Might have FINALLY fixed black glass issue, but...

[eclecticcottage]

Quick background:

Stove bought new and installed in fall of 2011 by hearth shop. In spring of 2012 had same hearth shop clean flue and replace door gasket (glass would blacked by the handle even when burning hot/eco bricks). Between fall '11 and spring '12, hearth shop was sold. New owner was a jerk and didn't want to fix screw ups in install-BTW, the shop retained the name, etc, however he claimed he wasn't responsible because he only bought the building. Wasn't happy when called out on the fact that EVERYTHING remained the same (name, number, displays in shop, etc) so that was a lie-he bought more than the building, and in fact, had all of our info on file so he must have bought the accounts and probably payables/receivables as well. Much arguing lead to the door gasket fix (at no charge, although they did charge for the cleaning, which we were ok with since it's just yearly maintance) as well as the stove being leveled properly (we hadn't realized it was out of level), other issues remained (they didn't put the pipe all the way down against the top of the stove so when the blower runs the pipe-as well as the blower-rattles, it's about 1/8"-1/4" above the stove top).

This year we know we have dry seasoned wood (MM confirms). We cleaned the flue ourselves. Still have black glass. Removed old gasket to find the installer never scraped off the old RTV and the gasket was slightly larger as well as loose in some spots. He added a washer to the handle to compensate. We bought and installed the correct gasket after scraping the old RTV AND the cement that he used. He had also started the gasket in the middle/bottom of the door instead of a corner, we started in the lower left corner as per the manual, and removed the extra washer. Hard to test over the weekend (warmer temps), but there was only a slight haze on the glass near the handle now. Might need some tweeking. I can say after this experiance we wouldn't buy another Lopi unless that shop gets sold again. I'm just glad the guy in the store is good, so at least getting parts (for now anyway) isn't an issue (since we have to go through a local dealer ala Lopi's rules for the dealers).

Found we aren't fans of an element of the Republic door design though. We looked at the doors at the showroom, both the Avalon verson of our stove and the Repubilc 1250 have the same design-the handle hole is drilled partly into the gasket channel. Looked at an Endeavor and a Liberty and both of them have a "wider" door so the handle hole is drilled next to the gasket channel instead of into it. We're thinking this is part of the problem, since the gasket has to go around the handle (kind of a "c" shape, but not that dramatic of a curve). It's certainly not a huge issue, but still...

 

[Slow1]

Sometimes if you want it done right you have to do it yourself... sad, but true more often than I'd like.

 

[Ram 1500 with an axe...]

Let me ask, when you start your fire is your fire starter near the bottom or the top? Since I switched to putting fire starter near the top when lighting, I have elevated my black glass issues, I used to think it was the gasket because it seemed so thin to me, it ended up being my light-up technique that was causing it. Just a thought.......

 

[eclecticcottage]

We've tried both bottom and top down fires. I prefer the old school bottom lighting whereas DH has decided he likes the top down fires when lighting from a cold start. It did it with hot reloads as well, and no matter how hot/long the stove ran, that black glass wouldn't go away. Even with a top temp of 600-700 for several hours, great secondaries, nothing seemed to change it.

Yea, slow1, that's pretty much how we usually do things. Most everything around here was DIY. We have a friend that's a contractor/carpenter so we drag him over every so often to let us know if we're on the right track for things we haven't done before. We had dealt with this hearth shop previously for two DV stoves at our old house with no complaints-found out later that the old owners had sold it before we bought the Republic. Might have looked around more had we known that. We chose Lopi the first time not really for the stove (I've never really loved the look of the Heritage Bay) but because the other dealers we visted had pretty cruddy looking installs in their showrooms (one VC dealer had really bad ones, I don't recall what was wrong looking, but I know it was bad-which was too bad because they also carried Thelin and I LOVE the Parlour DV). This dealer had a nice showroom with clean, good looking installs and nice and seemingly knowledgable sales staff. Anyway, since we were "playing with fire" and had NO experiance with wood stoves much less installing them, we thought we'd be better off with "pros".

 

[lopiliberty]

He had also started the gasket in the middle/bottom of the door instead of a corner,

Hmm that's where mine is started and they did that at the factory

 

[eclecticcottage]

Hmm that's where mine is started and they did that at the factory

Weird. I don't recall where it was factory, just that the manual states to start in the bottom left corner. I didn't think to look at the Avalon version at the hearth shop when we were there, I was mainly looking for how the handle was set up to compare.