Chimney rebuild done and relined. Jotul F 500 Oslo in September

[Tithis]

Last summer my wife and I moved into our first home, an 200 something year old colonial. That fall we had the chimneys and wood stove installation inspect and turned up a number of issues that forced us to stop any burning in the little Jotul 602 the home came with. Initially we only planned to do the chimney work this year and keep using the little stove, but with the new federal tax credit we decided to also get a Jotul F 500 Oslo, which is paid for an due to be installed in September.

This week all the chimney work as been completed. The problems with it were both code and general maintenance.

Code

• Chimney was only 2ft tall
• Had an un-insulated steel liner installed
• Liner was not listed for solid fuel

Maintenance

• Chimney had no real crown, just a wash that didn't even cover the brickwork, and it was in pretty poor shape
• Top few courses of brick needed to be replaced due to damaged bricks or failing mortar

Had the masonry work done in July, and this week they came back to install the new pre-insulated liner and new chimney cap.



Sold our Jotul F 602 USA to a couple for $700, so hearth is empty now and just waiting for the Jotul F 500 in September. Wife isn't happy that we'll need a mantle heat shield, but is willing to accept it.

This hearth is in the rear expansion of our old colonial. The room includes our kitchen, dinning table, and a family sitting area across from the hearth. Across from the hearth behind sofa is our living room door and the open sided staircase upstairs. Stairs lead to the two main bedrooms, one being built into the attic area above this main room with the stove and having the chimney running through it, and the other above the living room. Hoping the heat from the stove will cover theses rooms fine, the other two bedrooms on the far side of house aren't being used at the moment.



Not expecting this to be our main heat source with the size of the home, but hope is it will be a major contributor and help reduce our propane bill. Wish we wouldn't probably have to wait until October before we can use it

 

[moresnow]

What is the dimension from the hearth up to the bottom of the mantle? What is your end result mantle clearance with shielding? My math must be bad!
Good luck and I hope it all works out smoothly from here.

(broken link removed to https://www.jotul.com/sites/usa/files/products/139946_R11%2C%20MANUAL%2C%20F%20500%20V3_US.pdf)

 

[Tithis]

Floor to bottom of the wood trim/mantle is 48 inches.

If that trim was only 1 inch thick we'd be fine as the clearance for that is 44.25 (28.25 stove height + 16 inch clearance.) However the trim is 2.5 inches thick, so we had to treat it as a mantle. Clearance for mantles can be reduced to 18 from 30 inches with a shield, that plus the stove height of 28.25 gives us 46.25 floor to mantel, just squeezing in.

Shame the manual didn't have one of the stepped guides for trim/mantle thickness and clearance, as if it did I'm sure we'd be in the clear.

 

[Tithis]

Weekend project was to put in a better blockoff plate. The liner installers reused to old one which basically clamped itself to the cast iron damper. They were able to adjust it to have the liner centered, for the previous stove it was offset to the right quite a bit, so that was an improvement. I didn't much care for their 'insulation' which was just to put spray adhesive on it and throw some foil backed insulation over it, kinda ugly. I kept it in place though as just an extra layer and to help keep the liner in place while I made and fitted the new plate.


You can see the rather ugly setup they left behind. Was a little surprised they ended the pre-insulated portion of the liner right at the damper plate. Guessing it was too big to fit, not sure if that is an actual issue though.


And the 'completed' plate. I still need to add a couple more tapcons, silicon the edges and think of a way to keep the seam between the left and right plates together, probably some blind rivets.

 

[bholler]

Weekend project was to put in a better blockoff plate. The liner installers reused to old one which basically clamped itself to the cast iron damper. They were able to adjust it to have the liner centered, for the previous stove it was offset to the right quite a bit, so that was an improvement. I didn't much care for their 'insulation' which was just to put spray adhesive on it and throw some foil backed insulation over it, kinda ugly. I kept it in place though as just an extra layer and to help keep the liner in place while I made and fitted the new plate.

View attachment 281190

You can see the rather ugly setup they left behind. Was a little surprised they ended the pre-insulated portion of the liner right at the damper plate. Guessing it was too big to fit, not sure if that is an actual issue though.


View attachment 281191

And the 'completed' plate. I still need to add a couple more tapcons, silicon the edges and think of a way to keep the seam between the left and right plates together, probably some blind rivets.

