How many square feet will the Upland 207 Pellet Stove heat?

Using the industry norms as an estimate, the UP207P will comfortably heat 1200 to 1500 square feet. Besides heating that much space to comfortable level, it will contribute to the rest of the house. Customers frequently reporting heating much larger areas.

That said, the BTU rating of 30,000 is a tested value. The value given for the square footage that the stove will heat is only a rough rule of thumb. Factors affecting the area that can be comfortably heated include climate, insulation factors, and construction of the home.

Wood stoves and pellet stoves are space heaters. That basically means that all of the heat is emitted directly into the room in which the stove is located. Unless the immediate living space that you wish to heat is massive, the UP207P has the potential to make much more heat than you can effectively circulate throughout the house.  A loud high capacity blower built into a stove will not circulate warm throughout your home.  Most Upland 207 Pellet Stove owners run the stove on about one-half heat output or less. The digital controller has 16 heat levels. For much of the winter the setting may be between 6 and 12.

30,000 BTU’s equals about 8,800 watts.  That would be seven of the maximum sized typical electric heaters that may be plugged into a 110 v wall receptacle. ( Yes, that is seven of those magic box heaters advertized on TV.) So, it may be more helpful to try to envision if this many electric heaters would make you comfortable in the immediate space where you intend to locate the stove.

For the most rewarding operation, we suggest that you make the room with the stove comfortable and leave the thermostat at the far end of the house at a cooler comfortable level. This will make your family comfortable while benefitting from the efficiency of a pellet stove. You will find that your heating system will run far less as it just cycles on once in a while to balance out the heat throughout the house. In the meantime, the Upland 207 Pellet Stove will carry the bulk of the load while also providing a nice ambiance.

2.

How often to I have to take out the ashes or clean the Upland 207 Pellet Stove?

As a general rule plan on letting the stove run out of pellets and cool overnight once every four to six weeks. The actual maintenance cleaning takes about 20 minutes. It will then take about 25 minutes for the cast-iron body to heat up sufficiently to resume automatic operation.

Ashes - A common mistake of new owners is to rake and clean out the ashes too often. Using quality pellets, one only needs to lightly rake the ashes once every few days. The Upland has sufficient ash storage that the stove can run for a month without removing ashes.

This is an Upland 207 Pellet Stove advantage. Enjoy it. You may let the ashes accumulate until the stove is filled up to the door threshold. You may also remove a few scoops of ashes whenever you wish as long as you maintain your "volcano".

Always dispose of your ashes in a metal container stored outside the house.  After using your shop vac to clean out your stove, clean it out and store it outside.  An ember can linger in the plastic hose or in the filter. 

Burn Pot -  The auger resistance lever will provide the best indication as when to schedule a cleaning of the burn pot and feed elbow. Once the stove is up and running the resistance drops to the point that you can push down the lever easily with your thumb. When the resistance builds to the point that it is difficult to push the lever it is time to clean. You can usually run for a least a month between cleanings.

Window -  Some fly ash will collect on the 1400 F rated glass-ceramic window. This may be wiped off using a cotton cloth at any time while the stove is running. Over the course of weeks a thin transparent film of creosote will build up giving the window a bit of a tint. It is usually insufficient to warrant cleaning except when you do your maintenance cleaning of the burn pot.

The front door lifts off so that it can be placed horizontally on a newspaper. Spray the window with glass cleaner and allow it to soak while cleaning the burn pot. Oven cleaner may be used, but follow up with normal glass cleaner.

3.

How do I keep my auger feeding smoothly?

The Upland 207 Pellet Stove allows you to monitor the auger resistance and thus know how hard the gear motor is working. This helps you to judge when to clean the burn pot. With time, it will also help you judge pellet quality and your settings to minimize maintenance.

Auger jams are generally caused by sawdust, creosote, dense ash, and really bad pellets. 

