Back from VC what an impressive day

[GVA]

OTOH, the stuff that I've seen on the forums doesn't seem to have significantly more complaints about physical malfunctions or defects in VC stoves than in any other brands, and fewer than what I see with most any brand of pellet stove.

Gooserider

Let's leave the pellet stoves out of this, and go back to the topic at hand. ;-)

I'm not ranking on pellet stoves as such, just pointing out that there basically are very few if any hardware complaints about woodstoves of ANY brand. I will not hold tales of problems relating to normal wear and tear against a stove, or any sort of problems with a stove due to 'customer abuse'. If you overfire the stove and something melts, that is NOT the manufacturers fault....

I've spent less time on the Forums than many, but my impression is that VC doesn't have a lot of problems with their stoves. Considering the relative numbers of VC stoves out there compared to other brands, it doesn't seem they are doing that badly.

Gooserider

This is Mrs. GVA (against GVAs recommendation....) Anyway, I grew up my entire life with wood. This is our third season with a pellet stove. In both instances, our only source of heat was either the wood (as a kid), or pellet (married to GVA).....I would take pellets over wood any day of the week HANDS DOWN! Wood is a pain in the butt! First you have get get it (I always got seven cord a year, seasoned and already split), but then you get splinters in your hands and break your back stacking it. Then everynight, the family does WOOD CALL, where everyone has to get an armful of wood an put in the wood hoop. In the morning, there are only coals left (we had an Allnighter)....and the house is cold. Then there are the wood chips and bark laying around on the floor. Opening the door to chuck in wood and having coals leap out. This is not counting CHIMNEY FIRES. The only time volunteer fire depts go out in small towns is because of chimney fires. Ashs being scooped out....with red hot coals in them. Nope fella's, I much prefer the pellet. Neat little bags of pellets, that I open, dump in the hopper.....Mr. GVA cleans twice a month....heat is constant. I set the temp....75 degrees.. Wood....no control. Generally your either melting or freezing (cause the fire went out)

 

[GVA]

Well I went to feed the dogs and look what happens.
Anyway if you take a woodstove and pellet stove and set them side by side they do the same thing blowers will fail on both.... the pellet stoves have more moving parts and this causes problems but what it comes down to in the end is the people running them....... Wood or pellet
My wife is in rare form tonight and I think her wrath will be felt on this forum for a while to come. :grrr:

 

[BrotherBart]

Mrs. GVA:

"First you have get get it (I always got seven cord a year, seasoned and already split), but then you get splinters in your hands and break your back stacking it. Then everynight, the family does WOOD CALL, where everyone has to get an armful of wood an put in the wood hoop. In the morning, there are only coals left (we had an Allnighter)....and the house is cold. Then there are the wood chips and bark laying around on the floor. Opening the door to chuck in wood and having coals leap out. This is not counting CHIMNEY FIRES. "

Ok. Now what is the bad part?

 

[Todd]

Good points Mrs GVA and welcome. My wife is like you, she doesn't like the mess and work of wood. But then I do most of the work anyway and I don't mind. I was thinking of a pellet insert for my fireplace, but the price of pellets has gone up so much I might as well go with gas. A pellet burner I know told me he paid $150 a ton 5 years ago, now it's almost $300. I can get firewood for free and enjoy the exercise.

It seems around here anyway, that pellet stoves are really getting popular. The local hearth shops are selling more pellet than wood stoves. The need for pellets has gone up and the supply has stayed the same, thus the increase in the price of pellets. Maybe the price of pellets will drop in the future as more pellet manufactures are built and VC will have to think about getting a share of the pie.

 

[webbie]

I'm not ranking on pellet stoves as such, just pointing out that there basically are very few if any hardware complaints about woodstoves of ANY brand. I will not hold tales of problems relating to normal wear and tear against a stove, or any sort of problems with a stove due to 'customer abuse'. If you overfire the stove and something melts, that is NOT the manufacturers fault....

I've spent less time on the Forums than many, but my impression is that VC doesn't have a lot of problems with their stoves. Considering the relative numbers of VC stoves out there compared to other brands, it doesn't seem they are doing that badly.

Gooserider

There are major differences between the brands AND fuels when it comes to problems or lack thereof. I sold stoves at retail for over 20 years and VC did have more problems than my other brands. This does not mean that is was "over the top", just that we had many more problems. If an Acclaim or Encore was used on a heavy basis, the owner might have to do $500 to $1000 worth of repairs in the first decade. That is significant - but maybe not excessive when worked out by the year.

But other "plain jane" stoves such as steel models and the simpler Jotuls gave us almost no problems. I was just at my cousins this weekend and he has a Jotul 3 that he has been firing hard for about 12 years or more...and he was singing it's praises. "The best stove ever made" he said. I don't think he bought any parts for it. We sold hundreds and hundreds of those older 3's and 8's and there were virtually NO warranty or premature parts problems.

