Is this stove safe or a piece of junk?

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robertjp

Member
Oct 7, 2008
75
Western NY
Recently I was given a small woodstove by my uncle. I want to use it for my 600 sq. ft cabin on a lake with no heat. It is a Lavec model 150 and it says "Scandia" on the front. It is small. I read somewhere that these were cheap ( I dont doubt, it says made in Taiwan 1982). Does anyone have one of these or does anyone know if this is a safe model? It appears in very good condition but getting a round 6" pipe from a oval shape on the back looks like it will be diffucult. (it's 7.75" x 5.5") One woodstove dealer told me it will be tough. SHould I move forward with installing this or is it too unsafe? Thanks in advance. RP
 

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If it doesnt have a UL listing plate on the back, or something similar (a recognized test lab) just scrap it. If it does have a listing plate on it, contact your local fire chief for the clearances in your area for a UL listed wood stove.
 
Heres the plate on the back. Looks like it was tested by someone and it says UL. I hope I can use it because I dont have the cash to buy a new one but on the other hand I dont want to burn the place down either.
 

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These are cheap Jotul knockoffs. Well at least on this model Scandia put it's own name on it. The problem is that the castings on these knockoffs can often be poor. That affects how tightly sealed the stove is and the door fit. For this reason they tend to be a better stove for someone that likes to tinker and totally understands wood burning. It is not a good entry stove for a new woodburner.

Is it safe? Possibly, if it is installed with full 36" clearances. It somewhat depends on how well they made this one. If the stove is tight and has no leaks, and IF it has inner burn plates that fit together well with the upper baffle, then it could be an ok cabin or shop heater. Lots of ifs.
 
One test you might want to try is:
In a very dark room, take a bright flashlight and put it inside and close the door. Look around, look for light. That will at least give a hint to its build and how tight the stove is.

Your gonna need some serious clearance to combustibles on that install, so you may want to do some measuring BEFORE you make a call on it.

Not trying to bash a potential heater, but that was a pretty low grade stove when new. It didn't get better with time. It could still be a serviceable unit, but proceed with due caution.

(and make sure its legal to install in your area, as said above, some places won't allow it to legally be installed).
 
Well, assuming the stove is in usable condition, with a proper connection to a proper chimney burning properly dried wood and operated properly, it's not so bad. Personally I would keep looking for something better, like an old Jotul of the same vintage.

Clearance is your friend.
 
My primary concern with the Scandia knock-off stoves is that back then the Chinese were notorious for inferior iron castings. In fact it has only been in the last ten years or so that the quality has shown improvement. Lots of Chinese tractors with broken axle housings laying around in junkyards. And with a small stove like that people tend to burn them really hot trying to put out heat and that is a recipe for disaster if the castings are defective.

What kind of chimney are you thinking about?
 
Thanks guys for the info but now Im more confused than ever. When you say the castings could be defective...what are castings and what could happen? There are 3 metal objects that lay inside the stove, I just cant figure out how they go. 2 are alike and it looks like they might hang on the walls? There are 2 small square openings on them and 3 pegs on the walls. The other piece is a roundish looking thing that maybe a log would sit on? Can these stoves overheat? I dont know what to do now. junk it or keep it.
 
Almost every part on the stove is a casting, cast out of iron. Defects can be hidden bubbles or cracks.

The plates with the square holes are the side plates. Yes, they hang on those pegs on the sides. The other piece is the baffle. It sits on the ledge formed by the edges of the tops of the side plates. The arch faces the back of the stove with the arch downward so that it curves around the flue exit.

Yes, this stove can overheat, so can most any wood stove if run improperly. If it has cracks or leaks, it will be hard to control. That would be a very good reason to pass it on or make it a planter.

Is this your first woodstove? If you decide not to keep it and there are no leaks or cracks, maybe give it away on CL? The stove looks in relatively decent condition, though it appears to be repainted, so it's hard to say. Someone could probably use it.

PS: Here is an exploded parts diagram for a Jotul 602 which this stove is a copy of. My 602's side burn plates look like part 5A in this diagram. The 602 has a round flue port so I am not quite sure about how Scandia cast its upper baffle.
 

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Wow Im impressed with your guys knowledge, yes it was painted by me yesterday with high heat rustoleum. It really didnt need it except the legs had some rust on them so I painted the whole thing. The stove looks like it was either never used or rarely used. I dont know much about them but it looks quite good. I still dont know what to do but will try the flashlight trick mentioned above. How much can you get a small new woodstove for now just in case?
 
For 600 ft² you don't need much stove, and you don't want to give up a lot of footprint to make it a safe installation. This old stove you've got will require either a large footprint or a whole lot of work installing wall protection. In any case, it's an outdated, cheaply constructed inefficient burner. If you're set on installing a woodburning stove in your cabin, you have a whole lot to learn. As important as the stove is the proper venting of the flue gases. That means stovepipe (also called connector pipe) from the flue collar on the stove to where it penetrates the structure, then an appropriate support/transition to Class A chimney pipe, which needs to extend up to a height dictated by the configuration of the roof and where the pipe emerges. For any kind of decent, modern, efficient installation with a modestly sized stove and all that's required for getting it ready to burn, I'm just gonna swag that you need to set a budget somewhere around $2000 - $3000. (~$1000 for a stove, and ~$1000 for all the other stuff) You may well be able to do it for less. You can certainly do it for a whole lot more. In any case, as you begin to explore the possibilities, you'll find some very nice little stoves available today that burn wood quite efficiently and have very tight clearance requirements to combustible materials. Welcome to the forums! Rick
 
Check out the Englander 13 which should be in the ball park of $800 (?). Napoleon also has some. You can find a 1450 for under a thousand.

