St Croix hastings

Guy obviously wasn't on the 3 year plan for having dry pellets!

Gary

 

Hello
St. Croix uses the old SAE 841 oilite bronze auger bearings that can get black and gummy inside. So pull that out and clean it up well and you should be fine. You can even upgrade it to a nylon bearing too!

Click pic to enlarge.

 

Don, is that the bearing that's in the plate near the motor? Or is there another bearing im not seeing?

 

Well today I had a few minutes after work so I wheeled the stove out in front of the shop and started to blow it out. Holy cow, the inside of this thing is dirty! I seriously doubt if he cleaned it at all. I hit it with air for 20mins or so and there's still ash coming out .

I have to order the combustion blower gaskets, auger gasket and versa grate shaft gasket. I'm going to try and weld the worn versa grate pieces and grind them down to spec. If it works, great and if not I'll just order them.

 

Thanks dex. I knew i was getting a project with this stove so im ready for whatever it's gonna throw at me. Any recommendations for online parts sources? Cheapest i've found is at pellet stove parts 4 less.

 

Don't forget to clean out BEHIND the firebox….

 

Most of the St Croix stoves have the same bends and angles inside the stove where the smoke and exh follows the path to the outside exh pipe. There might be a small hole on each side of the burning pot. You can insert a old flex choke cable inside the hole with the other end inserted into a small drill.. This will rattle around and loosen a lot of gunk and soot. Then using a rubber mallet smack the back side of the stove which loosens more soot and junk. I have pictures of a Auborn cut in half that shows the inside of the stove and where it plugs up. I could e-mail them if needed. St Croix recommended burning their stove hot at least once every couple of days to prevent it from plugging up. The usual scenario was it worked fine the first season then the second season it just wouldn't produce as much heat as it did when new. The third season was worse. After these stoves had been in use for 3 years St Croix sent out fliers describing where to drill two holes and how to get the insides clean like I described.

 

Yeah I am glad to find it. Its almost like sitting down at a local cafe for coffee with old friends. Looking at member list I see several names I recognize. I googled IBC to see if there was any life there and somehow found this website. Looks like a good place to learn more.

 

Glad that you found us Rona Always nice to have another pellet head on board .

 

'bout time you got here Rona.

 

Just got through stacking 2 ton of Indeck pellets bought on sale for 3.99 a bag. 8 will be returned as they had gotten wet and you could feel the bag had solid portions. This is a small but important advantage for unloading and stacking by hand. Indeck has more ash then I like but it has a consistant length rather then some brands that are simply to long to fit in the slots of the feeder wheel on a Bixby.

 

Welcome Rona!