Had the hearth shop out to clean the stove and chimney today. My opinion of the hearth shop is less than stellar (I know where we WONT be buying another stove), but the sweep was great. Showed us how to get the bricks out to clean in the stove in case another starling decides to sweep for us (lol) etc and replaced the door gasket to see if that would solve the dirty glass by the handle problem. In taking a look at the flue, he said he doesn't see any evidence of a chimney fire. So our draft issue seems to be just that-a draft issue. Could have been related to the door problem, we'll see-I know for sure we're not done burning for the season. We decided not to wait on the cleaning until the summer mainly because of an install issue (another thread altogether) so we'll see how it burns now. But at least now we've had someone take a look and verify we have no evidence of a chimney fire, no glaze, no puffy stuff.
