Castle other grills or stoves

1 report to CPSC, the latest made Mar 7, 2024. A report isn’t a recall.

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At a glance

From SaferProducts.gov, released Oct 25, 2026.

1report to CPSC
Mar 7, 2024the latest report was made
Mar 7, 2024the earliest
1with the company’s comments

Brand: Castle
Maker: ARDISAM INCMakers, importers or sellers, as the reports name them
Product: Other grills or stovesCPSC’s product type: Other Grills or Stoves (code 3233), in Yard & Garden: Grills & Accessories

By month

1 report from April 2023 to March 2024; the most in March 2024, 1.

The numbers, as a table

Reports to CPSC by the month each was made, newest first
Month	Reports
March 2024	1

How badly anyone was hurt

No incident, no one hurt 1 CPSC: No Incident, No Injury

As each report says it, in short words; CPSC’s own words are under each.

The reports, as CPSC published them

Reports people made to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. CPSC publishes each one after sending it to the company named, and doesn’t guarantee they’re accurate. A report isn’t a recall.

Each report is the words of the person who made it, as CPSC published them. The company’s comments, where CPSC published any, are set apart as the company’s own.

CPSC, SaferProducts.gov public database export. Released Oct 25, 2026. Updated daily.

No incident, no one hurt
Made Mar 7, 2024, sent to the company Mar 18, 2024, published by CPSC Apr 1, 2024

The product, in the report: Free standing Pellet Stove

I wanted to report a potential safety hazard with the following Pellet Stove.
Stove: Castle Serenity Pellet Stove (manufactured by Ardisam, Inc with headquarters in Cumberland WI 54829) Model 41278: S/N: 041703 01021 071423 1333
My experience: On Saturday 3/2/24 at ~11:30 AM EST I had the stove set to ECO mode with control by the thermostat. We had just left our house for some shopping for a few hours. Stove was off when we left. Approximately -hour after we left, the stove turned on and began the ignition procedure. It was likely about 2/3 through the “ignition” procedure, when the power blinked off for about 4 seconds. I know this because I received a text notice from another appliance thats connected to the internet and sends a text message when the power is restored.and the firepot was full of pellets that were partially lit. When the power came back, apparently the stove didnt. Over the course of the next hour before we got home, the pellets continued to smolder in the firepot. My house filled with smoke, all the smoke alarms in the house were going off.
When we got home (around 1:15 PM EST), the smoke was so thick we could hardly make it through the house to get a dog out that was in her crate in the room where the stove is (downstairs in a large walkout basement) and get the windows open.
My house: 2,700 SF modern ranch constructed in 2007.
My Installation (which is in accordance with manufacturers recommendations outlined in the Owners Manual): - Location at the center of 37 long exterior wall within a walkout basement. Its the on the walkout portion (not the buried portion of the basement). - Exhaust - 3 Duravent piping with high temp silicone sealed joints with a 38 section of vertical pipe (greater than the 36 min. indicated in the Owners Manual) and vented out through sidewall. - Intake - The installation instructions indicate that installing the 2 fresh air intake to the outside is NOT required for my situation (or at least it doesnt explicitly state that I must install the air intake to draw air from the exterior). So, I did NOT install an intake pipe to burn exterior air, I let it utilize interior air from my house since I do have plenty of air leaks in my house.
Product Issue and recommendation: Update the Power Outage/Restoration Safety Feature that is already part of the software that runs the stove. Do this by updating the software for the fire-off procedure after power outage to LOWER the firebox temperature setpoint when power is restored from 120 deg Fahrenheit to 95 deg (which is an ambient temp that would NOT be typical in a house).

Model
Serenity Model 41278
UPC
N/A
Serial number
041703 01021 071423 1333
Bought from
Home Depot
Bought
Jan 24, 2024
Where
Bellefonte, Pennsylvania: Home/Apartment/Condominium
Who was involved
Age 50, Male
The reporter’s relation to them
Self
As this report names them
Brand Castle, made or sold by ARDISAM INC
How badly, in CPSC’s words
No Incident, No Injury

