Jotul 8 questions

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rodeorulz

New Member
Dec 27, 2011
2
Wyoming
I'm trying to sell a red Jotul 8 (can someone confirm which 8 it is by looking at the photos?). It was sitting in our garage when we bought our house so we weren't the original owners of it.
Can you tell me as much info about it as you know? Does it have firebricks? Any general info is greatly appreciated as I know nothing about it except what little info I have found online.
I have attached photos to help out with identification.

I would like information as soon as possible since I do have a few people interested and want to make sure that I and they know what they need to know before someone purchases the wood stove.

Thank you all in advance!
 

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#8 made from 1981-1989
 
That's the spin-draft kind, i.e. the 1st generation. I have/use one of those as my exclusive woodstove this year (supplemental to my heat pump).

I have a long thread on this that's somewhat of a blog of my own experiences running it--
https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/60162/

There are no firebricks in this stove, only steel liners on the sides and back (back plate acts as a perch for the baffle/flue exit) although I added some firebricks on top of my baffle to help extract more heat from the stove (tends to spill smoke out when opening the door unfortunately but that's worth the bother to me). It can be top-vented or rear-vented, and that can be switched by unbolting the cover & flue exit collar and installing them in the opposite locations (looks like yours is set up as a rear-vent, that's better for heat extraction IMO, I converted mine from top-vent to rear-vent intentionally)

I managed to get a Jotul dealer to track down the old manual for that 1st gen-- http://spirilis.net/junk/woodstoves/jotul/8_Spin_Draft.pdf

It had a Coal kit available for burning anthracite, believe it or not, but Jotul only made them for a year and you can't get the kit anymore. Woodmanspartsplus seems to sell the (wearable) cast iron grate bars for that coal kit, but from what I could tell the coal kit basically sucked--very hard to use, it was a hopper type of system but you had to shovel the coal into a narrow gap between the top of the door opening and the top of the hopper, couldn't top-load or anything like that. For the heck of it, here's the manual for that coal kit: http://spirilis.net/junk/woodstoves/jotul/8_coal_kit.pdf

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Also, when cleaning it, be sure to remove the stovetop (it lifts right off--check the rope gasket, might be a good idea to replace that), upper baffle, then all the steel side/back plates, then after cleaning the ashes off the bottom plate--remove the bottom plate and thoroughly clean the ashes out from between that bottom plate and the bare bottom iron casting. That space between the bottom casting and the ash plate (where the ashes/wood sits) is an air channel for the stove's rather rudimentary "secondary burn system"--where air comes through the lower slot in the spin draft, under the ash plate, between the steel side/back liners and the outer shell of the stove and enters the upper firebox. When you have a huge load of wood in there and it's burning there in the upper firebox, you can get some serious secondary combustion action and the chimney should be totally void of smoke. Nice clean burn. Not as fancy (or reliably clean of a burn) as the newer non-catalytic burntube stoves, but not bad for 1984!
 
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