Pellet Stove? Always a nightmare for us. At one time we talked to dealers who said they averaged 2-3 service calls for each stove sold the first year. A pellet stove dealer has to take a 100% different approach to business than a store that just sells wood or coal stoves. They must have much more technical expertise and have the capacity to service all these relatively complicated stoves. Frankly, our shop did not have the infrastructure in place.....so even when we sold 30-40 pellet stoves a year, they ended up talking up more of our service time than the other 400 wood and gas units we typically sold. It's really a different business.

 

[BrotherBart]

Maybe the price of pellets will drop in the future as more pellet manufactures are built and VC will have to think about getting a share of the pie.

I bet that Peter MacLeary heats his house with one of these:

http://www.englanderstoves.com/25-pdv.html

 

[webbie]

BTW, I talked to a couple top dealers this weekend about VC. The news was not good. I told them it sounded like VC was coming back, etc. etc - they said the company was difficult to communicate with and deal with - I did not get specifics. The dealers are also upset about the recent past.....things like changing the way they do business (inside stuff like whether they are dealer direct, work through distributors, etc. etc).

Here's the thing - no one who studies the issue can doubt that VC has the ultimate stove foundry and many other things going for it. But, the BIGGEST part of the VC legend was the way the company treated people, employees, etc. and the PERCEPTION of such. The "Older" CFM spent a lot of this "economic capital" - as I said, everything from getting rid of each and every veteran to making the products "non exclusive" (Imagine a BMW dealer on every corner and some working out of their house).......This is NOT the fault of present management, but you cannot turn back history. I agree with the comments that a turnaround is MUCH more than good products. It is building a legend from the ground up...and that legend must also be carefully defined since it will be different from the original. It's a tough row to hoe from a marketing perspective. The good news is that in the attempt they are creating some new and quite exciting products. The bad news (for them) would be if they are not able to make their goals over the short and long run.

I understand Elks being impressed. Anyone who sees that operation would be impressed. Remember, though, that a lot of what you are seeing is the original dreams and follow-through of an almost cult-like company which was inspired by a combination of ideals that are virtually impossible to replicate today. That foundry was dreamed-up and built by Duncan Syme and a band of merry hippies and back-to-the-landers and other longhairs!

There are some good articles here and there about the company - here is one I wrote about some lost history:
https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/wiki/W._Mitchell/

Here is one of the better old articles about the company from INC. Mag:
http://www.inc.com/magazine/19890301/5564.html

For those who might question my hippie reference
"It begins with a product that became an icon for an era, and with the model of new-age entrepreneurship that seemed to blossom spontaneously at its birth. It is the story of a failed corporate metamorphosis, too, of a growth company struggling to come to grips with a declining market. And it is the story of a personal education as yet unfinished, of the transformation of Duncan Syme from a self-proclaimed "backyard hippie" with a dream into a manager with a responsibility."

Yes, no doubt VC was started by a bunch of hippies....but the dream ended fairly quick.

 

[webbie]

Timothy Leary was a Prof at Harvard along with Richard Alpert (Ram Dass)....

Yes, Duncan is a self-described hippie (see INC article) and I have seen many pics of the early crew at VC and can attest for hair at least to the shoulders and other such factors. They were "drop-outs" from society in the classic sense - having moved to backwoods VT and Backwood Colorado. Here's an article and my take on it and other stuff I've heard around it:
http://tinyurl.com/vy59m - About Prickly Mountain (VT)
"The Vermont enclave Prickly Mountain was built as an antiestablishment utopia—and that’s what it still is."
http://tinyurl.com/tummt

(broken link removed to http://tinyurl.com/y96hle)

Long story short, there is an enclave near Sugarbush in Northern Vt that become a gathering place for hippies - many of them highly educated college types from the Ivy League. A spirit of Utopia and "anything is possible" in housing and other design was fostered there - sort of an artists colony type of thing. Duncan and Murray were part of the Prickly Mountain Gang, and that is where the stove idea and even design originated.

Just to clear things up about colleges and hippies - remember, in the late 60's the colleges were the epicenter of a lot of the "movements" from the anti-war to the free speech and on and on. Hippies, at least the ones I knew, often had former lives as things like MIT graduates! Hippies were, in fact, largely from the middle and upper class educated families, as the poorer folks tended to be drafted and sent to Vietnam....and other reasons apply also. In other words, hippies were largely white, educated, etc.

