Stove smell on light up...does yours smell?

Hey guys

For those of you who don't know, my stove smells when I light it up. It's not paint (already heated it all winter, stove top temps to 900 degrees and I know what curing paint smells like), it's not paint curing on the pipes (heated the pipes to 850 degrees), it's not smoke, it's not CO (which is odorless) or CO2 (odorless). It's coming directly from the metal.

It's for the first 1-2 hours. A smell comes from the stove top. Kinda sweet/chemically smell (new word). Is this normal? The entire house will have that smell if I open my door to my main floor. My basement (where the stove is located) will smell strong, I will open the windows and once the stove has been going for 1-2 hours, the smell is less strong. It is coming from the stove top. It's not pain.

It's an Osburn 2300, double wall stove pipe going to an outside Class A chimney.

Am I losing my mind? COuld it be the smell of the metal warming up? I don't know anybody else who has this smell coming from their stove on light up.

The retailer came (at my cost) to look at it and tried the "it's normal" and ended up saying "it's paint" then "we'll deal with this, you'll hear from me within 5-7 days" Guess what: it's been 2 weeks and no news.

Calling the company did not help. The company won't take a look at it, I gotta ship it at my cost to their labs. I aint paying $250 shipping fees ONE WAY for a $2000 stove for them to say "it's normal". The guy on the phone seemed to not be listening to me. I said "SO if you were me, what would you do" to which he replied " GOod question, I don't know what I would do!" I asked if they would take it back, they said "it's not a performance issue, the stove heats well, etc" F--- I was mad. He said "nobody here has ever heard of that..we had one bad bunch of metal once but the stove would smell the entire time" I said "what if it's a bad batch" he did not say anything. I said "if I buy a car and it works fine but smells terrible, the dealer would d o something about it" to which he replied "they'd take it for a good cleaning". Bad bad service.

Here's my question: does your stove smell when you light it?

Andrew

Backwoods Savage said:

No, our stove does not smell. Someone else was having a problem with this just a short time ago and perhaps will chime in here. I have to admit it sound extremely odd. How could you isolate it? How can it be cured? I don't have the answers but hope you do get some.

Click to expand...

I agree, I certainly hope I can find the problem. If my retailer doesn't replace it, I am selling it. Simple. And I am getting something different, different brand. Before purchasing a new stove I will certainly ask 1 BILLION questions on this forum.

Dakota: there's nothing. Not a thing. I am thinking there could be a human remains in my stove hidden. Other than that, there's nothing. If I stick my nose right to the stove top on light up, as the temperature of the stove top rises I can smell it more and more. There is NOBODY close to me. LOL, I live 700 miles East of Montreal. ALLLL alone. Hell, there isn't even a hearth store nearby!

As for cold starts it's simple. My stove is in my basement. My basement is wide open and I am not using it right now (since I am in the midst of finishing it). Electricity where I live is CHEAP. It's First 30 kWh per day 5.45¢/kWh - Remaining energy consumption 7.46¢/kWh. SO, in order to use my stove properly, since I don't have my partitions up in my basement yet, I gotta heat 1275 square feet, then the heat rises. It's been quite mild lately, it has not gone below 25F in over a month. My electricity bill (hot water included) is only 100 bucks for a month. If I had my partitions in my basement and it was completed, I would use the stove. But I am quite certain that heating 1200-1500 feet of unused space with my wood stove will cost me more than heating me living room and dining room/kitchen with electricity ALLLLL that to say, that's why I have cold starts

I can smell it, my installer smelled it, I aint losing my mind (then again, does someone with mental health issues know they have mental health issues?) In-laws (outlaws), friends and other smell it. It lasts 1-2 hours. WHYYYYYYYYYY MEEEEEEEEEE

Andrew

Hey guys

Thanks for the input.

I have tried wiping..and wiping..and...wiping to no avail. It makes no difference.

I can't take the paint off with my nail either. Damn it all.

I think I am beyond the point of no return. At this point I am so frustrated with the unit that I don't even want a replacement one. I want rid of it all together.

I called the installer this evening. He works from home. 2 weeks ago he said I would hear from him (which I never did) so I called tonight. He said he has not spoken to his distributor yet. He said to wait until the spring and we will figure something out. So guess what: no wood fire until the spring. LOL. Grrr. I am tired of this. Very tired of this.

Do your stoves smell?

Andrew

I think it's a bunch of F----- crap. If I had my way, I would take the stove to a friend. This friend does research in sheer/stress of metals and cement. He has a gigantic press capable of crushing Chuck Norris. My stove would go in and I wouldn't look back. The fact that the installer is "trying to contact" his distributor and the company itself not giving a hoot is really pissing me off. I would expect that paying $2000 (which I now realize is more than I should have paid) for something gives you good customer service. BUUUUUUUZZZZZZZZZ. Wrong answer.

So now my stove sits downstairs, my wife is turned off by wood stoves (no pun intended) and I have 7.5 cords of wood waiting to be burned. Phoooey. It's been a long day.

