St. Croix Genuine Stoves review: Customer support 69

I have owned my St croix afton bay for 3 years now and have had nothing but problems. Every year I have burnt out an ignitor now and on my second fire pot. The board is junk as far as I'm concerned. Every once in a while I have to move the board in and out to get it to work. Now a couple weeks after I had it tested the auger doesn't work at all. Wish I would have read these complaints before I bought mine cause I would have gotten something else. The warranty is a joke. 5 years covers nothing, well maybe the base it sits on. Electronics are junk and that fake brick panels are a joke. Very poor all together.

I have owned a St. Croix Hastings for four years. It is a beautiful stove in appearance, and did perform well the first season. During the first season, there was a noise coming from the versa grate assembly. We had the dealer service and clean the stove at the start of the second season. It seemed to run well. However, the noise in the versa grate returned. At the end of the second season, the dealer was called back to clean the stove again. At this time they disabled the versa grate and promised to order a replacement. They never came through with the part. The performance of the stove degraded. By the third season, there were several problems. Every other day, i shut down the stove, remove all grates and shields traps etc. Bang and vacuum but stove doesn't run well for long, and can't use any setting above two or burn pot overflows. This resulted in a fire in the combustion fan housing. The vacuum switch is constantly clogged. Convection fans screeched to a halt and required replacing. Alot of issues and poor overall perfomance from this product. Now shopping for a replacement from a different manufacturer.

Hi Jeremy and ensmeyer.

We can help you get your stoves in good shape, and ready to run quietly and efficiently. If you would email stcroix@eventempinc.com with your information, we can get in touch with you. Please put complaint board in the subject line, and we will reach out to you right away. Thanks, St. Croix Stoves

I have two stoves. On the first the error light kept coming on and the stove kept shutting off. I contacted the place where I brought the stove and they gave me another panel. On the second stove, the stove didn't come with a ceramic backing but painted metal. The paint continues to chip off the metal. We sent it back to the store where purchased and sure enough, a week later, the new one has peeling paint as well.

Hi Catonsvilles,

Send an email over to stcroix@eventempinc.com and we will do our best to make sure your stoves are running well. Please put complaints board in the title line.

Thanks, St. Croix Stoves

My St. Croi stoves' combustion fan went after one season. But I love the stove. The dealer is coming tomorrow to replace the fan. Then I hope all is well. They are great stoves. But the fine ash that pellet stoves create is an issue for all stoves. Get a leaf blower. They need to design a pellet stove that has a automatic cleaning system. A high powered blower that can be manually operated once a week. Not hard to engineer. The company the does this will destroy the others. Maybe I will start one next year. Investors can contact me at hybridintherain@hotmail.com. The revolution starts today.

We have had a StCroix Prescott EXL for 8 winters now . Have replaced the exhaust fan several times and the room fan once . Stove runs 24 hrs/day all winter. Also replaced control board last year. New type works much better !Local dealer Hearthworks, Hooksett, NH has been very helpful with parts and advice when required . They have a most complete parts dept and when we have required a part it was always in stock ! Never an order required ! The stove is well maintained and keeping these stoves clean is an absolute must do ! It doesn`t take long and the stove never letsus down ! I feel bad for all the people having unsolved problems but think a better dealer and regular maintainence would give very positive results ! Mike in NH

Just installed our Saint Croix used pellet stove. Does the "advance heat" button make it burn hotter?

I own a St Croix Afton Bay purchased in Nov of 2005. It's been a pain in my a** from the day I bought it. My dealer no better, as he was little to no help and after less than a year with ongoing issues and my request for a new stove, he actually wanted to charge me $100 to come to my house and diagnose my stove problem and then another $60 an hour to repair at a minimum of one hour labor. This aside - it's been 7 years of hell - the "versta grate motor" has been so loud from the I bought this piece of junk; the stove is all rusted inside. I have had to replace the combustion fan, burn pot and burn grate. The pot and grate got so rusted they crumbled. This was to the tune of $300. Just last week, my auger quit on me and it's not the fuse. Just stopped running - no longer feeding pellets. Now, I take extremely good care of my stove - fanatical actually. Clean it regularly like weekly to every two weeks- and every spring and fall. I have tried to contact to St Croix with no luck - cannot send email as it comes up as error when you send attempt to send email or click on link. This company sucks - my dealer in Adams, MA sucks and I will never ever again buy one of these stoves.