The company’s comments, in its own words

(3/29/2024) ARDISAM INC: By way of background on the functionality of the stove product, way the stove works when you start it is as follows:
1) Igniter and exhaust fan come on. 2) After a short period that allows the igniter to come to temp, pellets start to feed. 3) The igniter heats the pellets until a flame is achieved. This allows the rest of the pellets to catch fire and the firebox to begin to heat up. 4) There are proof of fire switches located on the exhaust fan housing. We know that once the firebox and air within it are hot enough to heat the exhaust fan housing enough to trip these POF switches which are rated at 52 degrees C (approximately 125F), that the fire within the firebox is a sustainable fire. 5) When the POF switch is tripped indicating a sustainable fire, the stove switches to heating mode. Heating mode has different pellet feed rates and fan settings that are dependent on the operation mode and are conducive for sustaining a fire rather than starting one. Additionally, the room fan is also activated in heating mode. The purpose of the room fan is to pull heat off of the firebox and blow it into the room. Having this fan active during ignition would be counterproductive. 6) When the stove is shut down or a condition is detected that is indicative of something being wrong, the stove goes into shutdown mode which turns off pellet feeding but keeps both the room and exhaust fan going for the purposes of burning through any remaining pellets in the firepot, exhausting smoke, and cooling down the stove to room temperature. The two reasons the stove would shut itself down are: a. Electronic overtemp is triggered indicating that the firebox is getting too hot which is typically caused by either a feeding malfunction leading to an overfeed of pellets, or a room fan malfunction which prevents the room fan from dispersing heat from the firebox into the room. When the electronic overtempt senses excessive temps, it shuts down pellet feeding and goes into shutdown mode. b. Temperature drops below the POF set point which indicates there is something wrong causing the temperatures to drop below those we know to be associated with a sustainable fire. This is almost exclusively due to a lack of pellets which can be caused by the following: i. Running out of pellets in the hopper. ii. Auger motor failure preventing the auger from feeding pellets. iii. Loss of vacuum indicating the door may be open which shuts down pellet feeding as a safety precaution. iv. Hopper lid switch indicates the hopper lid may be open which stops feeding as a safety precaution because it is dangerous if someone’s hand gets in the feed auger. v. The mechanical overtemp switch is triggered indicating that the firebox is getting too hot which is typically caused by either a feeding malfunction leading to an overfeed of pellets, or a room fan malfunction which prevents the room fan from dispersing heat from the firebox into the room. The mechanical overtemp is located in line with the auger power feed and is intentionally separate from the electronic system. The reason for this is that, in the event of an electronic component failure that could potentially allow the stove to continue feeding pellets despite the stove controller not signaling feeding, the mechanical overtemp will trigger, opening the circuit and preventing power from reaching the auger motor. 7) After a period of time that we know to be sufficient to burn through any remaining pellets and cool down the stove, shutdown mode ends and the stove goes into standby mode.
The issue the complainant had was that a power failure occurred in the small period of time where the stove had managed to achieve enough ignition to start a fire, but not enough to indicatve a sustainable fire that triggers the POF. Had the POF triggered and power been lost, the stove would shut down and then would have immediately entered into shutdown mode as soon as power was restored. And if power wasn’t wasn’t restored, a sustainable fire sufficient to trigger the POF would have had enough updraft to have largely vented the smoke even without the exhaust fan. There are only two ways that I could see that would prevent the rare perfect storm involved in this incident:
1) Changing the programming so that whenever the stove is powered-up, it goes into shutdown mode regardless of whether there had previously been a fire. This would be unacceptable for two main reasons: a. It would be a major annoyance for customers that they couldn’t have the stove powered without 15+ minutes of fans going full speed. Doing this would be unprecedented on the pellet stove market as far as I am aware. This would be unacceptable to customers, and most would likely assume it is happening in error. b. The stove would be inoperable for 15+ minutes until the stove has completed the full shutdown mode sequence and the stove went into standby. 2) The POF switches were changed to a lower trigger point. First off, this would NOT prevent the occurrence of this issue. It would merely slightly reduce the chances of an already extremely rare event. The only thing lowering the POF trigger point would do is shorten the window between the start of ignition and the transition to heating mode (which would subsequently trigger shutdown mode if power were lost and then restored). Due to the thermodynamics involved, the temperature the POF sees does not build linearly but is more of an exponential curve. This means that the final 5 degrees before hitting the set point are faster than the prior 5 degrees, which were faster than the 5 before that, etc. So, the chances of occurrence would not be reduced by that much. Moreover, making such a change could result in other concerns: a. We don’t know that a fire capable of triggering a POF with a lower set point has reached the point of being sustainable. Again, the parameters required for ignition are different than those required to sustain a fire. Changing to a POF with a lower set point could result in an unsustainable fire and the stove essentially being non-functional. b. Making such a change could potentially trigger other safety concerns. c. The tolerances on a POF with a lower set point could potentially cause issues. Taking a look at a similar POF from another high-quality switch manufacturer, which triggers at 120F compared to ours at 125F, the data sheets list it as 120F+/-7F which could mean a true trigger as low as 113F would be within tolerance. More problematic, the reset point on this same switch is 90F+/-11F. This means that even a high quality switch with a trigger point just 5F lower than our current switch might not reset until it reaches 79F. A switch with a 110F set point has tolerance of 110F+/-7F, meaning true trigger could be as low as 103F. Reset on this is 80F+/-11F, meaning it may not reset until 69F. Seeing as many people prefer to keep room temps higher than this, I am confident saying the stove would not reliably function with a 110F switch as many installation environments would not allow an in-tolerance 110F switch to reliably reach reset temperatures. Switches with lower set points than those mentioned above are not prevalent on the market (likely due to the fact they are mostly used in heating applications and going any lower runs into the reset temperature issue.) The only other switch offered by this manufacturer offers below 110F is an 85F switch which is 85+/-7 and has a reset of 67F+/-11F.
In summary, the stove features numerous fail-safes, and the occurrence of this incident required a perfect storm of events and timing. The protocols we use are nearly identical, if not identical, to those employed by most other pellet stoves on the market. There is no way of preventing this issue from happening other than requiring that the stove goes through shutdown mode every time it is powered up. This is a non-starter for the reasons mentioned earlier. Beyond that, the only way to even reduce the chances of an already very rare circumstance would be to use a POF switch with a lower trigger point. Given the limitations of these types of switches, it is not possible to reduce the trigger point by more than 5-10F at best and still have a reliably functional product. Given the non-linear nature of the temperature build-up present in a stove during ignition, the reduction in probability of this happening as a result of switching to a POF with a lower trigger point would be extremely negligible.

CPSC report 20240307-B057C-2147340535. Submitter: Consumer Search for it on SaferProducts.gov

CPSC’s disclaimer

Disclaimer: CPSC does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or adequacy of the contents of the Publicly Available Consumer Product Safety Information Database on SaferProducts.gov, particularly with respect to information submitted by people outside of CPSC.

Word for word, from the disclaimer in CPSC’s export.

Sources

U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, SaferProducts.gov public database export.

Released Oct 25, 2026 and checked Oct 25, 2026. Updated daily. Public domain (U.S. Government work). CPSC asks to be credited, and that no endorsement be implied.

Reports of harm are from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), on SaferProducts.gov. CPSC does not endorse Hearth Record.

Castle other grills or stoves

At a glance

By month

How badly anyone was hurt

The reports, as CPSC published them

CPSC’s disclaimer

Sources

How to read a record

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