LOL @ PJ. I especially enjoyed the comment from a customer rep (who seemed to be surfing the web or something of the sort). "I don't know what I would do if I were you, that's a good question". And "you can send it to us for our laboratories to test, at your cost, then we send it back to you, at your cost" Christ, that would be like $500



Andrew

lucy said:

I have been reading about your problem from the very start of your posts. I hesitated to comment because this is very far fetched, but since you haven't come up with anything else I thought I would put my experience with a similiar situation. About 7 years ago we bought a cottage in September, the cottage came with an old smoke dragon (which served us very well right up to this past October when we bought a new Jotul). When we first fired up the old stove around October of that year we had a strange, sweetish, unpleasant but not completly awful smell that would appear and then disapear and then come back when the stove was relit, not all the time just most of the time. I will cut to the chase - what it turned out to be was that when the stove was lit it was of course drawing air from all areas of the cottage including behind the wall of the bathroom where the bathroom vent stack was located. On further investigation the vent stack had a fine crack in it and the air was being sucked out of the vent and I guess the holding tank. Interesting it didn't have any odor in the air directly around the problem. Duct tape fixed the problem for the next several years until my husband got around to replacing the pipe properly (out of site out of mind). I can't remember how we came up with the solution but I know it had us stumped for quite a while. Good luck

Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip lucy. That's crappy (bad joke). Here's my situation: my stove is about 18 feet from the west end of my basement, my "stink" pipe is 35 feet away at the other end of the basement. I open 4 windows in my basement. It is certainly a possibility but I don't think it could be that. I stick my nose directly (yes, almost lost the nose hair) on my stove top and that's where the smell comes from. It's sweet, kinda smells like chemicals. When outside, I can sometimes smell my pipe due to the fact that I place 45 degree bend on it for the winter (normally we have lots of snow). If it was from the pipe, would the smell not be pulled from under my stove, into my primary air intake and then into the stove for combustion and not directly onto the stove top? I will certainly double check everything. I appreciate that your first posting was due to my bad luck/ troubles. Not to mention I knew some people in Gimli (same profession as me)

I expect a stove that is sitting to smell if I have not lit for a few days (dust, etc). Kinda like baseboards. But to the point that I need to open my windows for 1 hr and the smell goes throughout the house??

The poor service I have received is making me wanna ditch the stove all together. If a new stove somehow (God unwilling) still smells, then I quit. I sell my wood and use my stove as a table top. :D

Anybody wanna go for a vacation? Free food and lodging if you inspect my F----- stove while you're here.

Nothing like a $2000 wood stove, $1000 worth of wood, $1700 chimney installation sitting in my basement calling my name. This is worse than torture. Thank GOODNESS it's not cold.

Andrew

COrriewf: my wood is seasoned. 2 years old. I use beech, white birch, some maple, black spruce. I have gotten the temps of the stove top to 800 regularly. That's the temp it cruises at while burning properly. It wasn't a 1 time 1 temp deal. I do not clean with chemicals in the room at all; I am currently finishing the basement. The room my stove is in doesn't have gyprock or a ceiling or a floor yet!

NW Fuels: if that's the case about a rat or a car, they have it out for me. I don't have either of those (that I know of).

gyrfalcon: When my installer came two weeks ago to look at the problem, we disconnected the stove, swept the chimney, disconnected the stove pipes, blew them out, etc.

I looked in my ash pan, nothing there.

It is indeed maddening. Grrr.

Thanks guy

ANdrew

Corriewf: my stove get to about 850 or so for 1 hr then goes down to 600 or so. It's only on initial fire up. My paint is still pretty and black. No discoloring at all. I do not run the draft open at all. This is how I light: I use about 10-12 pieces of kindling with new paper and a few bigger pieces on top. I then opeb my damper and my bypass. Light the paper and let it go for about 10 minutes or so. Close the bypass then the door and turn down the damper. I rarely leave my bypass open passed 1/4! It's a hot stove. I am not re-painting it.

I have run air filters. Nothing. I have blown out every piece of stove pipe, the vents on them (since they are double walled), everything. Cleaned chimney, did a rain dance, bought a lottery ticket and searched for a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Nothing.

The reasons I don't want to sand/paint is because then the company will never take it back.

LOL. Troutchaser..it would be nice if everyone contributed $10 but considering I could be a serial killer that nobody knows and with tough times, I don't wanna see that happen. Nor do I like taking from others..the only thing I like to take is advice..which I am trying

HOWEVER, on a good note, the Customer Service rep I spoke with yesterday called me at work and said he didn't like how things ended yesterday. He agreed to take the stove back to test it, I gotta ship it there, they will ship it back. He got a quote for shipping, it's $65. So I gave him the green light and agreed to it. They will hopefully pick it up in the next week or two.

I checked my lottery ticket, no winnings, nothing. Damn it.

Andrew