i own the hastings model-after first season-ignitor failed-start of third season ignitor failed/vaccuum switch failed-start of fifth season ignitor failed/versa grate cam physically broken off-now the stove will not run correctly-heavy soot/the ash pull underf the versa grate slides out on its own, when this happens the stove really builds up/any ideas on why this slide would come out on its own?someone mentioned cleaning behind the combustion fan?/i have dissassembled the stove after every season and have never removed this fan, should i?

I installed an Auburn in the front room of my 1926 2 story brick home in October '05 and burned it October-March, mostly 24/7 through the spring of 2010. It has not given me one problem and sat unused until 2 weeks ago when we sold the house after moving out of state in the fall of '10. I happened to have about 60lbs of corn and 30 lbs of pellets left over so gave the stove a quick cleaning and check, filled the hopper, hit the ON button, and burned it for 1-1/2 days while we were finishing our move out.

For having sat untouched for over 2 full years I was pleasantly surprised that it worked, but then asked myself why it shouldn't. I burned an average of 4-1/2 tons of corn each winter for 4-1/2 winters and it always worked well. The install must be correct, the chimney/exhaust must be kept clean, and the stove must be kept clean. Use the proper dropouts at the bottom of vertical exhaust runs and keep the ash cleaned from the exhaust immediately following the exhaust fan to avoid many problems.

I've had a Lancaster for 5 years, it was good the first couple years, now its crap. It builds up ash in 18 hours, I have to vacuum the inside out every 18 hours. The front glass ashes up in a couple of hours. I've had the fan replaced and some other piece, with no improvement. It's gotten progressively worse over the last couple years. The dealer tells me its the pellets. I've been through 4 brands, with the same results. I'd not get another one, and I'm looking to dump this one.

Orion940 and others: You'll think your stove is clean when in reality it's not! Notice that after a few years (or several) it starts having problems such as ash buildup, shutting off, etc.? That's because after this long there has been fly ash built up in places that are not getting accessed with "thorough" cleaning. I know you'll protest, but in fact this is true well over 90% of the time. Check out hearth.com forums for some very good advice and techniques for thorough cleaning as well as too many to count replies from people who were positive their stoves were clean, when in fact after a true thorough cleaning returned to burning like new stoves. It's worth your time.

I'm having trouble with my EXL. the Ash clean out rod is stuck!

JeanneAH is totally correct about cleaning. We burned our Prescott EX 24/7 for about 2-1/3 seasons and then noticed a marked increase in black soot build-up inside the stove and heavy carbon deposits inside the burn pot. We cleaned the stove repeatedly with no improvement. We even replaced the combustion blower, thinking it was going bad, but to no effect.

Finally, we made a scraping tool to reach into the area behind the back panel of the fire chamber both from the top at the rear of the heat exchanger tubes and from below through the ash removal ports. This brought out a large amount of ash which our previous rapping on the back panel had not brought down.

Most important was using a flashlight and mirror to inspect the air channel leading down from the back panel area into the duct in back of the cleanout panel behind the ash pan. Looking upward into the area directly behind this cleanout panel revealed bridges of ash blocking both sides of the air channel coming down to the horizontal duct. Using a stiff but flexible wire about 6 inches long to probe the bridged areas brought down a considerable amount of ash. We had tried to clean this channel before, but had not reached high enough into it to remove the ash bridges.

So far, after this cleaning process the stove has been performing OK.