Sawdust - The bottom feed design allows the Upland 207 Pellet Stove to handle more sawdust than most pellet stoves. Many pellet stoves have a top feed design that requires the auger to lift the pellets to the chute before they drop into the burn pot. It is difficult to pump saw dust upward. It tends to fall back down and collect at the bottom of the auger feed until it jams things up. The UP207P auger design minimizes this problem.

Creosote is going to be created by any biomass heater. The better the combustion the less creosote produced. Better quality pellets obviously burn cleaner. To further decrease the collection of creosote, the Upland 207 Pellet Stove uniquely burns the pellets within a fresh bed of feeding pellets. Most of the creosote producing products of combustion are kept away from the cast-iron burn pot. With good pellets and proper operation the Upland 207 Pellet Stove can generally go for a month or more before a maintenance cleaning of the burn pot and feed elbow.

Dense ash is generated by excessive poking in the burn pot or if the fire is allowed burn too low into the burn pot. Too much combustion air reduces the efficiency, allows ash and creosote to collect at the bottom of feed elbow. The combustion air damper sets the air to the natural draft of the stove. Once set, the Digital Controller will adjust the combustion air to match the desired heat output and keep the combustion in the proper region of the burn pot. This allows the ashes to be pushed out the burn pot by solid pellets feeding in from below.

Quality Pellets are consistent in their size and hardness. You should not be able to crush pellets with your fingers. Crumbled pellets do not burn very well. Punky pellets may turn into mush as they are pushed towards the burn pot. This creates lots of resistance and may ultimately jam the auger. Beware of pellets that may be damp or have gotten wet.  Burn at least four bags before commiting to a ton.

Overly long or large pellets may bridge in the hopper and stop feeding. This would be indicated by the gear motor running with no resistance and probably hanging downward. The fire will start to recede down into the burn pot. A prod with a yard stick down through pellets will collapse the bridge. You may rotate the auger bushing 180 degrees and pull it out ½" to open the throat to help feed the longer pellets. However, you should go back to the original position as soon as you can.

4.

How do know if I have set the nozzle and air control properly?

Combustion Air Nozzle -

The nozzle is the primary feeder of combustion air. The downward spout of the nozzle should be centered, left and right, and front and back over the burn pot. Do not worry about the initial placement. You can reposition the nozzle using the ash rack while the stove is burning.

Looking from the front try to make the spout point straight downward. Looking through the side door, again center over the burn pot. You should be able to see one of the ¼" spreader holes in the side of the nozzle. The spreader hole should be about ½" outside the bushing.

Once the stove is up and running, the nozzle positioning can be checked by observing the location of the super hot zone within the burn pot. If charcoal is building up more on one side than others, direct the nozzle a little more towards the charcoal.

Air Control -

The air control allows manual adjustment for variances in chimney systems, weather conditions, and fuel quality. Once it is set, you should not need to adjust it as long as the environment stays basically statis quo. You do not need to re-adjust the combustion air valve when changing the heat level. The combustion air fan adjusts its flow to match changes in the HEAT LEVEL.

Avoid the tendency to run with too much combustion air. Too much air reduces the efficiency. More importantly, too much air causes the burn to take place too low in the burn pot resulting in a quicker build up of creosote in the feed elbow. The cavity created in the burn pot by the combustion air should be no more than 1" deep. There will generally be a ½" to ¾" dark band of burning charcoal around the inside circumference of the burn pot.

The super hot zone of the burn pot is about 1500 deg. F. As the pellets pass through this zone, most of the gaseous combustibles are driven off leaving pellet shaped charcoal. These gases produce the flames.  Much of the charcoal is also burned within the burn pot producing the super hot zone. Some charcoal also tumbles out of the burn pot and continues to burn in a pile that builds up around the outside of the burn pot.  If left undisturbed, all of the charcoal will burn up.  A properly established combustion system will resemble a volcano.

5.

I scuffed my hopper and chipped the porcelain on my stove. Can I repair it?

