Hello good people! I'm new here and I have a bit of a long story so my apologies if I break protocol in any way. After using an old Jotul #3 for the last ten years or so and feeding it every 4-5 hours, after some research I broke down and decided to upgrade to a 3-year-old Pacific Energy Neo 2.5 wood stove (not insert) which has been a bit of a challenge, or more aptly a comedy of errors.
Upon arrival at the seller's home I managed to get the huge thing loaded into a homemade trailer with the help of a 4 wheel dolly and the homeowners I bought it from, but since we all have bad backs it wasn't easy; in hindsight I should have removed all the cast iron prior to loading, but when I asked them if the sliding top "cook" plates were removable they told me they weren't... I should have known better because everything can be dismantled given the proper tools, but being in a bit of a rush I gave them the benefit of the doubt. Flash forward; I did manage to get it home in one piece, but when I unstrapped it to show it to my brother the trailer popped off its jack stand and the whole thing rolled out and did a faceplant into my driveway... Broken glass everywhere, bent metal, in short, a nightmare, but this is where it started to get interesting.
One of the small cast iron front pieces came off and I attempted to look it up by the part number to find replacements for the thing. Well, oddly that part number didn't exist, at least not on the interwebs and not in the owner's manual(s) for the 2.5, or the 2.5 LE (I'm still not sure what the difference is... age perhaps?) so at this point I'm flying semi-blind. I decided to table that question until we got the stove inside. After some attempts at righting the beast back on the dolly with a come-along, levers, elbow grease, you name it I finally broke down and had my neighbor move the thing as close to my house as he could which was partially under my deck with his excavator. I won't tell the story about how it fell over again while I tried to move it out of the rain, because no one wants to hear about multiple pulleys, ropes, rigging and such and eventually we did finally get it in the house. Did I mention this thing is extremely top heavy? Finally, with the beast on a level floor I attempted to use pipe clamps to get the bottom steel tabs on the cast iron to mate with the slots on the bottom of the stove. This is where the cast iron started to move freely and I had an "AH HA" moment and realized that not only were the sides easily removable, but all the cast iron was. Knowing this would have saved a lot of time and a lot of money deposited in the swear jar.
Fast forward again, I visited the closest Pacific Energy dealer in my area to order some parts and found out they didn't carry the glass and didn't seem to be able to order it, which I found rather odd. The dealer suggested I have the glass fabricated and he gave me the specs which I provided the local glass shop with which is when I found out that NEO ceramic glass is $100.00 per square foot! Once I got my jaw off the floor I ate that $250.00 bitter pill, ordered it and picked it up last week... Well just to add insult to injury the dimensions the dealer provided were for a smaller stove. So, flash forward again and I'm back at the dealer and after some semi-heated discussion regarding whether the old guy working the register did, or didn't, provide me with the wrong dimensions (you can't make this up) they agreed to go 50/50 on the next piece of glass. I'm guessing they didn't want to ruin their relationship with the local glass shop, or future business from me. Oh yeah, I also needed replacement firebrick because the hard firebrick they sold me was roughly a 1/2" larger than the broken pumice brick it came with. He originally told me “They’re all the same size”.
At this point I started feeling bad for the guy because I was starting to think he was suffering from dementia (some days I'm pretty sure I'm headed there myself). Regardless they were finally able to cut the firebrick down for me, but it was still another headache. Flash forward again to today. I've got the right size glass, I've got the right size firebrick, I was finally able to bend the damper lever back to a position so that I could remove the ash dump, vacuumed the thing out and started assembling the firebrick which is when I noticed something odd. Near the ash dump hole are three raised 5/8" wide metal rivets (quality control oversight?) and the brick would almost certainly break if I were to just lay it on top of them. My options at this point are, do I drill a shallow hole in the firebrick, use some of the old gasket and ash to level the brick, grind those rivets down a bit, or maybe I'm just missing something obvious.