I've got a St Croix Prescott I purchased new and am on my ninth season burning
with it. My stove runs 24/7 during the heating season with shutdowns only for cleaning.
These stoves are very efficient and reliable if you know how to maintain it from the get go.
Many people don't and sadly this is where a lot of the complaints come from.
The only part I have had to replace was the room air blower. That was two years into
owning the stove. Learned my lesson there. The blowers have to be removed and
thoroughly cleaned. Pellet stoves require regular maintenance to function properly
it's that simple. Now I remove the blowers every season and take them out to the
garage and clean them. This stove is a power house of heat and not that difficult
to keep running well. Mine is vented with a liner 15 ft up my chimney and also we
set up a fresh air intake from outside. The stove works beautiful with this set up.
I have never had an auger jam and the stove eats whatever pellets I feed it but,
crummy pellets require more cleaning so for that reason I prefer to buy the good
stuff. If you need help with your stove email the guys at eventemp. They are
very helpful and will walk you through troubleshooting. Give them a chance
before coming here and complaining. Also, firewood hoarders club forum
has some very skilled pellet stove members that are willing to help as well.
I look forward to going into year #10 next year with my prescott. I'm toasty warm
here while my friends with no stove keep their thermostats at 68 to conserve oil.

I have a Hastings St. Croix stove. Approx 7 or 8 yrs old. It runs non stop and I shut it down once a week for cleaning. It is a hard stove to clean, lots of hard to reach places. That being said, I have concocted devices to clean it. However I have come upon a problem. I left one day and when I got home it was shutting down and still had pellets in the hopper. I decided to tackle it in the morning...however it smoldered all night in the ash pan. IT WAS HOT! I took it out with welding gloves. The stove was very creosote due to the poor quality of pellets this yr. What I found is that the chute from the auger was packed with blackened pellets...and I mean packed. The ash pan was full. I cleaned everything thoroughly. Even taking out all the pellets and cleaned the auger area. I added a couple handfuls back into the hopper and turned it on. It appeared to do the neg. vac. Check (although it didn't sound like the other fan was working) and the exhaust blower was running but it kept running and didn't start feeding pellets. It gives me a 1 not blinking. Any thoughts on what to do?

We bought a Lancaster St. Croix stove about 6 years ago and so far we have been happy with it. However, recently we noticed very fine dust all over the house and it definitely is from the stove. We replaced the exhaust fan gasket, but the problem remained. Did anyone have this problem? If so, what is the solution?

I've had my st.croix Lancaster for going on 5 years, im very surprised by all the negative comments, I bought mine used for 500$, it was three or four years old...I have had zero issues, from what I've seen people don't clean or service them as they should, there are some tricks I was told about by my local dealer, cleaning just the ash box, and burn pot area isnt going to be enough, once a year I pull the stove, take it out on the deck with a two wheel cart, clean everything with compressed air and put the shields and covers back in place.. these are not Lp or natural gas, you do need to maintain them. If anyone wants some insight drop me a message tdcequipment@gmail.com ..Thanks T

I have an Element P pellet stove and have been having issues with the smart scan system. Even after cleaning the sensor / reflector it is very trouble some trying to keep the sensor to light correctly even with a freshly cleaned stove. I'd like to disable this system, how would I go about doing this? Cut the wires to the sensor and wire them together? Any information would be great xcr600sp96@hotmail.com. Thanks!

I have at Felix York insert. Worked fine for a couple years then this year 2015 the auger would not stop running kept over flowing burn pot. Called dealer they said it was an air flow problem so I use the leaf blower trick and cleaned the crap out of the stove. Same problem auger keeps running. So I started messing around with the control board. Well I got lucky! About a quarter down from top of control board there are four white chips. The first chip on left I put a piece of wire (copper) between the first and second wires on the top of the chip and it works just fine. Don't know if this will work for anyone else but it's worth a shot. Better than paying $249.00 for new board!