If you search Craigslist carefully you can come across some good deals on used stoves. I got our Englander 30, with a blower, for $500 used for only a couple seasons.

You can find an old Jotul 602 for a couple hundred - mind you it's a pre-EPA stove - but a good one.

Personally I would turn the Scandia into a smoker or something.
 
OK I give up. I wont use the stove even though I dont think it was ever used. The rope around the inside of the door is brand new, so I doubt it was used. Getting the best stove to keep all the experts happy sounds good but realistically, I cant go over7-800 bucks if that. If that wont do it, I guess Ill just use my propane heater Ive been using and bag the idea altogether rather than burn the place down.
 
There may be a reason it wasn't ever used . . . or was only used for a bit.

My own take . . . when it comes to having a high heat source in my living space I want to make sure the fire stays where it belongs and the heating appliance is safe . . .
 
robertjp said:
I cant go over7-800 bucks if that.
Click to expand...

If that includes the pipe, its gonna be tough to do. You are definitely in the "used" market, but if you keep your eyes open, there are some pretty good stoves that hit the used market, some may even come with pipe.

If heating with wood is a goal of yours, then do it. It WILL be tough on your budget, but if your lucky, patient and willing to look around, you might just run in to what your looking for.
 
robertjp said:
OK I give up. I wont use the stove even though I dont think it was ever used. The rope around the inside of the door is brand new, so I doubt it was used. Getting the best stove to keep all the experts happy sounds good but realistically, I cant go over7-800 bucks if that. If that wont do it, I guess Ill just use my propane heater Ive been using and bag the idea altogether rather than burn the place down.
Click to expand...

Well, now that you're sufficiently scared of this thing...

... if you ever get out to the eastern part of the state, I'd love to take it off your hands. :lol:


I don't get the comments about clearances. It's a small stove, so it shouldn't need huge clearances. The plate on the stove gives the minimum clearances required. Why would these need to be exceeded? Stove clearances are based on the area of the radiating plate and the maximum surface temperature expected. Stove with side baffles don't get as hot as bare castings do, and the back of that stove (which should face the wall in most installations) is only about a square foot in area. I think the recommended clearances for that stove are conservative. Unless the thing is literally belching fire out somewhere, the quality of the castings won't change the laws of heat transfer.

The biggest problem I see is the oval collar. I burned a Scandia 118 copy (the big brother of your stove) and it had the same size and shape collar (5" round) that the real Jotul had. I'm surprised to see that they deviated from the Jotul 602 on your stove. You may have to have one custom fabricated. The cost of that could be anywhere from cheap to prohibitive, depending on the willingness of your local shop to do one-off work.

BTW, Taiwan ain't China (at least for now, anyway). I sold power tools from both places. The Taiwanese stuff wasn't badly made, but the designs were somewhat atrocious, and the motors were massively wound yet still burned out (again, poor design). The Chinese stuff was garbage all the way around. The Chinese have closed the quality control gap between the two, but back in the 80s when this stove was made, Taiwanese stuff was vastly superior.

Here's another observation that may be of interest. A couple years ago, I lost a piece of door gasket at the beginning of the season. I fully expected the stove to run away on me. Not only did it not run away, it would smolder and go out if I closed the air down too far, even with a big fire raging away inside. I couldn't really see any difference between the way the stove worked with the fully gasketed door and the way it ran with the gap in the gasketing. Naturally, I replaced the entire gasket, but this eased my concerns that air might be leaking in through the spots where there were chips in the stove cement along the seams.

I admit to being biased since I used one of these things as my primary heat source for almost 20 years without incident. The biggest problem with these stoves that I see is that the internal baffles eventually warp and burn away in parts because they are intense little burners. But that holds true for the real Jotuls as well. The guy that gave me my stove replaced it with a real Jotul 118. He says he's on his third set of side baffle plates and these ones need replacing now. They are quite expensive from Jotul. Now he finally needs a new top baffle. Mine went last year. Since he used my stove for several years before he gave it to me, my top baffle seems to have lasted longer than the genuine article, even though I burned my stove a lot harder than he does with his.
 
The size of the stove has little to do with clearances. The stove radiates a lot of heat and was tested to the clearances listed on the back label posted above. I'm not sure if PFS is an accepted lab. If not, without the UL label, it would have to be 36". This could be reduced with wall shielding.

I agree that if it was me, for a cabin installation, I would put in a safe flue system and hearth and would try it out. Perhaps the cost of installation is the deciding factor and not the stove?
 
Wrong direction. That is going from the pan into the fire. Search on Vogelzang here.

I would keep the stove you've got first.
 
Vogelzang makes some decent stoves...but the Boxwood's not one of them. Rick
 
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