Plugged auger....fire went out

[skibumm100]

Got home from vacation last night and started up the stove. Got up this morning and the fire was out. Still burning the Vermont's and I'm noticing a lot of fines left in the hopper. I let the pellets run out after about six bags and vacuumed out the fines from the hopper. It's probably been another six bags until this happened. I have notices that these pellets don't really feed very well in my stove. They are a little bit long to feed really consistently. I need to check the auger set screw to make sure it's tight but the fire seems to die down then a bunch of pellets will feed all at once and the fire will flare up pretty good. I expected some of that as that's not uncommon. This morning the auger was packed full of pellets/fines. I has to get a piece of coat hanger and dig it out to free it up. I like the way these pellets burn and they don't produce a lot of ash but I may have to clean out the fines or sift them out if it continues to cause jam-ups. To be fair, we had to handle the pellets quite a bit. I had to load the pellets by hand into the truck, re-stack them in the basement, bring them up into the house and then I store them in a big box near the stove and scoop them into the hopper. Probably causing more fines than dumping the bag right into the hopper.