It is normal practice to stop the insulation above the blocking plate

 

[begreen]

It is normal practice to stop the insulation above the blocking plate

Do you mean below the block-off plate?

 

[bholler]

Do you mean below the block-off plate?

No I mean just above.

 

[Tithis]

After delays because of the CF door being backorded we finally got the F500 today. Town inspector is scheduled to come out tomorrow at 3, think everything should be good for his sign off.

 

[begreen]

That sure looks better in the big fireplace. Is the mantel clearance ok per the manual requirement?

 

[Tithis]

That sure looks better in the big fireplace. Is the mantel clearance ok per the manual requirement?

With the mantle shield they put in a think we are fine.

Believe the NFPA 211 allows a reduction of 50% to a minimum of 18", we are standing at about 18 3/4" between the stove top and the shield, with anouther 1" between the shield and the mantle.

 

[Tithis]

Welp, already calling the installer back.

Early on noticed the air control didn't make a ton of difference, and the glass was getting cloudy pretty quickly. Then when loading up some of my smaller old sugar maple splits the thing got up to 650F and setting on low did nothing. Turns out the ashdoor has too much play in it. If you just casually close it it ends up with gaps around the top big enough that I could see the orange ember glow reflecting off the ash pan. I can get a good seal if I lift up as I lock it, but that shouldn't be required and is annoying to have to do.

With the ashpan door actually sealing the stove has been just fine and I've been getting decent burns. For overnight burns I throw in the sugar maple I split thats been seasoning longer and get good secondary burning on low, during the days I use more of the less seasoned stuff which is working fine with a bit of extra air.

 

[Todd]

Great looking install. Ash pans can be a pita, if it were me I’d just let it fill up and shovel the ash out.

 

[Tithis]

Not gonna consider something like that when its still under warranty, gotta at least give the installer and company a chance to fix the issue. They are stopping by Friday afternoon to take a look and seemed to take the issue seriously over the phone.

Seems like just a poor fitting as the other doors have zero play in them and when in the right position it does seal just fine. I'd probably still use the ash pan since realistically I'm not emptying it a ton so making sure I close it right isn't a huge deal. But if I'm gonna have this for the next decade or two I don't want to risk my wife or a kid not closing it right and causing it to overfire.

 

[begreen]

It's not uncommon to have to lift the ash pan door on a Jotul to get the gasket to seat well. It's not a strong point. Even then the gasket seal can be touchy. After a few months I ended up letting the ashpan fill up and just scooping out the ash. The stove actually ran better that way.

 

[firefighterjake]

For the record . . . I still love and routinely use my ash pan on my Oslo with zero issues since 2008 (other than remembering to scoop out any ash that falls behind the ash pan so the door will shut properly.)

 

[begreen]

Jake, does your ashpan door close straight on, or does it need a little lift to latch it? Our F400 needed a little lift.

 

[firefighterjake]

Jake, does your ashpan door close straight on, or does it need a little lift to latch it? Our F400 needed a little lift.

Straight on . . . no lifting needed.

 

[EbS-P]

Straight on . . . no lifting needed.

Like my ash pan. Closes no lifting. Was not perfectly sealed on the top right corner

 

[Tithis]

The dealer who installed it visited awhile ago and said he'd talk with their rep about it, and are coming on the 17th to replace some parts of it, assuming the door or the part with the hinge.

Other than that been loving the stove and we've drastically cut down on how much we run our furnace, and thus our propane bill. Only ever really runs on particularly cold mornings when the fire has died down, or if I'm trying to quickly get the house warm before the wife comes home. We've put at least 2 cords of wood through it so far, mix of my big sugar maple that fell in 2020 and 'seasoned' mixed hardwood from a local guy. So far no weird issues with the catalytic deforming like I saw in someone else's thread.

Also the cats seem to be fans.

 

[Tithis]

The installer come by today and replaced the whole ash-pan assembly. First impression are good and closing it feels much better and smooth. There is still a good amount of play in the door, but it closes smoothly and tightly without needing to lift up on the handle like before.

Obviously wish I didn't have that little quality control issue there, but I'm happy it's fixed now and glad I reached out to the installer.

Also got my tax credit for the whole install: $2,479

 

[firefighterjake]

Love the pic of the cat in the chair . . . almost looks like he/she is smiling.