Don't Buy a Harman pellet stove. I Have a Harman and it gives great heat. But it is very unreliable. My Harman is four years old and I've replaced two control boards. Harman did cover the cost of the boards that were bad. But on both I had to wait to get them. So I paid cash out of pocket to have a spare. Yes, got a surge protector from my dealer when I bought the stove. And you should too. It gets better!!! As I write this my stove has been down for two weeks. Sat, Dec.30 It needs an Exhaust fan. Easy enough. I take the old one out, call my dealer he says come on down. 30 miles one way. "Sorry, after all I don't have that part, IÂll order it call me in about a week." Come on, itÂs winter in Maine. I said order it, I had no choice. One week goes by and stills no part. Lucky that week was warmer than usual. But this week is cold I need that part. Fri., Jan. 12 I call the dealer and he says I got your part yesterday. "I'll be right down", I say. I get there and he open his shipment up and no fan. 60 miles round trip. 120 miles of driving still no part. I have no idea when I'll get it. Wait!!! Still better news. Sat. Jan. 13 the pipes froze and are now leaking. Not directly HarmanÂs fault but it would not have happened if the stove was working. But my bad for relying on the Harman for the only source of heat in that area. Stop whining. Ok I was whining a little bit. So how about: Facts: 1. Harman wonÂt sell parts direct. You try before you buy at www.harmanstoves.com 2. I could not find an efficient way to contact the Harman company directly with my problem on their web site. It is almost clear they don't want to be bothered. Again, I suggest you try before you drop a few thousand on one of their stoves. In their Comments section about their website, I did recommend that they offer parts online with overnight shipping. Save a lot of driving around, which is more green friendly. I doubt they will take my advice. It doesn't really matter whether they do or not. In my opinion they make junk any way As Jim Cramer would sayÂÂ.. don't buy! don't buy! don't buy!!!!

Jim, I believe one of the false assumptions are the efficiency ratings of pellets stoves. They are not actually 84-87% efficient. (I have had several and love them, but those figures are manipulated- I will expand later). One of my biggest gripes with the industry is the rating of the stoves heating capacity using the btu input, in other words how many pounds of pellets it can burn in an hour multiplied by a generic (who knows what the manufactures use from company to company) btu per pound of pellet equals the btu rating of the stove. Most pellets stoves heat exchange efficiencies are in 45%-65% neighborhood, the dell point Europa is a notable exception that is into the +90%, and some of the real worst are even less than 45%. So how do the manufactures come up with 84-87% efficiency ? Well it is called an "overall efficiency" rating which includes; combustion efficiency, and some times electrical efficiency. For instance take a stove with 50% heat exchange efficiency, 99% combustion efficiency, and 99% electrical efficiency you would have an overall efficiency rating 83%. If that same stove was rated at 30,000 btu's you would only realize 15,000 worth of heat when turned all the way up. So I have owned 4 stoves this season of a quest for the most efficient, and my Harman advance seems to be the best so far, it has an extra heat exchanger on the back wall of the unit and even at full tilt the exhaust pipe is only at about 170 degrees, and the volume of air exiting the exhaust is very low, fair less then the heat exchanger. Mulesrider, It sounds sound like your Harman is having an efficiency issue, I think your dealer led you astray to say 1.5- 2 tons. I live in central PA and I will use about 3 tons this season for a pretty tight 1200 square foot house @ 73 in the living room 68 in the bedrooms. On an average cold day I will use about 50lbs a day. A few nights a it went down to 2 degrees with a 30mph wind and I used about 50lbs in 12 hours through the night, but it held the temp perfectly. If you have a Harman p38 you do not have a room temp sensor probe, however you do have you do have and exhaust temp probe, and from two of your comments it sound like that may be malfunctioning. 1.-The ash pan may not hold an entire ton worth of ash but it should be close, the fact that you say it is not even close makes me think the stove is over feeding, or not fulling burning the fuel. 2. The amount of fuel you are using for a 1400 square foot house seems really high unless you are trying to heat the house from the basement. What ever your issue is it sounds it is combustion related. Harman dealers are like any other dealer network, there are good ones and bad ones. The fact that the dealer led you to believe that you could heat a 1400 square foot house all season on 1.5 tons leads me to believe either they don't know their product, or they lied. Either way they don't seem like a great dealer. The p38 is a great stove, in fact at about $1700 new you could not find a better stove at the price point IMO. Sounds like yours need a repair. Savings, I had electric base-board heat, my savings (in reality not theory based on last year) will be about $600, but I am keeping my house at 74 degrees rather than 67 (new born in the house). If I tried to keep my house at 74 with electric I would guess my savings to be closer to $1000, and that is not counting the 20% electric rate increase this year, that would get my potential savings closer to $1200. Further, I have bought my pellets at winter prices ($215 ton), I will pre-buy this year for about $165/ton, putting my total savings over $1300/season.

My Harmon P68 is a piece of junk! My first stove was an Englander, a cheap pellet stove purchased at Home Depot. The Englander worked great. My Dad got one after seeing mine, his works great. After using the Englander I "upgraded" to a Harmon P68, that was a mistake. I saved up $3500, got rid of the Englander, ordered the Harmon P68 in Dec 2010, installed it in Jan 2011. After installation the feed motor needed replacing. So I couldn't use the stove for a week. Harmon sent the wrong part so I had to wait an additional week. The Dealer/installer was apologetic and not happy. I was starting to regret this stove swap. The stove worked great after that. Fast forward to Feb 2012. The blower motor is making a thunking noise and occasionally screeches like a train whistle. The warranty has expired. Remember, I ordered it in Dec it was installed in Jan and it didn't start working until 2 weeks after installation. But it's a week and a half since its first firing and Harmon doesn't want to fix it. The Dealer/Installer is an older guy that's been selling and installing stoves for 25 years. He's seems as upset about this as I am. He told me Harmon used to back their stoves with a longer warranty but another company purchased the name and now it's just 2 years. He also said he used to be proud of the Harmon stoves because they used to be built better. He said the original stoves used to go 5 years or longer before needing motors replaced. He told me that he's done with Harmon. Probably feels a little guilty that he didn't tell me this when I purchased my junk Harmon. So I'm going to replace my blower motor, the 2nd stove motor in 2 years. And I'm going to start saving up for a new stove. Not sure which brand but it won't be a Harmon. If you want to pay an extra $1000-$1500 for a name on a stove that might or might not work out of the box. That'll probably need expensive repairs and replacement parts soon after the warranty expires. Go ahead and buy the unreliable Harmon P68! It looks nice but it won't heat your house.

Same here. I took a lot of kidding about my survivalist mentality until the person in question found out what it's like to go a week without electric. Or was snowbound for the first time. Three days of supplies is a joke and I agree. Three weeks is more like it, minimum. I grow most of my own food, and am big into canning and preserving. In wintertime, I always keep rations for the chickens stocked up so they'll never starve to death if I can't get out. We could eat for six months without ever going to a store. LOL. Even though we have main gas backup, we have about a month's supply of seasoned firewood set back too. DH never understood why I make him trim up the downed trees and stack it, and I hope he never has to find out.