Does Your Pellet Stove Mysteriously Shut Off?

If you are wondering why your pellet stove occasionally goes out when it is otherwise working fine, you might be having the same problem I was having. At the bottom of the bag of pellets is a small amount of sawdust. If this sawdust is dumped into the hopper, it can cause the fire to go out "mysteriously".

How to Fix the Problem
Position a strainer or colander over a garbage can. You'll need a colander/strainer with the right size holes. Onieda makes one that works well (#50077). It has extending arms allowing it to fit nicely over a garbage can.

After dumping almost all the pellets from the bag into the pellet stove hopper, dump what is left in the bottom of the bag (approximately 1/10th of the bag) into a colander/strainer that is on top of the garbage can.

Shake the colander back and forth over the garbage to get rid of all the minute particles that can snuff out the fire. You can now dump those pellets into the hopper. (I keep a 5-gallon bucket next to the garbage in my garage to dump the pellets back into.)
The pellets are now ready to be dumped into the pellet stove hopper.