Don-bar inserts?

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I am looking to purchase one, and am very impressed with everything I see.... but they are far away (in your neighborhood) and can't actually see a unit.

The only person who wrote about them wrote very high praise, but I was looking for more confirmation of the quality.
 
Did you find out any more information on this? Which model are you considering? I am looking at this and the Osborn 1800 insert and am trying to make up my mind. I like the price of the Osburn 1800. Anybody know the price of a comparable Don-Bar?
 
Looking at the single-sided insert. They are all custom made is my understanding.

In Canada, so EPA rating isn't that kind of concern for me. I would assume their application is underway, so it might be fair to say they are not yet EPA approved (as in, keep an eye out for it...)

I am going to order an insert from Don-bar for this spring. Looking at around 3000.00 all in, plus shipping, but I'm going to Quebec city to pick it up with the little lady (I owe her some romantic time, and Quebec City is a wonderful destination. OH, the food... good thing we are both meso-ecto types.)

They are made of steel, so we're talking about a lot of heat from this unit. I have not (yet) spoken with anyone who has a Don-Bar insert. However, my WETT inspector came by yesterday (he installs inserts). He was blown away by the amount of heat that the steel units from Quebec he'd recently seen were producing. He really liked the idea of a steel unit from Quebec for my application.

I deal directly with the folks at Don-Bar, and the insert will be made to fit exactly. I have never imagined such personal service for such a product. Very, very impressed, worth a few bucks more on price. My heating bills (nat. gas) are crazy, so I'll re-coup the cost within 3 years. And... just my opinion, but when I sell the house (if..?) I know this unit will be a fine feature deeply appreciated by buyers. It does not have that... kinda clunky insert look. It looks classy all the way, to me. If the quality of manufacturing is as high as I hear, then the Don-Bar insert seems like a good investment on all fronts.

I am also big on the idea of the Ash-dump blower system, for a few different reasons. But don't get me started on that.

And the Door... the feature that sold me. This unit is a 'traditional' open fireplace one minute, and a high-efficiency heater with a _full_ fire view the next. Romance for the little lady, roasted marshmallows for the kids, and cheap heat for dad without the teeny fire window effect. I love it.

The only mention (with highest praise, and I wrote this reviewer, who confirmed his praise) of them on the internet I can find is here: http://www.hvac-for-beginners.com/wood-fireplace-insert-ratings.html

My impression of them so far is excellent. Still, I have yet to install the unit (until this spring), so I can only give my very early impression (and that is all good so far.)

With 5 cords of wood just stacked stacked, you can bet I am very eager to write an experienced review about them ASAP!
 
Thank you. Too bad they are not available in the US. Looks like I may go w the Osburn then. Have a great day!
 
I would NEVER recommend this company. I bought a fireplace insert base on the positive review in HVAC-for-beginners.The problems began with their business end. After my order went in and they deposited my cheque, I waited for two months for the product to arrive. An unreasonably long delay with no explanation. Parts of the order that they told me would be with the delivery were not there. I had to pay extra for another shipment. When I emailed them about any of the following complaints, I had to send repeated emails in order to get a reply. Their customer service, as far as I can tell, is non-existent. Here are some of my issues:

1. To close the damper, there is a screw that you turn with a lever. Normally, opening a valve or screw means turning counter clockwise. To open the Don-Bar damper, you have to turn it clockwise, to close it turns counterclockwise. Not a huge deal but really annoying.
3. On the top of the unit, there is an opening for the fresh air intake for when the door is shut. The flat plate that is designed to slide to open the fresh air intake or close the fresh air intake does not completely close when you want to stop fresh air from entering the unit. This is fine for when there is a fire, but on days when there is no fire, warm air from the house will be escaping continuously up the flue. When I complained, thinking that they had made an honest mistake, they told me "that's the way the engineers designed it" and refused to do anything.
4. As it turned out, I didn't have to be worried about the last item. The first several times I used the unit, it was with the door open. Everything worked fine. But then I noticed that the unit filled with smoke and the fire died out within minutes of closing the door, regardless of how open the fresh air intake was. Using a flashlight, I looked down inside the fresh air intake and found out something really funny: There is NO opening below the top surface of the insert to allow the fresh air to enter the unit. It was as if the fresh air intake was for appearances only. What might have been a tiny slit of an opening was jammed with the top edge of a screen which gives the appearance that there is an opening on the inside. Amazing! So I contacted the Don-Bar company, again thinking that they must have made an honest mistake and guess what? They again told me "that's the way the engineers designed it" and refused to deal with it.

Since then, Don-Bar has refused to return my emails.

So now I'm left with trying to figure out if I should do something to try to correct the fresh air intake or just always keep the door open when I burn wood. I could drill some holes inside the fresh air intake on the outside to the allow a flow of air inside, but do I know how many holes I should drill?What should the total area of the opening be?Should I attempt to match the surface area of the top opening?
 
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It didn't. He didn't buy one. In 2010.
 
Not too well. I just haven't used my fireplace at all for over a year. I miss having fires, but I'm not willing to risk burning down my house because I can never shut the door. During the summer I tried to see if I could drill some holes to open up the sealed compartment below the fresh air intake damper so that fresh air would flow through, but I wasn't able to get my drill angled correctly. So I think the insert is just going to sit where it is until I can find the time to pull it out, put it in the back of my car and take it to a welding shop where I hope the problem can be corrected. Of course before I let a welding torch touch the thing, I will have to scrub off all the creosote. My next time off work will be Christmas so until then, it's just sitting there as a reminder of what can happen when you buy something sight unseen.