Yes, you may repair and maintain the beauty of your stove.

The porcelain enamel finish on the upland 207 Pellet Stove is a colored vitreous (glass) enamel that is fused to the cast-iron at 1200 deg. F.  It will maintain its color and luster for the life of the stove.  However, because it is glass it may chip if hit with a hard or sharp object.

No paint can maintain its color and gloss to temperatures as high as can porcelain. Luckily, in recent years Forrest Paint has developed a 54H Gloss High Temperature Paint specifically for this application. The paint can withstand the temperatures achieved on the body of the Upland 207 Pellet Stove and maintain much of its gloss. A small bottle of this paint in a matching color is included in each stove.

The paint may be applied to a warm stove, but the temperature of the section to be painted should be below the boiling temperature (200 deg. F.) to achieve a smooth finish. The area should be built up with multiple thin coats. You cannot fill in the thickness of the enamel, but you can smooth the transition. Better results are obtained if the stove is brought up to operation temperature between coats. Patience pays off.

During the curing process there are changes in the paint causing it to give off an odor and some visible smoke. The fumes are non-toxic, but can be unpleasant. Ventilate and vacate the room to avoid discomfort. Once the curing is complete there will be no odor or smoke.

The painted portions of the Upland 207 Pellet Stove use Forrest’s Stove Bright® High Temperature Paint in Satin Black. You may use this for touching up your stove or painting your pellet vent pipe.

For more information go to www.stovebright.com or call at 1-800-537-7201.

6.

How do I maintain or repair the stove cement?

Stove cement or high temperature mortar does not hold a cast-iron stove together. It is not a glue. Its purpose is to provide a high temperature seal between two or more cast-iron pieces. If functions more like a gasket. But unlike a gasket, it is not permeable and can adapt to a greater variety of shapes and surfaces.

The mortar that is actually doing the work is not visible, because it is locked in between two pieces of cast-iron that are held together by bolts or tie-rods. Each cast-iron body part of your stove is designed with a section that encapsulates the mortar to make a seal and hold the cement in place.

To ensure that each seal gets a sufficient amount of the mortar, more paste is applied to each piece than is actually needed. When the pieces are assembled and the bolts are tightened, the excess oozes out of the joint. Inspection to check that all joints have paste oozing out ensures that all the joints are sealed. (The factory also does a fog test on the finished stoves.)

The excess cement is then wiped away. Some of the excess cement paste may still be seen on the inside of the firebox. However, care is taken to remove as much of the excess cement paste from the outside of the stove as possible. The mortar must be washed away before it dries. A small fillet of cement remains where ever two castings are jointed.

Sometimes after the cement fillet on the outside of the stove dries and hardens, it will develop some cracks. Thermal expansion, growth and shrinkage of the cast-iron do to changing temperatures, may contribute to cracks or chips in the non-encapsulated mortar fillet. This fillet has no functional purpose. You may leave the stove as it is or re-apply a fillet for cosmetic purposes.

It is a good ideal to run the stove for a while and then determine where fillets of stove cement should be applied.

Rutland Products makes a Fireplace Mortar available in black, grey, and buff.   Buff is the closest color to that used on the Upland 207 Pellet Stove.

                    Click for a PDF of Mortar Fillet Repair Instructions

7.

Does the Upland 207 Pellet Stove have an EPA rating or label?

The Upland 207 Pellet Stove is exempt from EPA emission standards such as those that apply to wood stoves.  The EPA has not set a standard nor have they approved a test model for pellet stove emissions testing.

This is because it has been found that virtually all pellet burning technology is clean burning.  The differences between various manufacturers and designs are overall efficiency, durability, ease of operation, esthetics, etc. 

Pellet stoves as a whole are encouraged by the EPA.  No single manufacturer or model is specifically approved or endorced by the EPA. 

You may download more information from the Enviromental Protection Agency's web site by clicking the following links: