Enviro Kodiak 1700 Review and Questions

[farger04]

Hi everybody!
I'm new to the forum but have been stalking it over the past few months since I moved into a house with a stove insert. I hope this post has some use for some people thinking about getting the kodiak 1700 insert and I'm also hoping some of you have some ideas to help me address a couple of problems I'm experiencing with the new install.

First some background:
My house had an old massive two door Woodland (fisher knockoff?), the firebox is about 4.5 cu ft. It had no baffle and was vented straight into my 14 ft. square brick chimney, it had fibreglass insulation around the insert to keep a good draft. The stove worked very well for me, it kept the house warm and had plenty of draft to prevent smoke from escaping and was very easy to get a rager going in no time. The problem I had with it is that it required quite a bit of flue damper adjustment as well as front primary air adjustment to keep it burning well and it absolutely chewed through wood even with me running it as efficient as possible. It also smoked a lot and filled my yard with a haze on windless days. I found that my county had just started a rebate program and they gave me $750 to purchase a new stove so I finally decided on the Enviro Kodiak 1700 insert and I had it installed for a total of $2450 with the rebate.

The install:
The installer ran a 14ft. 6 inch round SS liner down my chimney, he removed my existing flue damper and knocked out some brick in order to get it to attach to the new stove with no ovalling or bends whatsoever. He installed a sealed cap with a flue collar on top of the chimney (no block off plate at the bottom). Overall the install seems very good to me. I expected that this new stove and install would draft very well considering how well the old one drafted directly into my square chimney, but this hasn't been the case unfortunately.

The problems:
- Whenever I open the door I open the air control all the way then I crack the door for a little while and then I slowly open it, yet I still get some puffs of smoke out, enough that I can smell it in another room. I am burning 3 year covered and seasoned doug fir and it measures 15% moisture at a fresh cut in the center. Along with this, I am unable to keep the glass clean, it gets about 50% covered with creosote even while burning hot fires (with beautiful secondaries) with the air control 75% open. Once the glass gets dirty it does not clean until I physically clean it. My installer wanted to blame my wood so he suggested I try burning some dry 2x4's which I did and I still experienced the same problems. It seems to be a draft issue even though I can't find any possible causes. I have tried removing my chimney cap but this made no difference. My house is definitely not airtight and I have tried opening windows just to be sure but it doesn't help. I don't have any other vents or fans competing for air.
- The air control lever is horrendously squeaky, more like nails on a chalkboard. I'm thinking about trying to spray in some dry silicone lube to see if I can fix this.
- The air control lever doesn't have any marks on it so it's hard to know where to consistently set it. I fixed this problem by painting on 4 even lines so I now know exactly what setting I am at.

The good:
- The stove looks great
- It heats my house like a champion
- It burns about 1/3 the amount of wood, and there is no smoke coming out of the chimney
- With just a couple slight adjustments through a burn I can keep secondaries for hours, they are absolutely beautiful
- The fan is very quiet and having the thermostat controlled fan is a very nice feature
- From a cold start I can get the stove hot in about 10 mins. I use crumpled newspaper and kindling and I leave the door cracked until I get some coals, then I throw on some medium wood and close the door.
- If I load it full I easily get a 10 hour while keeping the house warm through the entire night, even though my house is terribly insulated.

My questions:
- What are some things I can try to help fix the draft issue? I assume the glass issue is probably due to the bad draft as well.
- What's the best way to fix the screatchy air control valve?


Thank you all so much for your help, all of your posts have already helped me so much.

 

[begreen]

Welcome. That's a great insert. The problem sounds like weak draft. We have been experiencing very mild temperatures. That reduces draft. To improve performance it may take adding some height to the chimney or colder weather. If the liner is insulated that would help too.

 

[stovelark]

Agree with BG. I run the FS sister in a lower level raised ranch with about the same setup. The Kodiak is a forgiving, easy to run stove and as a rule, have not heard much issue with blackened glass, mine stays amazingly clean. Darkened glass is generally attributed to poor draft or wet wood, or both. Usage will probably loosen the stickiness of the air control, no way to lubricate it safely that I know of. Good luck with your stove, think you made a great choice.