The company is still refusing to interact with me. So sad.
 
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then I noticed that the unit filled with smoke and the fire died out within minutes of closing the door, regardless of how open the fresh air intake was. Using a flashlight, I looked down inside the fresh air intake and found out something really funny: There is NO opening below the top surface of the insert to allow the fresh air to enter the unit. It was as if the fresh air intake was for appearances only. What might have been a tiny slit of an opening was jammed with the top edge of a screen which gives the appearance that there is an opening on the inside. Amazing!

Are you sure you're not missing something? This doesn't sound right. Maybe have someone with a background in different types of stove, with lots of experience in their internals, take a look at the unit.
 
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I get how it doesn't sound right. I'm still amazed at the stupidity. The Don-Bar insert is exactly as I described. The only way to get fresh air into the firebox is to leave the door open. The fresh air damper on the top of the unit has no opening into the firebox. Don-Bar has consistently refused to even address the issue in any way whatsoever.

It's like a carpenter built you a house with a front hallway that has an exterior door and an interior door. It looks good until you realize that what he built is more like two small closets, one that opens to your living room and one that opens to the outside. It won't be a hallway until you cut out the wall separating the closets.

Because I do want it to eventually work, when I pull it out and take it to a shop, I won't be just taking it to anybody. I will make sure I take it to someone with a background in different types of stoves who has lots of experience.
 
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In this case I think it is safe to assume that the company knows what is doing. Accept that this could be user or an installation error. Often the air from the intake is routed via a plenum to the front as an airwash. You can't see the intake holes in that case. If you could it might be a route for flames to come out of the stove! I suspect that there is a drafting or poorly seasoned wood issue and not the stove.

Does this insert have the multi-purpose intake control that also operates a flue damper? If yes, is the damper open when trying to start the stove?

Capture.JPG
 
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No it does not have a multi-purpose intake control. It came with an intake control that looks like the top diagram in the photo you pasted. In reality, that control is simply a rectangular metal piece that sits on top of the stove that can be slid using a tool Don-Bar supplied. By sliding this piece of metal you can cover or uncover rectangular slots cut in the top of the stove that seem like they should be the air intake. The slots are clearly visible but they go into a dead-end plenum. On the front of the stove, there is indeed the appearance of an airwash. I can see through the screen that covers the airwash opening that there is a space or plenum there that should be what routes the air to the airwash rather than to the firebox. The problem is that there's no opening between these two separate, dead-end plenums. I can shine a flashlight from either the open slots on top or from the airwash on the front and no light comes through.

The flue damper has a separate control that sticks out of the flue collar that Don-Bar supplied. Yes, I always opened it when lighting the stove and left it open throughout the fire because the door had to remain open. With the door open, once the fire was going well I could close the flue damper part way without any smoke problems at all. In fact, the unit works great with the door open. The problem is whenever I closed the door (with both dampers wide open) the fire would right away get smokey and then go out. I tried doing this a couple of times with the best seasoned wood available but the result has been the same and the glass gets covered in creosote.
 
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Have you tried a fire with dry construction scrap to eliminate the wood as an issue?
 
I've owned one of these inserts for 5 years now, the double-sided one. In fact, this company was the only place that offered such a model for an existing two-sided masonry fireplace.

I definitely see light shining through the mesh when I point a flashlight down the air intake openings on the top of the fireplace. So it sounds like a factory screwup. They make these one-off from a template for each order.

From our experience, we had nothing but trouble with them from the start. We paid to have them come and measure our fireplace, so they had no excuse to screw up. But they did.

Our first insert arrived and was installed by their team (from head office in Quebec). When we started a fire that evening, we had a lot of backdraft and the house was filled with smoke. The base of the fireplace also warped considerably because there was nothing to shield the metal from the fire. Like they could have told us to put some sand or brought some themselves.

Anyhow, moot point, the insert was badly configured at the factory and not suitable for our configuration. For our setup, we needed a smoke chamber, something that was not specified by the estimator. To their credit, they also added smoke shields on both sides which drop down 3 inches when the door is opened.

Two weeks later, they came back with a brand new insert and took away the old one. They did not replace the closing plate at the top of the hearth even though the flue shape had changed. There was now a gap on each side of the closing plate which let inside air up the chimney. We had to fix that ourselves since they washed their hands of it. The fireplace worked better, but the big glass window gets dirty in a hurry. So much for their air stream theory.

I would not recommend anything by Don-Bar since they are not high-efficiency. They don't even have refractory fire bricks lining their boxes. They surreptiously use the term "Certified EPA exempt" on their website. This is misleading since you are either certified or exempt, not both. If you are exempt, it means your product has not met the minimal air tightness standards set by the EPA. Bottom line: 90% of the heat from your Don-Bar fireplace is going up the chimney. If you want to get close the BTU ratings they advertise , you're going to need to fill up your firebox to the max.

Sure, it's better than an open fireplace, but for the money you can get so much more efficiency from a reputable manufacturer.
 
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