Avalon Astoria Auger Noise

tfb577, first of all, welcome to the forum. Lot's of helpful people here.

I had an Astoria as my 1st pellet stove, and it was a great stove!

As for the jamming, does your Astoria still have the "pellet chute flapper" installed still in the down tube? If so, remove it....it was the cause of MANY problems with the stove having pellet jams. Dealers were told by Travis Industries to remove them 2 yrs ago from any remaining stoves they had in stock before selling them.

If you don't have one, then I recommend shutting down the stove, unplug it, then remove the auger motor & auger from the auger flight. Be prepared for lots of pellets to come out, but then you'll be able to shine a flashlight up the auger flight and see if it needs cleaning/scraping, etc.

Hey Tim had the same thing happen to my first Astoria, I emptied the hopper completely and cleaned everything and that problem went away. Sounds like you might have one stuck between the auger blade and the chute.

tfb577 said:

What is a auger flight?......One thing I really have learned is a good cleaning is needed often.

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The auger "flight" is the tube that the auger spins inside of.

And yes, cleaning is VERY important.

same thing happened to me. I found that the auger cap piece had a small gap where stuff was falling into the auger. The caulk there had worn out. I put a piece of aluminum tape over the opening and have not had an issue since. Mine is a new stove and the flap is on mine. Good to know I may have to remove it.

quickrch said:

.....Mine is a new stove and the flap is on mine. Good to know I may have to remove it.

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Travis Industries sent all the dealers a tech update to remove ALL the flappers from any in-stock units, or from ones in installed units:

November 10, 2008 Hot Flash #2039
Avalon Large Pellet Appliances:

Fuel Gate Removal

Avalon pellet stoves are designed to operate using a variety of fuel brands, qualities, and sizes. If the stove is properly used and maintained, it will give many years of trouble free use. Under abnormal conditions (i.e. poor fuel quality, improper air adjustment, and lack of maintenance), we have found it can create conditions conducive for a burn back. Over the years, we have found this occurs in less than 1/10 of 1%. Though these events are distressing to us, they have never resulted in injury or any extensive damage. However, they are an aggravating nuisance that we were determined to diagnose and prevent.

Our study of the problem concluded that poor appliance maintenance, improper air-tofuel balance, poor pellet fuel quality or a combination of these factors are the cause of the few burn backs that have been reported. Being unable to control pellet quality or how consumers operate or maintain their appliances led us to devise a barrier to prevent fire from entering the pellet drop tube. Our fuel gate was tested in large pellet appliances for a considerable length of time, including in-home operation at various locations across the country using a variety of pellet brands without reports of jamming. We knew that even if events led to conditions conducive to a burn back, pellets would build up, cause the auger to jam and the stove would shut off. This would be an inconvenience to the consumer, and an indication for the consumer to alter their method of operation or maintenance or try a different brand of pellets. Our decision to include the fuel gate in all large pellet appliances was based on our determination to prevent this from ever happening

Since including the fuel gate in our large pellet appliances, we have received many more reports of auger jams than we anticipated. Many of these auger jams we believe are caused by extra-long pellets that are able to bridge behind the fuel gate.

Because of high demand, pellet size, and quality varies far more than we realized, this has lead to more frequent auger jams than we anticipated. Rather than risk continued nuisance auger jams and the resulting customer dissatisfaction, we are removing the fuel gate from our large pellet appliances effective with the serial numbers shown below.

Model Ser. No. Where Fuel Gate is Removed

Astoria Stove 2303-932815

Astoria Bay Insert 2304-09949

Arbor Stove 2305-000990

Additionally, we are asking our dealers to remove the fuel gate from pellet appliances at the time of installation. If responding to customer inquiries should an auger jam occur, please tell the customer they may leave them off the appliance after clearing the jam.

Yikes, let me make sure I am talking about the same things...that metal door flap in the pellet shoot between the auger and the fire. If that is what we are talking about I am going to check the serial number. My stove what just shipped to me from a dealer who ordered it from Travis...so my thought was it just came from the factory to me. Still in the wood crate. Thanks for the post. I'll check the serial tonight.

Hello

Also as a last resort you can try this. Just like Julie Andrew's song:


A tea spoonful of powdered graphite in the hopper helps the bad pellets go down, the bad pellets go down.


hm hm hm in the most delightful way!!

Seriously, my neighbor used it for his Inferno Pellets in his Englander 25 PVDC and people in this forum really know how tough they are to swallow

Good luck

Hey all, new here, I'm not sure this is the right place for this but I am having a similar problem. I have an Avalon Arbor purchased in 2013. It's been working great but this morning the auger started making a groaning noise. The auger seems to spin fine and I've vaccumed it out the best I could. To clean the flight, I can just loosen the four screws and pull it off, what about resealing it? Any other input appreciated.

c