 

[NoGoodAtScreenNames]

I have the Boston 1700 which is similar to the Kodiak and never had dirty glass problems. But I have a much taller chimney with an uninsulated liner but with a blocking plate. I'm just a regular schmo - not an expert, but a few questions for you.

How much are you turning the air down and when? Do you know the stove temps? Do you turn the air back up a little towards the end of the cycle?

Can you tell what part of the burn cycle the crud accumulates?

Have you tried a top down fire? Even if a you keep your small load / big load method do you have some small stuff on top to catch and burn the smoke off?

When the fire is going good do you see evidence of the air-wash? Flames should come towards the glass and then get pushed downward.

 

[NoGoodAtScreenNames]

One more thing - do you normally load north south or east west? When I do north south, I like to put small split east west on the front top to spread the fire and burn the smoke that rises from the bottom it comes forward from the back.

 

[woodhog73]

That's great you are getting 10 hour burns. How big is that insert ?

I have a quadrafire 3100i and it is perfect for me in every way except for burn times . I'm lucky to get 4 hours possibly 5 hours and that's it.

As for the glass you say it darkened with different kind of wood ? Mine stays clean with my 1.5 to 2 year seasoned oak pile, but my equally dry poplar and birch dirties the glass. Can you try different wood ?

 

[blacktail]

How close to the glass are you placing wood? And is your Fir full of pitch? Wood too close to the glass will cause dirty glass and cause smoke spillage when the door is open. Extra pitchy wood can blacken the glass too.

 

[kinetic711]

"Install only in a masonry fireplace with a good-condition chimney at least 15 ft (4.6 m) high."
This quote is taken directly from the Kodiak 1700i owners manual. In your post, you say your liner is 14.5'.
Get the installer back and have him make it right.

 

[begreen]

If I were to add on to the height it would be more like 18"-24". Our milder climate means a lot more shoulder season burning than most folks see.

 

[farger04]

First, thank you all for your quick responses, they are all helpful. Sorry I haven't been able to respond back sooner.

begreen: we had a 35 degree night last week and my house was 72, I unfortunately still noticed the same problem with smoke escaping with the open door. I will definitely look into adding some height, it might look a little funny having an extra 6 feet coming out of the chimney but I'd rather that than having poor draft. Insulating the liner would probably help but I still experience the problem even after running the stove for 24 hours at which point I would assume the chimney is nice and hot.

kinetic711: Thanks for that info, I should have read the manually more carefully, my installer said that the 14 ft. was more than adequate but said he could charge me extra and add some length. I'll bring this up with him.

nogood: I normally load north-south but sometimes I'll put some splits in east-west depending on what the coal look like. I will have to try putting a small split east-west in front and see if I notice a difference. I don't know my stove temps, I'm not able to place a standard stove top thermometer since the top is not exposed because of the top shroud. I'd like to get a temp reading, is there a thermometer out there that I could place under the top shroud and run a wire out to where I could see it? I usually turn the air down once I see some pretty good coals and I am able to while keeping a good secondary burning. From a cold start I usually run it full air for about 10 mins until I see some pretty good sustained flames then I usually knock it down to about 20% open, if I plan to let the fire die I will open it all the way once the flames are nearly gone and let it run like that until it's dead. So far I haven't really been able to tell when the glass gets dirty, it seems kind of random but then I've only been running the stove for a week. During a burn I don't really see flames heading downward across the glass, mostly they stay up high and then disappear upward towards the flue. With the stove cold I tried lighting some incense underneath the air intake, I could see the smoke coming down out of the airwash across the glass but interestingly I only saw the smoke come down in the middle of the glass, this happens to be where the glass stays clean. I only get dirty glass on the bottom corners.

woodhog: It's a 2.5 and I am definitely quite happy with the burn times. I've been amazed that I can get these long times even with air control open a bit and it will keep some pretty good secondaries most of the time.

blacktail: The wood is definitely not pitchy, it's pretty light and I never see any pitch on the outside of it, I also don't ever get sticky fingers when loading it. I do have a couple of longer pieces (never loaded against the glass) that I load sometimes and after a fully loaded night burn sometimes I have some ash against the glass in the morning, I suppose that's probably what's causing my dirty glass. This still doesn't explain the smoke spillage because it happens even when I don't have wood loaded anywhere near the glass.


I do think that maybe my dirty glass is being caused by a combination of my wood type and loading it too full. I guess I was expecting just a bit too much of the airwash. The dirty glass isn't a huge thing for me but I would definitely still like to solve my smoke spillage problem. I think I should be able to burn dry fir without having to worry about puffs of smoke billowing out into the room. I have noticed that I am able to reduce the chance of spillage by turning off the fan before opening the door, the fan unfortunately blows down across the open door so that any smoke that comes close gets pushed out into the room by the fan. With my old stove, even with a super smoky fire I could open the doors fully and see all the smoke escaping out the flue and none would ever make it out of the stove, this is the kind of draft I was hoping for.

One other very slight issue that I've noticed is that whenever the stove temperature changes just a bit I hear a lot of moderately loud pops and creaks from it. Is this pretty normal? I never used to hear much of this with my old stove. Do these creaks and pops lessen with stove age at all?

Thanks again for all of your helpful responses.

 

[NoGoodAtScreenNames]

My best recommendation on the smoke spillage is to not open the door... Do a top down fire. Load it up, small stuff on top and you won't open it again until 8 hours later when the coals are red with very little smoke at all.

I'm not sure how to measure temps on the Kodiak. On my Boston I have a magnetic thermometer on the sides that I never look at. It's kind of hidden inside a side panel. I point an IR gun into vent instead. I think this is the one I have. Definitely worth the money for me. Just make sure to pick one with readings up to at least 800f.

http://www.amazon.com/Etekcity-Lasergrip-Non-contact-Thermometer-Temperature/dp/B00DMI62HM

Good luck.

Edit: just looked at the Kodiak manual. It's pretty much the same thing I have. An IR on top should work good.

Also how bad is your problem? If the gunk is just in the bottom corners (less than a square inch) then that is pretty common. Once a month I put vinegar on a paper towel and it wipes right off. If the gunk doesn't block your view of the fire then I wouldn't worry too much.

 

[farger04]

Thanks, I do have that same IR gun so i'll monitor temps from the vents. The problem is fairly bad, it starts at the bottom corners filling them to about a 5x5 area on each corner and then moves all the way up to the top filling about two inches wide along the sides. Its brown and not see through, not just a white haze. Also this happens after a single day of burning. Interestingly, I just tried to put a small split east-west in front and it actually made the glass much worse in a matter of about 25mins even though the split was on fire the whole time with no obvious smoke. The split was definitely very dry.

Watching the fire closely i do see the air wash pushing flames downward, it just seems like its only putting air down the middle of the glass and not along the sides.

 

[begreen]

Insulating the liner keeps the flue gases hotter. That improves draft. Even after burning 24/7 there can be large heat losses to the colder surrounding chimney. To see if extra pipe will help. On a dry day (good luck ) remove the cap and put in a 3ft piece of 6" round, cheap warm air duct pipe. Try the stove and see if there's an improvement.

 

[farger04]

So I added a 4ft section of rigid stove pipe to the top of my chimney as a test, unfortunately it didn't seem to make much of a difference, still had significant smoke escape when opening the door. While I was up there, I shined a bright flashlight down the liner, I noticed that it is definitely not very straight. It had quite of few bends on the way down ( my chimney is straight though). I think the bends are caused by the liner being a little slack. I'm thinking that this is pretty normal for flexible pipe but maybe not? Could this be significant enough to cause a draft problem? I will try to get a picture but I'm not sure it will do a good job of showing.

 

[begreen]

We've been very mild in temps outside which doesn't help. Friday night/Sat morning look cooler. Maybe try again then. The liner should be relatively straight unless there's an offset. Did the damper get removed or notched to pass the liner or was the liner ovalized to get through the damper area?

 

[farger04]

Ya that's true, it has been pretty warm. The damper was removed along with some bricks so that the liner could be passed through without ovalizing, which further makes me think the draft should be much better than it is. There is no offset in the chimney.

 

[farger04]

I've noticed another small issue and I'm wondering if anybody else has experienced this or maybe has an explanation. I usually leave the fan on auto mode and I've noticed that it seems to turn on randomly for several hours after the stove has cooled down.

