Thanks bjp, after I got home and looked at it, it was probably a combination of larger chunks not properly dried and a pretty dirty reaction chamber. Your right in the fact that its not a staged fan, but the addition of air that they are calling low, medium, high. I misspoke.
Just to clarify, after I loaded it at 4:30 am, the unit went into medium (water temp 178) and ran there until 6:23 (water temp 150). So over the time of 2 hrs 50 min it was in medium and lost 28 degrees. Then it switched to low mode at 6:23 am until 11:15 am. At which point my water temp dropped from 150 to 118 degrees, and then I got alarms. So, it was in low mode for 4 hours 40 min or so. The 7 hrs I mentioned was a combination of medium and low modes.
My wonder yesterday was why it went from medium to low mode after I loaded it, and the temp was dropping. I would think if it was trying to heat, and it was loosing ground, it would try harder, not let up. I was confused by that. Conventional wisdom would tell me that if it's loosing ground in medium mode, kick it up to high. I looked threw the manual last night, and it's true that it's the reaction chamber temp that dictates how much air is introduced, when stepping up from low threw high.
From the manual: In Demand Mode with the primary air actuator open, when the combustion temperature reaches 550˚F, the secondary air actuator will start to open and the Secondary status LED will be white. The secondary air actuator will continue to open more as the combustion temperature rises.
It's my first year with a boiler of any kind. I didn't know I was going to get it until early August or so last summer. It was installed October. I didn't have much time to cut and dry wood. I burn a fireplace inside, so I had some wood. I had about 3 cord split and stacked. I had another 4 cord bucked up and in a pile waiting to be split. Once I found out I was getting the boiler, I started splitting and stacking as fast as I could. The long and the short of it is, I've been burning a combination of wood what is anywhere between 23% and 40% moisture. My Idle pulse time is set at 15 min and my minimum idle pulse duration is at 50 min because of this. Regardless, I've had it go out on my multiple times this year. I'm chalking it up to a large learning curve.
Thanks for taking the time to answer. There is so much info in this forum. I wish I had time to look threw all of it.
Bourbon