Hampton/Regency Door Adjustment Blues

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pulldownclaw

pulldownclaw

Feeling the Heat
Mar 2, 2007
399
Richmond, Va
So, this is our 3rd year with the Hampton HI300. Love the stove but I'm having serious issues with adjusting the door for a good seal so I can stop overfiring the stove. The adjustment on these things is done on the latch where the door secures itself to the stove. The door seemed to need adjusting last year, so I took out the latch and removed a washer from the top and bottom like the manual says to do. The door was so tight I ended up snapping the handle off. :shut:

So, after going thru the nightmare of getting a new handle on, I just burned with a loose door and had to keep an eagle eye on the stove to make sure it didn't overfire on startup. This year I've tried to adjust it again with no luck. I just can't find the sweet spot, it's either too loose or too tight. Maybe I need a new gasket? Seems awful soon for that, but what do I know?

Any Regency/Hampton folks with tips out there?
 
I'd try a new gasket as it may be the easiest fix. Can you switch the washers for thinner ones?
 
After three years gasket replacement is not out of the ordinary...
What does your gasket feel like?
Is it still pliable or is it as hard as a rock?
Did you try the "Dollar Bill" test?
If it's not pliable, it can't compress, no matter
HOW much adjustment you make to the door.
Replace it the kit is around $50 from your Hearth shop...
 
I have 2 regency products and need to adjust the door on one of the them soon. I looked in both the regency manual and the Hampton manual and the latch system for them are different. So I can't offer any advice. I did a quick search on you tube and didn't find much. Maybe contacting the installer or your chimney sweep? Good Luck!

I do have a question for you. This is our first year with the insert and I would like to attach a magnetic thermometer to it but I can't seem to find a place to get an accurate reading. I have looked in the manual and searched this site but found nothing. Do you use a thermometer?
 
Gasket most likley getting worn.

Murphy: we have a thrmo on the front left corner just above the handle. It seems to read a little cooler than it is, so I tend to use 400 as the "baromoter" with the thrmometer there. We ahve one on the top, but since it has the air gap it's rally kinda useless there. When I read the reviews of the Regency inserts, the front corner seems to be a pretty common spot.
 
Bit of a derail here, but yes, that is where I have my thermo on an I-2400 as well. Based on observation & reading several threads here there is no great place for a thermo on this model. All exposed metal front & top is an outer shell seperated from the firebox by airspace. The exception is on the door where a thermo looks god-awful, but IR gives good readings there.
Thermo will be slow to react to temp changes and will read low ESPECIALLY with the fan on high. MY thermo can drop 150 degrees or so if I crank the fan from a low setting (I have a rheostat on the plug, nice!). Problem is even worse on the top shelf.
I cruise anywhere btwn 300-450 on thermo. 450-500 w fan on high I'm getting a bit nervous, tubes are glowing & heat pumping.
 
The gasket still feels fairly pliable. It's compressed of course, but doesn't feel hard. The dollar bill test fails in several areas. I just feel like there's a problem with the door adjustments I've done, but I've tried so many things I'm at a loss. Maybe I can replace the gasket and see if that helps at all. I've read a couple of posts concerning the Englander stoves that they need "high density" gaskets, anybody know about the Hampton's, or can I just get gasket material anywhere?
 
Did you ever fix the door seal problem?
I am in the process of purchasing an HI300.
Thanks.
 
Here is my input on this problem... as I have the same stove and suffered from the SAME issue also resulting in a broken door handle. When you take the latch system off the stove you can adjust the height of the catch bar up and down. The higher the catch bar, the looser the stove will close and the lower, the tighter it will close. Leave all three washers top and bottom in. Also, you can feel the door handle "click" once you close the stove and the door still fails the dollar bill test. Take the handle and push down a tiny bit more and it will latch again. The salesman came to my house to show me this. My door did the same thing and I am running it as I explained. All three washers top and bottom present and shuts and latches perfect.
 
The latch system on the HI300 could be designed a bit better. The handle bolt on our display model routinely gets snapped off. We started using a grade 8 bolt which seems to have solved the problem, but you can still see the pot-metal spacer/rosette on the handle flex when you trying open and close the door.
 
We got the HI300 installed yesterday. There is indeed a second notch in the latch that snugs it up a bit more.
 
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