E1 error code on a pellet heater is triggered when the fire in the burn pot goes out. If this has happened to you then most likely you’ve found your pellet heater has switched itself off, is no longer heating and the E1 error message is displayed on the screen. You may have also noticed your pellet heater was running and suddenly just shut down and stopped heating. An E1 error is caused by not enough pellets being fed into the burn pot to keep the fire going. This is usually caused by the hopper being empty or long pellets which is why wood pellet length is important and can be a problem.
What to Do if You Experience E1 Error Code
First, clear the code on your pellet heater. With the heater switched off, press and hold the thumbs up button for three or so seconds. The pellet heater should beep and the code will be cleared from the display. If this doesn’t work, you may need to turn the pellet heater off at the wall, wait 10 seconds and then switch it back on. With the code cleared you can restart your pellet heater again but you may encounter the problem again, so it’s best to troubleshoot and try to find out why your heater experienced the error. It’s important to fix this error because the heater isn’t burning properly and may suffer from excessive clinkers.
What Causes E1 Error Code
The main reasons the fire goes out in the burn pot is because the hopper is empty or not enough pellets are being fed into it to keep the fire going. First, check your hopper. It’s easy to forget to refill the hopper, especially in the middle of winter when your heater may be running on high heat. You may see there are some pellets in the hopper but look at the auger and where it draws pellets in from. A hopper that is almost empty or low on pellets may not have enough pellets near the auger to feed into the burn pot. If your hopper is empty just refill it and your E1 code problem should be fixed.
If your hopper isn’t empty then you will need to adjust the feed rate on your heater. Pellet heaters have a feed rate which determines how often the auger turns and thus how many pellets are dropped into the burn pot. More pellets equals a bigger fire and fewer pellets a smaller fire. Not enough pellets may be fed into the burn pot when the heater is running on low and the pellets are too long. Long pellets move slower than normal through the auger and this is how the fire in the burn pot can go out and E1 code occurs.
How to Fix E1 Error Occurring
E1 error code on a pellet heater is caused by not enough pellets being fed into the burn pot to keep the fire going. There are a few ways to fix this. First, you can increase the feed rate of your pellet heater. If you have access to the feed rate settings, start with P4 and look at decreasing the time the auger is off or not turning. By decreasing the off time the auger will turn more frequently and drop more pellets in the burn pot, hopefully keeping the fire going. How much you reduce the off number by will depend. So start small and see if that stops the fire going out and E1 code error being triggered.
If you can’t or don’t want to change the feed rate settings on your pellet heater, then the other thing you can try to stop E1 error occurring is mixing long pellets which are causing the problem with shorter ones. By mixing long and short pellets, this will decrease the overall average length of the pellets being burnt and increase the amount of pellets fed into the burn pot, hopefully preventing the fire from going out. You will have to experiment until you find the right mix of long and normal length pellets to keep the fire going. If your long pellets are very long, then you may need to mix more short pellets to balance the lengths out.
E1 Error Code Summary
E1 error on a pellet heater is caused by the feed rate being incorrect for the length of pellets you are burning. Changing the feed rate of your heater without understanding what impact it may have can cause problems if not done correctly. If the feed rate was not setup correctly (maybe you bought it second hand and someone has changed the settings) or the pellets you burn are all longer than normal, maybe you bought a pallet and have 50+ bags to burn with no short pellets to mix in, then contact your retailer for support. They will be able to tune your pellet heater to burn the length of pellets you have and fix the E1 error problem.
The PFTas pellet heater manual will provide some brief and basic information about Error codes.
