Anyone try the new St Croix shaker media?

Hello
This was new last year (2018)
It is added to cover the bottom of the burnpot to break up clinkers.
Has anyone tried it?

 

Wow. Just wow. I have a St Croix, and while some pellets cause more clinkers than others, I have never had a problem with them. A quick scrape once a day takes care of it, ( that's when I used to burn 24 hours a day. ) Now I use it just to take out a chill, or if we're going to be downstairs, and clinkers aren't even an issue. Buying a bag of what looks like crushed up lava rocks from a gas grill sounds like extreme overkill to me.

 

Geez...I've never had a clinker in my current stove since 2006.

I did own a St Croix corn burner and clinkers was it's middle name.

 

I found that the size of the holes in the shaker grate are 3/32” diameter are small for wood pellets but work for corn. If burning wood pellets then 1/4” diameter is best and drilling every other row out to 1/4” helps. It would be nice to have a wood pellet shaker grate. What do you think?

 

We've been running a used Prescott EXP (2004 vintage) since 2014 with many different brands of cheap pellets. Never seen a clinker and this is the primary heater so it runs a lot. Scrape burn pot once a week at most, so I'll pass on the firepot stones thankfully.

 

I think they found a way to have people spend more $$ than they need to.

 

Making the holes larger for wood pellets is a better fix?