So I'm gone doing a fishing show locally every day this week. Get home last night and wife says the pellet insert is about to go out that the flames are low. Sure nuff there's about 10 pellets in the hopper. So I fill the hopper.
10 minutes later my phone rings...it's my neighbor across the street...he's mowed down my mailbox with his car. ugh. But I digress.
About an hour after I filled the stove my wife calls me on the intercom and says the stove just went out. ugh. It don't go out unless something's wrong...yep..the first auger jam of the year. It's 9:30 at night by now. I pull the insert to get at the auger motor collar in the back to turn it with a wrench. I couldn't reach it good enough so I pulled the insert out a bit more...and yep just that little bit too much so that the 4" exhaust pipe breaks the joint at the top of the T on the back of the stove. It's all gobbed up with clear silicone...looks like GE silicone or something like that. There's soot dropping out in a big pile on the floor of the fireplace. Man what a mess. Every time I touch the pipe and it wiggles I get more soot. ugh. I clean it up as best I can and look for metal tape to try and seal it temporarily. I end up having some copper 1" wide tape and used that for the night wrapping the pipe with the copper tape and aluminum foil doubled up to seal around the pipe. (Had to use the foil as I couldn't get it to seal no matter what I did there was soot coming out a little when the stove fan fired up)
There were no screws in the pipe at all...just gobs of this clear silicone...doesn't seem right?? I'm going to HD this morning to get some aluminum heat tape and look for some high temp stuff to seal the pipe up with, is there something recommended for this? Pipe to T wasn't a real tight connection? It seemed sloppy?
Did get the auger unjammed too and ran it for the night without any issues but want to make this correct. My thought is these guys who installed this or the last guy to take this apart was a hack....
10 minutes later my phone rings...it's my neighbor across the street...he's mowed down my mailbox with his car. ugh. But I digress.
About an hour after I filled the stove my wife calls me on the intercom and says the stove just went out. ugh. It don't go out unless something's wrong...yep..the first auger jam of the year. It's 9:30 at night by now. I pull the insert to get at the auger motor collar in the back to turn it with a wrench. I couldn't reach it good enough so I pulled the insert out a bit more...and yep just that little bit too much so that the 4" exhaust pipe breaks the joint at the top of the T on the back of the stove. It's all gobbed up with clear silicone...looks like GE silicone or something like that. There's soot dropping out in a big pile on the floor of the fireplace. Man what a mess. Every time I touch the pipe and it wiggles I get more soot. ugh. I clean it up as best I can and look for metal tape to try and seal it temporarily. I end up having some copper 1" wide tape and used that for the night wrapping the pipe with the copper tape and aluminum foil doubled up to seal around the pipe. (Had to use the foil as I couldn't get it to seal no matter what I did there was soot coming out a little when the stove fan fired up)
There were no screws in the pipe at all...just gobs of this clear silicone...doesn't seem right?? I'm going to HD this morning to get some aluminum heat tape and look for some high temp stuff to seal the pipe up with, is there something recommended for this? Pipe to T wasn't a real tight connection? It seemed sloppy?
Did get the auger unjammed too and ran it for the night without any issues but want to make this correct. My thought is these guys who installed this or the last guy to take this apart was a hack....
