Heritage at home, is it a dud?

[Highbeam]

There's plenty of oozed mortar on this one. The air control is stiff too but it seems to work lock to lock. So is it safe to scrape the oozed mortar flush with the soapstone?

I am in good spirits about this so far.

 

[Todd]

You shouldn't have to do this. If you screw something up, then what? Can't you exchange it or get your money back and buy a different stove elsewhere?

 

[Highbeam]

It's tough Todd, the nerd in me wants to fix it if I can. If this was a handheld widget that I could just swap out at the dealerthen I would have brought it straight back. With the amazing weight of this thing and difficulty in moving it I tend to want to make it work. You can bet though that I had a hard time explaining to the wife why I was up to my elbows in cement dust and sweat trying to "hit the manifold with as mush force as you can achieve" (quote from Hearthstone) of our brand new and expensive stove. If she sees me pull out my 4.5" disc grinder as planned then she will know I qualify for stupid.

I really want to make the Hearthstone work but this is quickly becoming a repaired, reconditioned, reject, lemon stove that should not cost me as much as a new perfect stove.

 

[Highbeam]

Update: I'm not messing with it anymore. Dealer's tech will do it under my watchful eye.

 

[hearthtools]

Update: I'm not messing with it anymore. Dealer's tech will do it under my watchful eye.

I would have them take off the cast iron ash Pan compartment off the bottom of the stove ( just a few bolts) and Chip out any extra Mortar that is in the air slider chamber.
We had to do that yesterday with a stove. It might be fine now but once it heats up it might stick all together.

 

[Highbeam]

I'll mention it to the service guy. A bit tough to make him do extra work when the slider seems to work fine now. We'll see if he feels a problem. Is there a gasket or seal between ash pan casting and the floor casting?

I got a real nice service bulleting from HS regarding the proper way to remove the secondary manifold. There is a key piece of process that unlocks the whole mess and would have allowed me to get the job done last night. Oh well, at least I know how to do it if needed in 10 years.

 

[hearthtools]

Yes the ash pan chamber seals to the bottom of the stove with fiberglass gasket
so no need to reseal anything once we remove this.
Sometimes we remove this pan so we can get our forklift type dolly under the stove without messing up the ashpan if the stove is not on a pallet.

 

[Highbeam]

Update:

It's all good now. The service man came out and did a real good job of making everything come together. He, actually we, took out the manifold and ground off all the extra gooped cement that squished into the box, then ground a little off the back of the manifold where there are some ridges on a raised seam, then ground a little off of the rear mount for the manifold, and then finally ground a little off of the front "noses" of the manifold that sit on the tabs. Everything now falls in nicely. He did a few checks and seemed to only grind as much as needed for the fit.

Now that everything sits all nice and level I am getting anxious to install it.

The intake air control was nice and smooth with only typical resistance. You couldn't move it with a feather but a pencil would do it no problem.

This was a factory problem and not a shippers abuse or a dealers faulty assembly. It came from Vermont this way and so everyone buying or selling Hearthsones ought to be aware of this potential issue.

Thanks to all for your help.