St. Croix Hastings shuts off on level 4 or 5, plus another issue

[Guin2008]

Hello everyone,

I have reviewed my manual and find it horribly deficient and while I have read all the basic troubleshooting help posted on this site, I am still not sure how to correct my problems. We have the St. Croix Hastings which we bought and installed in mid October 2008. It is direct-vented out the side of the house - all per the manufacturer and dealer specs.

It seems to work great on levels 1-3, but if I run it on 4 it will shut off after about 15-20 minutes and on level 5 I'm lucky if it will stay on for 10 minutes. I honestly don't need to run it on the higher setting most of the time because it heats the house so efficiently, but it is recommend for 20-30 minutes per day -- as I'm sure you all know. When it shuts off, the flame turns dark orange and the #3 diagnostic light will flash and there is plenty of fuel in the hopper. No smoke comes into the house, but the glass gets some black soot on it. I can restart the stove if I wait about 15 minutes for the shut down to complete. It will stay running on the lower setting. Well, most of the time.

That leads me to the next issue. Recently, over the past month, it has shut down during the night 3 times and (once during the day), after running for at least 8 hours. The hopper has plenty of fuel and it has just shut down and the #2 diagnostic light is flashing. I can restart it and it will remain running. Usually I take the opportunity to do a cleaning before restarting, however it is not overdue to be cleaned at that point but I do see more ash than normal when this happens. Also, on a few of these nights, we were having pretty good wind associated with some winter storms. Not sure if that matters?

So, I wondering if I need to clean more vigilantly than I have been, but I've been doing what I was told needed to be done both daily and weekly. Again, the manual is TERRIBLE and so I hope I'm getting all the grates and ash traps that I can attend to without needing a screwdriver and shop-vac (small hand vac, yes)! Since we've only had this running for a few months and really only full time for about 6 weeks, I can't imagine it is that dirty.

We have made no adjustments to the damper, we just left it on the factory preset. I'm am very confused as to what needs more air and what doesn't.

Sorry for a very long post and any information would be very helpful!

Needing some tweaking in snowy Maine...

 

[krooser]

I'm sounding like a broken record here... I think you need to clean your stove.

I have a St Croix Pepin... great stove... very trouble free. But my stove (and yours) has a back wall that fills with ash and you can't get it all out without a lot of work (or a leafblower).

Last year I had a sooty flame problem... not enough heat, etc. I called service... the tech came out, sucked all the ash outta my vent and went home in 20 minutes. Stove worked like new.

Now I'm doing a little experiment... For the last four weeks I've only given my stove a basic cleaning a couple of times... I'm trying to fill up that back wall so I can get a picture of how much crap comes out when you DO clean it. I'm almost there... the stove isn't putting out nearly as much heat right now... I'll probably do a regular cleaning this weekend and then use the leafblower to REALLY clean it.

Search "leafblower" to find my post (with a few poor pix) about doing a good cleaning...

 

[Guin2008]

Thanks for the reply and I'm starting to realize that I need to do a much more detailed cleaning more often. I do the basic routine every day and pull out the grates and vacuum out the ash pan probably once a week. We were not led to believe it would need the really detailed cleaning this often and it's practically brand new.

Also, the thing with level 4 or 5 I noticed within the first week or so, operating it basically part-time since it wasn't that cold when we first started using it.

We are going to try and get to the dealer today or over the weekend. The people we bought it from are quite knowledgeable, but it's just hard to get them on the phone right now. They sold so many stoves, it was bedlam in the store when we picked it up.

Anyway, I will post back when I know more.

If there are other suggestions, please let me know.

 

[krooser]

Your stove produces much more soot when running on the lower settings... that's why the they suggest running on 4 or 5 frequently...

Good luck... the St Croix's are great stoves...

 

[Guin2008]

Husband went to the dealer and we are working through a couple things. Apparently, the pellets we have - premium from spruce point - are not all hardwood. Our dealer is actually meeting with one of their reps next week because other people are having similar issues and they are burning these pellets. These pellets were the only ones you could get delivered around here and you had to pre-order in July for October delivery. It APPEARS that this pellet has too high of a moisture content, so we are working on swapping an un-opened pallet for all hardwood. We had about 10 bags of the lignetics mixed in that burned beautifully, but I didn't make the correlation with pellet quality until now. Having a hard time finding those in our area right now

Next, he recommended opening up the trap on the outside pipe and predicted we would find lots of ash in there and sure enough, he was right. Again, predicted based on the pellet quality. Then, he advised adjusting the draft trim and feed trim and trying it on 4/5.

