indicate if there is a leak around the door – which would cause pressure to be too low – or gives the same error message when the pressure is too high because the flue pipe is backed up with ash.
When the flame guide was cracking, combustion was poor and the stove produced excess ash that clogged up the flue pipe, leading to higher pressure inside the stove. Cleaning the flue pipe solved the problem.
The stove is now working again – and AI assisted search proved very helpful.
