I've been running my Heritage all winter, the 11th winter for this stove. Something changed 3 days ago. I noticed that I had some trouble starting the (cold) stove in the morning. As I normally do, I kept the side door cracked until the kindling and small splits were burning aggressively, at which point I would normally shut the door (primary inlet is wide open). The fire slowed a lot more than normal, so I reopened the door. Assuming that maybe I split up a log that could have been damp, I continued to build the fire, but in general it took longer to heat up the stove.
After the same thing yesterday, this morning I did a couple things to the cold stove. I put the shop vac on the dog house (nothing obvious came out) and removed and inspected the ceramic baffle, which seemed fine. I reassembled and lit the stove. Again, it just felt starved for air. Once above 450, or so, I did start to get some secondary combustion, but it was different. Normally the holes in the tubes look like gas jets at this point. They didn't, so I'm concerned that the secondary inlet is blocked.
My stove is partially in a fireplace, so I can't see the back of the stove right now. I did a test with an incense stick, seeing around back as much as I could. I could see the behavior of the primary inlet, which seemed to be normal as I opened and closed it, but I'm not sure where the secondary inlet is and the incense smoke just seemed to waft away from the stove when the primary was closed.
Any suggestions?
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