Black Glass

[cbodkin]

I am a proud owner of a St Croix Hastings pellets stove which has already helped me cut my con ed bills. This Winter is the 2nd year I am using the stove, which has been working great. About a month ago I started using some new pellets, and my glass window started to get back much quicker than it used to. (It used to take about 6 days for the glass to get black. Now it only takes 1 day.)

My guess is that the ash content for the new pellets is different, and is causing the window to turn black. I've tried adjusting the air intake value, but that has not worked. I also notice that my burn pot seems to be filling up with more pellets that it used to, which is resulting in more un-burned pellets in my Ash pan. I've tried setting the pellet feed to a low setting, but that does not seem to work either.

Perhaps my Pellet stove just got really dirty, and is all clogged up. Before I pay for someone to come and service the stove, does anyone have any suggestions?

 

[corpseal]

Hello. You probably need to post your question in the pellet stove forum for a better response. Good luck

 

[begreen]

The feed rate would have been my first guess too.

If you put the old pellets alongside of the new ones, how do they differ? Are the new pellets a lot shorter? Are they the same diameter as the old pellets?

Have you tried some of the previous pellets again? If you go back to a few bags of the old brand pellets, does the stove settle right down? If yes, sounds like the pellets may be the issue and not the stove. If the old brand pellets aren't working too well either, then a thorough cleaning would be a good place to start.

 

[krooser]

Your stove is plugged with ash. I have a St Croix Pepin... here's what you do.

Pull the grates, cerra brick and take off the ash trap doors that are above the ash pan. Clean your ash pan. Take a hammer and tap around the firebox... you'll will find a lot of ash coming out of the ash traps.... you need to keep tapping until all the ash is out then run a long brush, wire or Romex cable up the ash traps and down the back of the stove to clean out the ash that's trapped behind the firebox.

Or use a leafblower and suck it out in just a few minutes.

 

[cbodkin]

Thanks for the advice. I'm going to give the stove a good cleaning this weekend. Looking at the manual, I want to make sure I got this straight. I'm going to remove the fake brick panels which should give me access to the 2 ash traps. If I were to use a leaf blower to unclog them, where am I sticking the mouth of the leaf blower into? Am I sticking it into the ash traps?

 

[j00fek]

you hook the suction end to the outside part of your exhaust and blow out the ash outside

 

[cbodkin]

found the more detailed post on how to do this. My exhaust goes through the ceiling, about 3 stories high. If I climb up there, attach it to the exhaust, and give this a try do you think it will work?