VC Encore NC - Door $ bill test results...

Sounds like the door is leaking air, or you mave have to much draft. Give us details of your chimney, size , height, is it outside, inside, lined, insulated. You may need a damper if it is not the air leaking around the door. Hopefully someone with this stove will let you know how they react when you cut the air control back.

Slow1 said:

7 burning days done and I decided to try the dollar bill test on my doors... Here is the report:
Between the doors: it is tight enough to hold the bill.
Left door Top: Can pull the bill out but bill will be curled
Right door top: Can pull the bill out with some resistance
Left door bottom: No resistance
Right door bottom: No resistance
- Air wash on glass isn't working well - Despite nice hot fires, I have significant parts of the glass that never get clean.
Any thoughts on this? Would a leak on bottom of doors cause issues I'm reporting or am I simply inventing problems for myself? Is this something that can be adjusted on the doors?

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As we used to tell our grad students: use the little gray matter. Listen to what you've discovered and act on it.

You already know the answer: "the Lincoln slips out, do the rout(e)". We can do a rap.

Read the many posts here on re-gasketing. It is a simple process--kind of fussy and messy if you are not compulsively neat. Use procto gloves for the cement. Do it.

Forget the clear ceramic ( BTW: it is not "glass") smoking up. Real wood burners don't give a damn about seeing a fire all the time. And don't try "fixing" the doors" until you get the seals correct.

We want heat. Repeat: we want heat. We want heat. We want heat.

It sounds like a leaky door is your problem - as you are already aware. You can adjust the doors with the screw on the inside of your latch - you can use the allen wrench that came with your stove. The manual has the information. You may want to also check the ash pan door seal. It can be adjusted the same way. After adjusting mine, the windows are staying more clear, the temps are easier to control, and my burn times are longer.

If you're overly curious - blow out a match or light and blow out a piece of kindling or rolled up newspaper and pass it by the suspected leaky areas while you have a good fire going. If you have bad air leaks you should see the smoke pulled in through the door.

My opinion - and it is an opinion - is that the dollar bill test is the one you should go by as far as when to re gasket the stove. I don't worry about a couple spots here and there where I can yank the bill out as long as there is some decent resistance on the way out. I would, however, worry about an area where it slid out with no resistance. The purpose of the gaskets is to greate a seal that air cannot be pulled through while the stove is operating - if there is resistance on the dollar bill, it will be too tight a seal for air and the gaskets are doing their job.

That being said, if air was being pulled into your stove through the doors, the smoke would follow it when you did the smoke test. As long as you had something producing plenty of smoke and you are comfortable that you watched closely and tested thoroughly, if smoke didn't pull into the stove around any of the gaskets, I'd consider other possabilities. First thing that comes to mind would be too much draft. Too much air is pulled out of the stove, too much air has to rush in to replace it, and there's your hot quick fire. What are the specs of your chimney set up?

Also, something to consider, the temps you are seeing (up to 700*) aren't into territory where I would necessarily feel you are dealing with overfires. If you shut the air down at 650*, as you mentioned in your origional post, you should see the stove climb in temp - 650* is cranking, then you cut the primary air off and less air and heat go up the flue, more heat is trapped in the firebox. Consider simply shutting the air down earlier if you are trying to obtain cooler fires. Begin by shutting down close to completely at let's say 350* and see what happens. Different stoves and setups will react differently, but with some experimenting you should be able to determine the minimum temp at which you can shut your air down and still keep the secondary burn cruising instead of having the fire die. At 650*, the fire is sucking up air anywhere it can get it and if you shut the primary down it's just going to suck on the secondary and keep right on cranking.

Do the gaskets already, stop fooling around with all these suppositions. Unless, of course, the stove is for other than heating. :red:

Door gaskets aren't that mean to do. And it's something that will need to be done every year or two if you're using it to heat the house. That is, unless you are EXTREMELY careful loading wood to not catch it a bit with a log once in awhile and dislodge it...

Finding leaks isn't hard either. Take a candle, or one of the "barbecue lighters", propane or butane torch... light the thing and adjust a medium fire and move it slowly past where you think the leak might be. The fire will get sucked into the leak, and might go out.

Do not stretch the gasket as you put it onto the door with the cement. It will reduce the diameter of the rope and may not seal. Trust me... or don't, and buy some extra gasket.

I just regasketed my whole stove....makes a BIG BIG difference. I have a woodstock fireview. It was an easy job to do... door gasket literally takes about 5 minutes. follow Leons advice and DO NOT strectch the gasket. the heat will shrink it when you fire it up some.

Read the other posts on gasketing recently.
All the above plus: use High Density gaskets. Demand them.
And: use procto gloves for applying the cement in the gasket grooves.
No charge.

Slow1 said:

I had one that went to 700f despite cutting the air supply completely off at 650

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That's completely normal. Many stoves have a temperature spike just after the damper is closed all the way.

I use furnace gasket cement, black stuff comes in a tube, some fiberglass mixed in with it. A Q-tip works pretty good for laying down a thin layer on the "BARE METAL" left when the groove is cleaned properly with a Dremel mototool.

No more than necessary to cause the gasket to adhere.

May be adjustment left in the latch to tighten it some, reference to adjusting the door latch. I usually push the door in and see what kind of compression it takes before I pick up on metal on metal contact. If it's pretty springy, you might take a turn on the latch screw and see if it tightens up.

if it is only 8 days old the new gasket has probably "shrunk" a little and the door needs to be readjusted.

If you aren't having significant overfires, and everything is working fine (everburn, consistent temps for a period of time) I wouldn't worry about hitting 700. As you've probably read, it is not uncommon - particularly for a stove that big. And I'm supposing that the temps fell from there. If you didn't see the smoke sucking into the doors, you most likely don't have a leak there; at least a significant one. I would adjust the doors (front and ashpan) as tightly as you can and go from there. Then, if you're having thermonuclear burns - get new gaskets. From what I understand adjustment of the door is more of a rule than an exception. The stove expands and contracts regularly - particularly a new one.

There is as tight as you can, and "reasonable". I weigh 275 pounds, and move most of my wood a piece in each hand... split or not. Whenever I make something as tight as I can get it, I end up buying parts to replace what I broke. The gasket doesn't need, and should not be, "squished", only compressed about half the available material.

Close the door without latching it.

1. Can you push the door further closed, compressing the gasket material?
2. Or is it floppy, and you hear the metal bottom out before you feel gasket material compress?

Floppy? New gasket.
Springy? Tighten 1-2 turns and see when happens. Sometimes it doesn't take much at all.

A word... make darned sure you understand how your door latches... make sure you're really tightening the latch with the direction you're turning the screw in... some are counterintuitive.

Arrow inserts have a threaded handle with the latch that stays with the door. Screwing the thing "in" (tightening it), actually loosens the compression of the gasket and creates a leak or makes one bigger. To tighten the latch, one must unscrew the handle.