(Wow, amazing how much gets lost over the years- we'll have to find some pics of Duncan sucking on a joint)

BTW, this goes for a lot of the stove industry as a whole - lots of hippies, back to the landers, etc....involved. In fact, I remember the first couple trade shows - a lot of long hairs and casual clothes. Then, in 1980, all of a sudden we noticed that the trade show was taken over by "suits" (salesmen) - most of us had never seen anyone in the industry wear a suit! It just was not done When I used to visit stove companies, you would see the owner welding or painting stoves....hair tied behind him, of course!

Many Folks might know that Kurt Rumens, President and Founder of Lopi (Travis Industries) was a drummer for a highly regarded rock and roll group....he has stories of being "this close" to being Aerosmith! But he fell into selling stoves....and then making them! A couple million stoves later, and Kurt is still very well known for a "rock and roll" attitude in the industry....

Speaking for myself and some others I know in the industry, we were coming of age in the late 70's - trying to find something to do which fit in with our ideals of a simpler life and energy independence, etc. - this is why I and many other entered the business.

So, while this does not apply to 100% of the industry, a LOT of original biz was related to dreamers like Duncan, Kurt and...to a lesser extent, storekeepers like myself.

 

[GVA]

Long story short, there is an enclave near Sugarbush in Northern Vt that become a gathering place for hippies - many of them highly educated college types from the Ivy League. A spirit of Utopia and "anything is possible" in housing and other design was fostered there - sort of an artists colony type of thing. Duncan and Murray were part of the Prickly Mountain Gang, and that is where the stove idea and even design originated.

Yeah Mad River Glen I used to ski there till my knees buckled about 7 years ago.............. Hey come to think of it I cut my hair off then too...

 

[Gooserider]

This is Mrs. GVA (against GVAs recommendation....) Anyway, I grew up my entire life with wood. This is our third season with a pellet stove. In both instances, our only source of heat was either the wood (as a kid), or pellet (married to GVA).....I would take pellets over wood any day of the week HANDS DOWN! Wood is a pain in the butt! First you have get get it (I always got seven cord a year, seasoned and already split), but then you get splinters in your hands and break your back stacking it. Then everynight, the family does WOOD CALL, where everyone has to get an armful of wood an put in the wood hoop. In the morning, there are only coals left (we had an Allnighter)....and the house is cold. Then there are the wood chips and bark laying around on the floor. Opening the door to chuck in wood and having coals leap out. This is not counting CHIMNEY FIRES. The only time volunteer fire depts go out in small towns is because of chimney fires. Ashs being scooped out....with red hot coals in them. Nope fella's, I much prefer the pellet. Neat little bags of pellets, that I open, dump in the hopper.....Mr. GVA cleans twice a month....heat is constant. I set the temp....75 degrees.. Wood....no control. Generally your either melting or freezing (cause the fire went out)

Gee Mr. GVA, and I was always wondering why your avatar had that neat Richard Pryor hairdo... Did it get flamed by Mrs. GVA too? ;-P

Seriously, I'll freely admit that I've never dealt much with pellet stoves, but they've never tempted me either. Just never seemed to offer that much advantage over other easier to deal with technology like gas / oil, etc. Cost of the pellets that I've seen is 2-3 times the equivalent in wood as pre-cut and split cord wood, let alone if I scrounge or get log length and process it myself. The cost of pellets as I've seen it mentioned in the forums is enough that if I had to pay that much I'd just crank the furnace and pay the gas bill instead, as there isn't that much difference. Yes, I do have to work on processing the wood, (7.5 cords this year) but that sure beats paying to work out in a health club or some such.

I only get splinters if I don't wear my gloves. I make one trip a day for wood, using my new two-wheeled wood cart from Harbor Freight. In warmer weather I get about a day and a half out of a trip. I do get some bark and chips on the floor, mostly I sweep them up and use them as fire starter. My coals stay in the stove except when I'm shoveling out the ash (not a problem with a respirator mask) and then I dump them in the ash bucket - no problem.

Our pre-epa smoke monster stove will go for about 6-7 hours on a load of wood from blower on to blower off. It will keep a load of coals enough to restart with for about 24 -36 hours The temp in the house takes longer than that to drop. So I don't find the control to be a problem either.

That isn't to say that you are wrong, just that I prefer cordwood and that we have different priorities. The only reason I even brought up pellet stoves in this thread was to point out that despite all the badmouthing of VC, the bulk of the stove problems I've seen on the forum have been from pellet stoves, and that what we see for problems in cordwood stoves (of any brand) is minimal.

(And in this thread I've since seen comments from other stove pros confirming that.)

So no hard feelings on my part, and I hope none on yours...

Gooserider

 

[webbie]

OH wow, we have proof now of the actual existence of hippies and the stove industry!

It will be a bad night for all those fine Hearth.com readers who think some suits started that biz. Actually, suits were brought in later and destroyed it over and over again......while they milked $$ from it.