New Vermont Castings Stove - numerous gaskets not cemented

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Vermonter2011

Member
Jan 25, 2011
14
USA
Some of you may have seen my post from Saturday about a gasket coming loose on a Vermont Castings stove that had been installed less than a month ago.

I just had two people here to repair the gasket. They found numerous gaskets that weren't cemented properly, as follows:

The damper frame was not cemented properly - parts had no cement on them.

The flue collar gasket had no cement on it all.

Neither the back panel gasket nor the side panel gasket were cemented properly - parts had no cement on them at all.

Repairing even the damper frame gasket required that they disassemble the stove, so this was not the type of repair that I could have done myself simply.

By the way, the dealer I bought this from, Bennington Pool, Spa and Hearth, told me that they would charge me $65 an hour for travel time to repair this stove, even though it was a new installation and under warranty. They recommended that I repair the gasket myself. Since they are 50 minutes from my home, and this would have cost me $120 just for travel time to repair a new, defective stove, I opted to have a local woodstove dealer (who no longer carries Vermont Castings) make the repair. Vermont Castings doesn't reimburse the dealer for travel time on warranty repairs, so Bennington Pool, Spa and Hearth passes this on to the customer.
 
I doubt seriously if that flue collar or the body panels are supposed to be cemented at all. One of the reasons for going from using furnace cement to using gasket material in construction was to get away from brittle, leaky cement joints.
 
One gasket had fallen loose after less than a few weeks, and a part of it had not been cemented. Other gaskets had cement in some places and not in others - they were loose and hanging out. Perhaps the flue collar was not supposed to be cemented in place - I'm not an expert, although I hope that the repair guys were - but the side and back panel gaskets had been incompletely cemented.

A photo of one of the gaskets hanging loose is attached. The white section had not been cemented at all.
 

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Does seem pretty sloppy. Did a quality control checklist come with the stove? It sounds like the stove was put together at 4:30pm on a Friday beer night and the QC guy was sick or out of town.
 
Your dealer should be ashamed. Sure, the factory did a crap job, but we aint dealing with the same Vermont Castings as the good ole days. Your dealer should have been back the next day making that thing perfect. I would pursue this for sure. I think any dealer who visits this site would agree with me on this.
 
I recommend that you contact VC directly to verify what needs to be cemented, but also to mention about the shoddy QC and that the dealer won't make the repair under warranty at no cost to you (this seems ridiculous IMO). I have been successful contacting VC myself; I had to leave a message, but they did get back to me in 2-3 days.
 
Good suggestions Gridlock, but that dealer should not be able to get away with stuff like that. If it was me, I would offer to pay to have the gasket fixed and then stiff em. But I guess thats wrong
 
Actually, back when I was in business, I probably could have sweet talked you into letting me mail you some gasket and cement.....and maybe giving you a $50 store credit for accessories next time you came in!

Most of our customers with gasket problems did fix them by themselves....not saying everyone should, but in a lot of cases customers were able to bring the stuff into us (lift a door off, etc.).....

It is quite typical for gaskets on MANY stoves to come off in the first few weeks. In my experience, this is due to various factors - one of the biggest being that new paint on a stove gets sticky when first heated...and often grabs the gasket and pulls it off. That may or may not be the case on some of these.

Either way, hopefully you can learn here how to do your maintenance and simple repair. It's fine to note one problem, but in general we don't want the forums to be used as a "multiple complaint department" except in really serious matters....items such as this are probably best mentioned in your review and rating of the stove (our rating section) after a few months. By that time you will be able to weigh out the good and the bad things about your stove......
 
I agree with the gaskets Craig for the most part, with the exception of that blasted damper gasket. I wouldnt expect a homeowner to do that. You remember those Encores, had a million parts to em.

Now, as far as not using the forums as a complaint dept, I'll be sure not to fan the flames next time. But you know where I was coming from.
 
Franks said:
I agree with the gaskets Craig for the most part, with the exception of that blasted damper gasket. I wouldnt expect a homeowner to do that. You remember those Encores, had a million parts to em.

Now, as far as not using the forums as a complaint dept, I'll be sure not to fan the flames next time. But you know where I was coming from.
Click to expand...

plus one!

those damper gaskets are not simple to re-glue.

i try not to flame dealers/installers here too bad, they call and yell at me-lol
 
What dealer is fixing your stove? is it Friends of the wallet?
 
I'm sure you mean Friends of the Sun. They wound up billing me for only 1.5 man-hours ($82), even though they had at least 2 man-hours plus travel time in on the job. They did a good job, and it was certainly worth $82 to prevent me from having to rip the stove apart.
 
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