We are going to see if we can get it to burn on 4/5 and get the all hardwood pellets.

I'll post back with more results...

 

[mkmh]

Sounds like you have it pretty well narrowed down and that you are getting good support from the dealer. I just wanted to throw out there that your hastings should do just fine with high quality softwood pellets too. It just so happens you may have gotten a bad batch of softwood this go around. I have burned almost exclusively softwood (Corinth and "Quality") with excellent results.
Unfortunately there are quite a few crap-quality pellets out there in hard and soft wood and the premium label doesn't always equate to excellent results.

Enjoy your stove, the Hastings is terrific!

 

[Guin2008]

I'm starting to hear a lot about bad runs with pellets. Probably because they all ramped up production with this unprecedented demand. Still tweaking, but thanks for the info as a Hastings user.

I'll post again after we do more testing.

Thanks!

 

[Guin2008]

Things have gotten worse! We tried burning on 4 or 5 and it will shut off aft 20 minutes and 15-16, respectively. The flame gets very lazy, orange and then it shuts down. The flame is also very tall at that point - definitely almost touching the heat exchange tubes. This was after cleaning the stove AGAIN and using the all hardwood Cubex pellets.

We then spent half a day adjusting the damper in either direction and then trying again on 4/5. WE did gain a few minutes more time, but it eventually shut off again.

So, we called our dealer who got St. Croix Tech support on the phone. They asked some question about our install, how we were running it (manual), outside air kit used (yes), and they seemed satisfied it was installed correctly. Then, they told us to unplug the air kit and try running it on level 5 and then call them back. Well, we made it to 17 minutes on level 5 and then it shut down again. However, the firebox was very smokey without the air kit AND I noticed smoke on the outside as well.

Called back and our dealer is now ordering a new vacuum switch and he will bring it out and troubleshoot. He is not convinced that is the problem, but it's all he can think of.

So, we plugged the air kit back in, reset the damper to the factory default and started running it again on level 3 - it will only stay running now on 1-3. That seems fine for about 1/2 a day. Now, on level 3 the flame is lazy and we are getting black soot on the glass and on the back "brick" panels (excessive). The flame is taller than I remember it being on level 3, prior to all the testing!

Yes, the dealer is coming out, but I wanted other feedback. Does this sound like a vacuum issue - how does that switch affect combustion air. Also, the fan seems weaker now than when we have previously run it on level 3. We are just running it on level 2 now, but that's not really enough in this temperature. It seems to be going downhill fast and since we just got it in October of 2008 and have been running it for a couple of months, I'm wondering if it's defective. Also, not sure how long it's going to take to resolve the "issues". So much for something being easy and relatively trouble-free

 

[krooser]

Empty the ashpan. Pull the out the firepot, the Cerabrick, and the two grates on the sides of the stove. Find the two hinged flappers that are located above the ashpan and remove them.

Take a hammer, any size, and tap on the back wall of the firebox above, and around, the hopper chute inside the stove. I bet you will find TONS OF ASH flowing out of those two small ports above the ashpan.

You have all the classic signs of a stove that's plugged with ash.

The customer service people at these stove companies are clueless about how to really clean a stove.

 

[Guin2008]

Thanks for the quick reply, but we've only had this stove 2.5 months!! Is this because of crappy pellets we have run for most of it's young life?

Also, earlier this week, we did a very detailed cleaning and I found a ton of ash on those slanted points leading into the ash bin, behind the fake metal bricks - at the bottom. I think you reference this area above? We also completely moved the brick wall to get what was behind there with our shop-vac. We got almost a whole new ashpan full just in that area.

Ok, what is the Cerabrick?

 

[GVA]

Empty the ashpan. Pull the out the firepot, the Cerabrick, and the two grates on the sides of the stove. Find the two hinged flappers that are located above the ashpan and remove them.

Take a hammer, any size, and tap on the back wall of the firebox above, and around, the hopper chute inside the stove. I bet you will find TONS OF ASH flowing out of those two small ports above the ashpan.

You have all the classic signs of a stove that's plugged with ash.

The customer service people at these stove companies are clueless about how to really clean a stove.

Now you're sounding like a broken record..... :lol:
But you're right.......... $5 bucks says the stove is full of ash and choking for airflow.......

guin2008 when was the last time it was thoroughly cleaned??