So here's the scenario:
-Fire up the cold stove, fan turns on about 15 mins later once the stove gets hot.
-After deciding that the house is warm enough for the day and noticing that there's only coals left, I open the damper all the way
-Eventually the stove cools down and the fan turns off
-A couple hours later when there are barely any coals left and the stove is barely warm to the touch, the fan turns back on.
-At some point a few hours later, the fan finally turns off for good.

So, does anybody know what's going on here? I've witnessed this occurring several times and I can't explain it. I've left my stove cold for several days and never heard the fan turn on randomly so it only seems to happen during the cool down process, but the fan has definitely turned on when the sensor should be pretty dang cold.

 

[NoGoodAtScreenNames]

Mine is sometimes finicky but on the warming up side. Sometimes it won't turn on by itself as fast as I would like with good top temps. When it happens I sometimes just turn it on manual for a few seconds, hear it click and then it stays on in auto mode. On the cool down side I turn it off to keep it hot and help the coals keep burning - but I have a blocking plate so I'm not as worried about losing heat straight up.

I assume the sensor is sensitive in the mid range and can pop back and forth.

That being said all my prior advice in this thread ended up hurting more than helping so don't pay too much attention to what I say...

 

[farger04]

Not at all, you've been very helpful and I really appreciate your responses!

 

[stovelark]

With inserts, the snap disk sometimes will turn the unit back on after its shut off once already due to the buildup of residual heat that was left in those last few coals that are still alive under the ash top. Not unusual for it to happen once in a while.

 

[farger04]

Alright cool, that's what I was looking for, just wanted to make sure mine wasn't acting in some defective manner.

 

[trailblaster]

I also have a Kodiak 1700 insert and it sounds like a draft problem. Mine is hooked up to a 28' SS flex liner and I only get a little smoke in the room when I whip open the door fast with blower still going. My stove is 7 years old and I replaced the blower with the newer model and it comes on at a lower temp which is good and randomly comes on when stove cools down but never blows cool air and is much quieter that old blower. I let the old blower bearings go a few years without cleaning them and the shaft bonded to squirrel cages and rattled a lot. I do reseal the steel collar on top the connects to liner every year with stove sealant and that affects draft so check yours but the chimney does sound too short.

 

[farger04]

Hey trailblaster,
Thanks for that useful info. Where do you reseal the collar? Do you mean that you seal between the collar and the ss liner? Mine is currently sealed with foil tape but is already pretty tight by the looks of it.

On this topic, when looking at my install I noticed that there is an air gap between where the ss liner is attached to the "top plate" (like this but mine is much flimsier looking, http://www.woodlanddirect.com/Chimney/Chimney-Liner-Parts/Leak-Stopper-Top-Plate-13x13) which is attached to the top of my chimney and holds the liner in place. When the stove is off, I can feel the presence of warm air blowing through this gap, that's my heated house air escaping (no lower block off plate). This seems dumb to me because it will cause my house to loose warm air in the winter and cold air in the summer. But could this cause a draft/smoke escape problem? I would think the air would be getting sucked around the edges of my liner and up the chimney. Could this be sucking smoke out of the firebox when I open the stove door? The amount of air gap isn't huge, probably around 2 sq inches. I am wrong for thinking this is a potential issue?

I should also mention that the top plate itself isn't sealed to the top of my chimney but is pressed down pretty tight with the chimney cap and doesn't feel like it's leaking much.

 

[stovelark]

Hi farger- you should not be losing warm air up your chimney at the top plate. The ss liner comes up through the top plate, which is sealed down to the flue top by silicone usually. The liner is pulled up taught, putting tension on the top plate and holding it in place. (Remember, the top plate has screws going through the collar through the ss liner coming out of it.) The cap is then attached, all areas get silicone sealed- where the liner comes through the top plate, underneath around the edging of the flue and top plate. Its a good idea to put insulation under the top plate in the flue if possible and to insulate or block off the fireplace damper area below. You've got a great heater there, stay warm.

 

[trailblaster]

The collar has a bolt in the center going down and attaches to a 3-way bar that "pulls" the collar tight against the top of the stove. I only have to seal around the liner where it enters the collar., everywhere else is air tight.