St Croix Revolution newbe

[maacac]

I have been tinkering with mine.. Not sure I am getting all the heat yet. It has been in the high teens to low 20's lately and haven't been able to keep the house up to temp without some help from the gas fireplace. I am trying a mixture of cherry pits and pellets this weekend. We will see what that does.

We have gotten 12-18 inches of snow over the last 24 hours...... I guess winter is here in Northern Michgan....

 

[juandigital]

Im in the same boat as maacac, It has a hard time keeping warm and takes forever to get up to temps. Air out of the registers are minimal, even after I installed the booster fan. I clean the stove religiously on saturdays, sometimes even during the week. Some of you here know that I recently made the switch to corn since I can get it a few miles down the road. The corn is pretty clean and around 12% moisture. First few days were ok, few adjustments made to damper and feedrates. A few times ive noticed the corn clumping together in the burn pot, I figured it was out of balance and reduced the feedrates by switching to program #2. Yesterday I loaded the stove up with corn and headed to Detroit to visit my Dad for the day. I come home around 9pm to a cold and smelly house. I go downstairs and see the corn clumping again.. You can see from the first picture, the burn pot is empty yet semi burn corn is clumped up on both sides of the pot as well as being trapped in the pellet/corn shoot. Part of the clump was still on fire, just barely. The furnce didnt trip any safeties so was still feeding corn. I pressed the on/off button and chiseled out the corn clumps in the shoot. I then opened the hopper to investigate and a ton of smoke came out, I look into the small hopper (filled with wood pellets) and see hot coals in the hopper! I tried to scoop out the coals and a fire starts in the hopper. I finally put of the fire, remove all pellets and cycle the furnace on and off so the small auger would turn and dump all the hot burning pellets stuck in the auger tube. Fire was actually coming out of the shoot, the fire was somewhere inside. It took about 1.5 hours to clear the stove. The basement was filled with smoke, the house was 48 degrees. I had to cancel my plans to go to the inlaws house to watch the De La Hoya fight. Im lucky we came home when we did. After everything was put out, I switched over my dampers and fired up the propane furnace, I walked upstairs to my livingroom a beaten man. I researched the hell out of this purchase, tried to do everything right, spent countless hours on install and operations and my house is cold and smokey. My wife wants me to take it back and get a freestanding stove. Im going to call the dealer and see what can be done. I dont trust the stove anymore. I could go back to burning pellets, but it bothers me that the stove is rated for corn yet will not burn it.

thats fire coming out of the shoot! the burn pot is completely empty.

 

[hossthehermit]

Sorry to hear about the problems, Juan. Hopefully your dealer can help figure it out, or work something else out for you. Good luck, keep us posted.

 

[juandigital]

thanks guys, you all have been a great help. My latest theory is that without the outside air kit installed, the negative pressure built up over the course of the day and eventually starved the burn pot of air, thus over filling the pot. The clumping and over filling only happens after its running for most of the day. I also noticed the fire would be smaller at times, even though the heat setting was set on 5. I would then suspect that there wasnt enough air and open the damper some or adjust the fan trim, but that would only make it worse in the long run since the negative pressure would built faster over time with the increased intake amount. I hooked up the outside air kit today and will see what happens. I originally didnt think I needed it since the basement is a large open space, but in reality, its not so much the size as much as how well its sealed. Or I could be totally full of chit and the guessing game continues!

 

[maacac]

Juan,

Sorry to hear about your issues. I have also been messing with the damper and trim. I am going to try adjusting again based on the book and then not touch for a while.

Please keep up informed what your dealer says about the internal fire..


Best of luck..