I am finding this an interesting thread for a couple of reasons -
1. I'm surprised there aren't some more of our "usual suspects" jumping in on this one - usually folks are much more anxious to help out. (Come on guys, I can't carry this all by myself!)
2. It seems strange that there should be such a huge difference in what the two of you are experiencing in the way of support and help from VC and your local dealers, especially from VC - it almost is like you are dealing with two different companies. The only thing I can think of Jason, is to wonder if you purchased your stove off the internet rather than from a local dealer? We all like to save money, but VC has a fairly well publicized policy of supposedly only doing support on stoves purchased through regular dealers, not via internet shops, and if you read the some of the discussions on dealer support we've had here, many dealers don't want to support stoves they didn't sell initially, or at least they don't do as much for those customers.
I don't have much idea on what could be causing your poor performance problems. Two things that occurr are poor draft issues, poor air sealing on the rest of the house, and possibly "operator error"
Can each of you describe your burn procedure? Does the insert have a "bypass" damper? If so, when are you closing it? (Failure to close it would cause short burn times and low heat out put as most of the heat would go up the chimney) Where are you putting the coal bed? The other Everburn stoves seem to do best if the coals are piled up in front of the throat where the Everburn system sucks its air in at the back center of the stove. There is a thread elsewhere on the board where one of our users got a large Dutchwest Everburn, and does an excellent description of how the system works, and how he runs it for best performance.
One problem that some folks encounter is that stoves suck up a considerable amount of air, and if the house isn't well airsealed you can have enough additional cold air being pulled in to cancel out a good bit of the stoves heat, making it look like the stove isn't putting out enough. This is a subtle problem because it looks like the stove but really isn't. However, this usually isn't as much of an issue if one is using an OAK like Jason, so it might not account for his problem. Still, it doesn't hurt to check. As Elk (one of our regulars, who in his other identity is a building inspector) likes to point out, the stove is only a small part of heating efficiently, it is just as important to air-seal and control the air coming into the structure.
However one really dumb thought does occur to me Jason - in your first post, you mentioned that your OAK terminates in a "dryer vent". Is that what it really is or does it just look like one? If so, it could be your problem - where did that termination come from (VC or some other supplier?) A typical drier vent is designed to have air blowing OUT of the house, and has a flapper to keep air from sucking back in when the drier isn't running. A stove OAK is supposed to suck air IN, and a drier vent flapper would shut off the flow when you need it most! Check that vent, it shouldn't have any kind of flapper on it, at most there may be a screen to keep out leaves, rodents and so forth... Make sure there are no obstructions in that vent line....
What kind of draft do the two of you have? What sort of chimney setup are you venting into? How big is the flue? Inside or outside? How tall? Do you have a chimney cap? Do you seem to have good draft, especially when you have the Everburn system kicked in?
Gooserider