Sorry it's the first chip on left! Not the right

I purchased the St. Croix SCF-050 and have had nothing but issues. First the unit does not heat our home properly, its a large forced hot air furnace that is suppose to be able to heat up to 1800 sq feet, its not capable of that, the blower is low and weak even on the high setting. I questioned the settings/ functioning of the control panel when it was first installed as there was not a noticeable difference when increasing the temperature range. I was told by the installer that it was working properly. The heat range never seemed to work properly. I wrote to the installer voicing my concerns with in 6 months of the purchase. Today 11/16/15, I woke up at 4:00AM to a smell of smoke in our home, I went into the basement smoke was all though the basement, the furnace appeared to be off but I could see a glow from the back of the unit, there was no fire in the burn box. There was a fire in the back of the unit which appeared to be coming from the control panel. The flames were fairly high, but for the most part contained with in the back of the unit. I had to use a fire extinguisher to but out the fire.The pellets in the hopper were hot to touch as the fire was directly underneath the hopper.The other issue I noticed when this occurred is that the fire in the burn box was out, and there was an abnormal amount of pellets in the burn boxed, the pellets had smothered out the fire and the pellets were backing up into the hopper. There was no clog. everything moved freely and easily out. The fire appeared to be electrical, the furnace appeared to be in start up mode and taking in air increasing the flames.Once the unit was unplugged and the fire put out with the extinguisher the problem seized. The basement was very smokey, the first floor somewhat . This could have been a major issue. My wife and I have two small children. Very concerned with this product. The furnace is 3 years old.

I used to love our corn burning stove. Now we need a new control panel because it doesn't recognize that there is a fire in the pot, and keeps shutting down, also, the two fans are a nightmare. We replaced one already, and now the second one is bad. It's a bad design- it scks air in back there where the fans are and they get super dusty and corroded with stuff. We clean it often, still happens. The fan is also super noisy. It's almost impossible to find replacement parts. We bought it from a dealer that was set up at a rental place, no idea where he is now or how to get ahold of him. Cant find anything online. The stove itself is GREAT when it's working properly, it puts out tons of heat for our big farmhouse and keeps heating costs low- WHEN it's working correctly. Right now, it's not working and we need parts. Where do we find parts? SV

I have read a lot of comments about NO SUPPORT on St.Croix stoves. I must be blessed and I hope I can help others. We bought our first Auburn in 2006 from a dealer that went out of business within a year. We searched and found a dealer 100 miles from our house that had very helpful people (both on the phone and shipping us parts). A&L inc www.aandlinc.com has been very helpful getting us a new control board, gaskets, fan parts, and with cleaning suggestions. We now have a second Auburn that we bought used and were able to refurbish to almost new condition. I hope this info can help others.

In 2007-8, A friend picked out & installed an Afton Bay for us when we had a major family crisis to deal with. Seemed to burn good--no major problems (just carbon build-up on the glass door and I had stove cleaning done or did it myself every year.) All of a sudden this year during the coldest month, the motor must have seized up, because it went out and some kind of electronic/industrial smoke came pouring out. I had to call the fire department, who arrived in force. But later I discovered they had picked out the cracked pieces over the "on" section of the electronic board, so that now a one1/2x 2 inch gap is present, but they wouldn't own up to it. (Earlier the plastic control board cracked one cold morning when I pushed the 'on' button, but it still worked.) As for the smoke, there was never any actual flame, but the motor looked burned to a crisp. Can't find anyone to take a look at it--the original store (75 miles away) went out of business or moved. This was not a cheap stove. I agree that the manual is not easy to learn from. Would never have another one!

I have a St Croix afton bay pellet stove which was purchased in 2009.Every week this stove is cleaned the way our sales person from Dutchess county told us .Last year we started to have a small problem the stove would just not burn after two hours.Called up our sales person, mine you they are also tech.They came out and diagnose the problem which they told us there was nothing wrong with stove and charged us 200 dollars. After they left the problem persisted to get worse.The answer I got from them they needed more money to do a step 2 diagnostic which they whated 385 dollars.I told them you where just here and your tech told me nothing wrong.They whated this money up front before they even come out here.All and behold they give a telephone number to call tech support from st.croix which I did, we went over everything step by step to solve this issue. Nothing worked.Now they he tells us it is the control board which we installed same problem now the fuse on the control board blows every time we plug it in.I called the my tech in DUTCHEES COUNTY they what to remove my stove from the house and what 500 dollars up front before they even come here I said really We were scheduled for August 2019 its the last week of Sept. and still stove sits here.Tell me has any one had this issue before. Lets see if anyone from the st.croix tech support answer this e mail.