At this point if you told me those bumps are there to keep the bricks from shifting I would probably believe you, but I honestly doubt that's the answer. Secondly, I'm still in search of an owner's manual for this beast that actually matches the part numbers. Sadly, it appears that speaking to a Pacific Energy customer service representative is pretty much impossible, so I'm open to suggestions. I suspect that this won't be the last head-scratcher I come across, but in the meantime any constructive feedback is welcome and hopefully, this helps someone else to not make the same mistakes I did. Thanks in advance! -Eggyolkio
Upon arrival at the seller's home I managed to get the huge thing loaded into a homemade trailer with the help of a 4 wheel dolly and the homeowners I bought it from, but since we all have bad backs it wasn't easy; in hindsight I should have removed all the cast iron prior to loading, but when I asked them if the sliding top "cook" plates were removable they told me they weren't... I should have known better because everything can be dismantled given the proper tools, but being in a bit of a rush I gave them the benefit of the doubt. Flash forward; I did manage to get it home in one piece, but when I unstrapped it to show it to my brother the trailer popped off its jack stand and the whole thing rolled out and did a faceplant into my driveway... Broken glass everywhere, bent metal, in short, a nightmare, but this is where it started to get interesting.
One of the small cast iron front pieces came off and I attempted to look it up by the part number to find replacements for the thing. Well, oddly that part number didn't exist, at least not on the interwebs and not in the owner's manual(s) for the 2.5, or the 2.5 LE (I'm still not sure what the difference is... age perhaps?) so at this point I'm flying semi-blind. I decided to table that question until we got the stove inside. After some attempts at righting the beast back on the dolly with a come-along, levers, elbow grease, you name it I finally broke down and had my neighbor move the thing as close to my house as he could which was partially under my deck with his excavator. I won't tell the story about how it fell over again while I tried to move it out of the rain, because no one wants to hear about multiple pulleys, ropes, rigging and such and eventually we did finally get it in the house. Did I mention this thing is extremely top heavy? Finally, with the beast on a level floor I attempted to use pipe clamps to get the bottom steel tabs on the cast iron to mate with the slots on the bottom of the stove. This is where the cast iron started to move freely and I had an "AH HA" moment and realized that not only were the sides easily removable, but all the cast iron was. Knowing this would have saved a lot of time and a lot of money deposited in the swear jar.
Fast forward again, I visited the closest Pacific Energy dealer in my area to order some parts and found out they didn't carry the glass and didn't seem to be able to order it, which I found rather odd. The dealer suggested I have the glass fabricated and he gave me the specs which I provided the local glass shop with which is when I found out that NEO ceramic glass is $100.00 per square foot! Once I got my jaw off the floor I ate that $250.00 bitter pill, ordered it and picked it up last week... Well just to add insult to injury the dimensions the dealer provided were for a smaller stove. So, flash forward again and I'm back at the dealer and after some semi-heated discussion regarding whether the old guy working the register did, or didn't, provide me with the wrong dimensions (you can't make this up) they agreed to go 50/50 on the next piece of glass. I'm guessing they didn't want to ruin their relationship with the local glass shop, or future business from me. Oh yeah, I also needed replacement firebrick because the hard firebrick they sold me was roughly a 1/2" larger than the broken pumice brick it came with. He originally told me “They’re all the same size”.
At this point I started feeling bad for the guy because I was starting to think he was suffering from dementia (some days I'm pretty sure I'm headed there myself). Regardless they were finally able to cut the firebrick down for me, but it was still another headache. Flash forward again to today. I've got the right size glass, I've got the right size firebrick, I was finally able to bend the damper lever back to a position so that I could remove the ash dump, vacuumed the thing out and started assembling the firebrick which is when I noticed something odd. Near the ash dump hole are three raised 5/8" wide metal rivets (quality control oversight?) and the brick would almost certainly break if I were to just lay it on top of them. My options at this point are, do I drill a shallow hole in the firebrick, use some of the old gasket and ash to level the brick, grind those rivets down a bit, or maybe I'm just missing something obvious.
At this point if you told me those bumps are there to keep the bricks from shifting I would probably believe you, but I honestly doubt that's the answer. Secondly, I'm still in search of an owner's manual for this beast that actually matches the part numbers. Sadly, it appears that speaking to a Pacific Energy customer service representative is pretty much impossible, so I'm open to suggestions. I suspect that this won't be the last head-scratcher I come across, but in the meantime any constructive feedback is welcome and hopefully, this helps someone else to not make the same mistakes I did. Thanks in advance! -Eggyolkio
