Calling all RSF Onyx owners

[dcummings]

Hi all,
I've been using a new RSF Onyx through this past winter (in Durham, NC) and enjoying it greatly. Periodically I have questions about how this stove fits into our household. I've wondered about dry air / humidifying the house, whether anyone has tried taking out the top grill and cooking (in a pinch), whether people do their own chimney-sweeping and how they get the crud out, etc. We could chat in spurts here, but I was thinking of trying to set up a separate little mailing list (which I would share with any other owners who contacted me) where we could share occasional questions with each other.
Thoughts? You can contact me at [email protected] if you want (or on this list).
Drew

 

[kevinmoelk]

Welcome aboard Drew. Don't know of anyone burning your same stove, but the other things you mention... humidity, cooking, and chimney sweeping are all active topics on the forum. Do a little poking around with the search button and you should get a weeks worth of reading. Most of the above mentioned subjects are general enough to apply to all stoves and wood burners.

-Kevin

 

[kkesler]

Hi all,
I've been using a new RSF Onyx through this past winter (in Durham, NC) and enjoying it greatly. Periodically I have questions about how this stove fits into our household. I've wondered about dry air / humidifying the house, whether anyone has tried taking out the top grill and cooking (in a pinch), whether people do their own chimney-sweeping and how they get the crud out, etc. We could chat in spurts here, but I was thinking of trying to set up a separate little mailing list (which I would share with any other owners who contacted me) where we could share occasional questions with each other.
Thoughts? You can contact me at [email protected] if you want (or on this list).
Drew

I have one we had installed last summer. Not really an insert, though, as we removed the prefab fireplace and put this in it's place, so it fits behind the stone like the prefab unit did.

I am using a whole house humidifier. It helps a tad but it's still terribly dry in the house.

Never thought about cooking, but I have mine plumbed into their aux external fan which is then ducted to each bedroom. The air outlet/pickup and chimney are behind the top grille, so there is not a lot of room left.

I will pay my chimney guy to do the cleaning.

 

[dcummings]

Hey Kurt,
Thanks for your note. We did as you did - put the Onyx in the place of a prefab fireplace that I ripped out (also replaced the uninsulated chimney pipe). I guess I use "insert" to mean inserted into a wall (or chimney chase, as is the case for us) and flush with the wall. A freestanding humidifier is helping us be not quite so dried out, too, but isn't quite enough when we're using the stove a lot (it can't keep up and humidity hovers in the mid-30s). The ducting wouldn't have worked for us without some serious rebuilding of the house, but we have a pretty open downstairs-to-upstairs transition to heat gets up there reasonably well. Maximum heat differential from the downstairs to the upstairs is ten, maybe twelve, degrees in the furthest recesses.
Take care,
Drew

 

[kkesler]

Yeah, with the external thermostat, fan and ductwork it keeps the whole house at ~70 until it's down well below freezing outside, and even then the house heat only comes on occasionally. We have an unfinished full basement, so the task was fairly trivial. We did have to run ducts as the house ducting is in the attic and there is no access up there from the fireplace. The blower (or air noise it creates) is quite noisy, though.

What did they use to go around the face of your unit? The mortar they used around mine is cracked and falling off from the heat cycling.

 

[dcummings]

Our stove is in our main living room, so having it look nice was more important. We paid a guy about $1,000 (might have been $1,200 with the mantle) to put in a slate hearth and surround (I can send you pics if you're interested) and a mahogany mantle. The mantle is just two big slabs, the top one about an inch longer on either side and an inch deeper - an inch overhang all around. They're glued together, slide onto lag bolts put into the studs in the header, and just oiled them with tung oil (as the installer recommended). Looks great. Oh yeah, and my blower made a lot of noise, too, at first. I kept poking at it, etc., but then the stove installers came back out and we looked and the people who installed it the first time had forgotten to put in two screws bolting it to the back. Now I can still hear it, but it's a heck of a lot quieter than when it was down there rattling around.

Does the fact that you have to really get the stove going hot for awhile (more so the more ash is in it) to get the blower to go on irritate you? When it's cold and I'm really keeping the fire hot 24/7 it's not an issue, but if it has kind of died out I keep thinking I'm losing a bunch of heat because the blower isn't on. I'm thinking of rewiring it so my "dimmer switch" fan control is independent of stove heat. Thoughts?

D

 

[kkesler]

Pics would be nice. Perhaps I wasn't clear, ours is mounted in the main living room, it was just the unfinished basement made running the ductwork easy. Everything already had a nice stone surround and the Onyx went up to that almost flush. The installer used some mortar to fill the gap, and that is what is cracking. The noise with mine is just the air noise, no rattles, etc.. Sounds like a big air intake (which is what it is, I guess).

Don't bother rewiring, I bypassed my switch a few times and all the system will do is blow cold air until the box gets hot, which usually takes an hour or so.

 

[dcummings]

I'm attaching a pretty crappy photo, but it's all I have at the moment that's small enough to upload. Don't know about GA, but though we've had a mild winter it's still getting pretty cold at night. Supposed to get down into the 20s tonight. Got the stove cranking.

Teflon

 

[kkesler]

Very similar setup to mine. Stone is my surround, and they used mortar to fill the gap < 1/4", which is now cracked.

Mid 30s-40 at night here, so it's still running.