# Auger makes creaking door noise



## jzinckgra (Jan 15, 2010)

Just installed a new Enviro Empress and every once and while when the auger turns you hear a long drawn out sound like a creaking door. Is that the auger grinding pellets against the inside of hopper or is it the actual auger/gear mechanism?


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## woodsman23 (Jan 15, 2010)

Haunted????  sounds like the gearing needs a bit of lube, try to spray juat a tad of pam in that area but just a tad.


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## imacman (Jan 15, 2010)

jzinckgra said:
			
		

> .......you hear a long drawn out sound like a creaking door. Is that the auger grinding pellets against the inside of hopper or is it the actual auger/gear mechanism?



It may just be some dust (fines) from your particular pellet brand.  I just switched from the softwood Premier pellets to the hardwood CleanFires, and the auger makes an occasional "creak" or "groan".  I put some graphite spray on a handful of the pellets when the hopper was almost empty, and the sound disappeared for a while.


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## jzinckgra (Jan 15, 2010)

i bought a bag of corinth pellets but will be picking up a ton of oakies this wknd. see if that will help.


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## Flammam (Jan 15, 2010)

I had the same noises with Cornith. It seems they are Very hard and grind inside the auger tube.


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## jzinckgra (Jan 15, 2010)

Flammam said:
			
		

> I had the same noises with Cornith. It seems they are Very hard and grind inside the auger tube.



ah, good to know. thanks.


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## mark d fellows (Jan 16, 2010)

Mine does the same thing based on which pellets I am burning.  Hamer Hotones do it and the Hamer Stateman brand does it incessantly.  I don't like them because of this.


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## imacman (Jan 17, 2010)

Markcas123 said:
			
		

> Mine does the same thing based on which pellets I am burning.  Hamer Hotones do it and the Hamer Stateman brand does it incessantly.  I don't like them because of this.



Thinking back Markcas123, do you remember ever hearing it when burning softwood pellets?


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## want2bwarmer (Feb 5, 2010)

We had a similar problem with our Empress (installed Oct 2008 in our family room) a few weeks ago.  Noisy Auger, which eventually stopped working.  We also burn Corinth premium, but have had no difficulties in our Harmon insert.  Hope it's not the Corinth  pellets, seeing that we still have ~4+ tons left in the garage!

Service call for above noisy auger resulted in no mechanical problem detected, service tech vacumed out some pellet dust and declared the stove to be ok.  Stove seemed fine after he left.   A day and a half later, we heard the auger making a grinding/clunking noise again.  We assumed something was wrong & turned off the stove, & called the service guy.  A few minutes later we smelled smoke/strong woodsy pellet smell.  Turns out, the stove had caught on FIRE. Yup, a big 'ol fire in the pellet hopper. Thank God we were at home to clean the pellets out, and put out the fire before any smoke damage occured.  We had full on flames in the pellet bin. How does that happen?!  Thought there was a heat sensor in the hopper to shut things down if the hopper got too hot?

We are dealing with Enviro reps now to determine the cause--& have to say we are NOT impressed with customer service thus far.   They hauled the stove (and 2 bags of our pellets) back to the factory to test the stove, supposedly to investigate the cause of the fire.  Said we would hear back within the week.  Over a week, and NO call!  When we called Enviro today, our contact person was  "out for meetings thru the week", but her assistant talked with us had the nerve to infer that the fire may be blamed on (1) inferior pellets--which by the way are working GREAT in our Harmon insert in  the living room--no clinkers or ash build up at all in the Harmon (2) Failure to clean vents (part of annual cleaning that was in fact completed by our installer/service guy back in the fall prior to starting up for the season), the excuses went on and on. I am not hopeful at this point...I just cannot believe after 1 season of use, with all the recommended cleaning and maintenance done, that a stove can just catch on fire like that. Not sure I want a replacement stove, even if they offer it. What if we had been upstairs sleeping when the fire started?


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## missrobo (Feb 7, 2010)

Had a lot of grinding, crunching, straining noise coming from auger and feeder/slid plate also had occasional smoke in hopper while burning my ton of Cornith ....switched to NEWP and all that went away, quality of pellets makes a difference with my stove, Accentra FS


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## imacman (Feb 7, 2010)

I had mentioned above that a switch in pellet brands from Premier (no noise) to CleanFires (creaking, groaning when auger turned) has stopped again since switching to Lignetics hardwood.

Seems the pellets have a lot to do with it, at least in my stove.


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## vbard (Mar 6, 2010)

We have an Enviro EF2 fireplace insert that started making noises with every turn of the auger which sounded like my dogs whining through their noses. The feed dial was not at its highest level, but we were running it as high as it could be without being in the "red" zone of the dial. This noise turned into a shriek and we called the installers to come out and look. Naturally, it was quiet as can be for that whole hour they were here and started right back up when they left. They did say our pellets were very brown and stated the manufacturer was probably using whole trees, bark and all. Since it started getting warmer and we've cut back the stove, the noise is practically gone. Have we done any damage to the stove? There's still over a pallet left of these pellets and I can't stand the thought of not being able to burn them.


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