New St. Croix owner with a couple of questions

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Skinn

Member
Hearth Supporter
Oct 8, 2008
82
NY
Hey guys,
I am new to this forum but after spending a few days looking around I feel like I have already found a wealth of knowledge. I have burned wood for years but this year will be using primarily my newly installed St. Croix Hastings. This whole fire at the touch of a button is great!

I have only used about 4-5 bags in it so far but am very happy with its performance. I just wanted to ask other St. Croix owners about the Versa Grate system. I heard it could be noisy but don't notice anything out of the ordinary with mine, quite the opposite actually, I am not even sure it is working. The Hastings has a pretty sharp angle of view into the burn pot and I can't for the life of me tell if the grate is moving. Should it be obvious or is it a subtle movement?

Also a more general question, what happens if my stove runs out of fuel while I am not home? If I go away for a long weekend is it ok to just let it run until empty and then let the furnace take over or is that bad for the stove? In the past I would just let my wood stove burn out and then the heat would kick on so I am not sure if that is safe for the stove or will I run into problems?

Thanks for the help!!
 
Skinn said:
Hey guys,
I am new to this forum but after spending a few days looking around I feel like I have already found a wealth of knowledge. I have burned wood for years but this year will be using primarily my newly installed St. Croix Hastings. This whole fire at the touch of a button is great!

I have only used about 4-5 bags in it so far but am very happy with its performance. I just wanted to ask other St. Croix owners about the Versa Grate system. I heard it could be noisy but don't notice anything out of the ordinary with mine, quite the opposite actually, I am not even sure it is working. The Hastings has a pretty sharp angle of view into the burn pot and I can't for the life of me tell if the grate is moving. Should it be obvious or is it a subtle movement?

Also a more general question, what happens if my stove runs out of fuel while I am not home? If I go away for a long weekend is it ok to just let it run until empty and then let the furnace take over or is that bad for the stove? In the past I would just let my wood stove burn out and then the heat would kick on so I am not sure if that is safe for the stove or will I run into problems?

Thanks for the help!!
Click to expand...

Welcome to the forum. I'm thrilled to see yet another St Croix owner out here. I think you'll be very happy with the stove.
The Versa Grate is very quiet when working properly, so I would not suspect a problem. When it is not working, you will start to see ash building up in the burnpot very quickly. If you would like to confirm it is working you can easily remove the panel on the right, and you'll be able to observe the versa grate system in action. It is part of annual maintenance to lube some of these parts, so probably not a bad idea to take a look back here.
It is bad practice to let this stove run out of fuel. I've accidentally done it 2 or 3 times in the last several years. Each time for less than an hour (I think). Basically, the auger keeps going trying to load pellets, which is not a good thing. My dealer told me that he's had to replace augers for people who had let their stove run without pellets for 8 hours.

One thing you might consider for long weekend is a programmable thermostat. With this you could set he stove to turn on and off while you are away, which could stretch the fuel supply through the long weekend.
 
Does that mean the St Croix computer has not been programed to show a no fire shut down?
 
I was kind of wondering that myself, would the computer notice that there was no fire and just shut itself off then I would just have to reload and start the stove when I came home. I will call my dealer to find out for sure but as of now I will just do as I always have and load the wood stove before going away and just let the heat kick on when it burns out I was just hoping to let my pellet stove get me as far as possible without having to rely on the furnace. Thanks for your quick response guys!
 
Not sure about the stoves, but the book on my Revolution says that if the fire goes out, it will try to ignite again, but after about two minutes goes into shutdown.
 
Hm, i'm honestly not sure. My stove is older so maybe the newer CPUs do a better job with this scenario. My experience has been that the auger seems to keep on trying to feed pellets indefinitely.
 
My stove shuts down when the exhaust temp drops below 110 F and the #3 light starts blinking. It takes a while before the exhaust cools down though.
 
mkmh said:
Hm, i'm honestly not sure. My stove is older so maybe the newer CPUs do a better job with this scenario. My experience has been that the auger seems to keep on trying to feed pellets indefinitely.
Click to expand...

Hey, does your stove's on/off light flash slowly green when it's off in Smartstat mode? Mine seems to. Seems like it's just in standby. Just want to make sure it's normal since when I didn't have it hooked up to a thermostat, it didn't flash that light.
 
ylomnstr said:
Hey, does your stove's on/off light flash slowly green
when it's off in Smartstat mode? Mine seems to.
Click to expand...

Yes, mine does.
 
Does the light flash even if the stove has been turned off at the thermostat? I was just wondering if the flashing just means that the stove is waiting for the thermostat to call for heat or if it just indicates that it is in the smart stat position. It has not been cold enough for me to figure out my thermostat yet so I am just wondering what to expect.
Thanks
 
Ok thanks that is what mine was doing too just making sure it was ok. As I said I have not had the opportunity to run it with the thermostat for any length of time yet and just wanted to make sure that it was set up right.
 
I also have a St Croix just got it hooked up about a month now, and I'm still learning but yes my light flashes in smart stat even when the stove is off. I just unplug it and it stops the light then I go back to manual and there is no flashing of the green light. I found though , that the cheap tstat that came with the stove isn't accurate. I set it at 66 and the temp. was 70 and the stove still didn't drop down to low I had to manually turn the tstat down lower and the stove finally kicked down. I think we'll be changing that to see if it is the tstat.
 
I have a St Croix Pepin... it's been great.
 
zeta said:
Any pics krooser? How old is that stove?
Click to expand...
My old digital camera died... no pix.

I bought my stove used last year. I believe this will be the 7th heating season for it. Except for needing a good cleaning last year after running it on one or two during a warm spell it's been trouble free.
 
I purchased a St. Croix York insert and have used these web sites: http://www.stcroixheat.com/support_manuals.htm
and (broken link removed to http://www.eventempinc.com/stcroix/downloads/dig2/Digital_Control_Board_Service_Manual.pdf)
They seem to give all the info needed for the St. Croix stoves.
I've been using two different pellets and I did notice a difference between Corinth pellets and Armstrong. 'Corinth was excellent burning, no ash and minimal fines. The Armstrong pellets fill up the cleanout every bag or two that's burned. The Armstrong pellets don't seem to put out the same heat as the Corinth pellets.
I do have a question, for anybody, about flame height. If I run the stove on 3 (mid level), the flame rarely gets above halfway on the bricks and it's not steady. The flame will fluctuate in height from none to 2 or 3 inches high. I adjusted the draft by using a thermometer on the heat output and kept opening the draft until the heat output went to its highest point. If I opened the draft to much the heat output went down, so I backed off to the point where the heat output was highest. I figured that was the optimum draft setting. I don't know if that is one way to set the draft.
I did have a problem (with the armstrong pellets) where the stove would quit running while "piloting". Sometimes I'd get a flashing LED showing a diagnostic problem and other times just the on/off light would be flashing (even though my thermostat was calling for heat). It seems the draft from my chimney was to much and I had to use the DRAFT TRIM button to stop some off the inherent draft from my 25 ft. chimney
Didn't mean to hi-jack this thread. Just thought I'd put my 2 cents in. thanx
 
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