F500 V3 Oslo Woes

[kborndale]

Unless your draft reversed how could smoke come out the seams? I don't know if jotul will communicate with you directly, I believe they only communicate thru the dealer. If it is only a few months old it's still under warranty so they should send somebody out to check it for free. Something doesn't seem right here, either a horrible dealer or we are not being given the entire story.

 

[JamesGuido]

I don't know if jotul will communicate with you directly, I believe they only communicate thru the dealer.

we have had success communicating with Jøtul thru messaging thru FaceBook.
Search FaceBook for:

Jotul North America​

Good Luck!

 

[joop]

might be a poor draft,forgot to preheat chimney had smoke coming out the seams rolled paper stuck at top of baffle and viola smoke gone. can anyone say vc seems to be sounding the same.

 

[hartmanj]

Unless your draft reversed how could smoke come out the seams? I don't know if jotul will communicate with you directly, I believe they only communicate thru the dealer. If it is only a few months old it's still under warranty so they should send somebody out to check it for free. Something doesn't seem right here, either a horrible dealer or we are not being given the entire story.

Well here’s the rest of the story. The dealer won’t come out for free because they didn’t install it. I live in the boonies and had to go a distance to get one. They wanted $3000 to deliver and hook up to my existing pipe. Instead I opted to pick it up with my truck and then I had a more local stove dealer (that doesn’t sell Jotul) come out and bring it in and attach to my pipe for a few hundred dollars. I’m a single older lady on a budget so that made sense to me at the time. I didn’t realize that this would essentially void my warranty. I can’t afford to now buy a new stove plus pay thousands more to have it installed. This is why I am upset but I suppose I am out of luck and this is my mistake. The dealer is currently telling me I have to pay for a chimney sweep to come out and inspect the chimney. Prior to that they told me that the installers must have taken the top off the stove which did not happen as I was there at the time. Anyway, thanks for any advice, but please don’t take me over the coals, so to speak.

 

[bholler]

Unless your draft reversed how could smoke come out the seams? I don't know if jotul will communicate with you directly, I believe they only communicate thru the dealer. If it is only a few months old it's still under warranty so they should send somebody out to check it for free. Something doesn't seem right here, either a horrible dealer or we are not being given the entire story.

The cat is plugged

 

[EbS-P]

Well here’s the rest of the story. The dealer won’t come out for free because they didn’t install it. I live in the boonies and had to go a distance to get one. They wanted $3000 to deliver and hook up to my existing pipe. Instead I opted to pick it up with my truck and then I had a more local stove dealer (that doesn’t sell Jotul) come out and bring it in and attach to my pipe for a few hundred dollars. I’m a single older lady on a budget so that made sense to me at the time. I didn’t realize that this would essentially void my warranty. I can’t afford to now buy a new stove plus pay thousands more to have it installed. This is why I am upset but I suppose I am out of luck and this is my mistake. The dealer is currently telling me I have to pay for a chimney sweep to come out and inspect the chimney. Prior to that they told me that the installers must have taken the top off the stove which did not happen as I was there at the time. Anyway, thanks for any advice, but please don’t take me over the coals, so to speak.

Have you local guy come out for a cleaning. Take pictures and if cat is damaged send them to jotul stove shop for warranty repair.

How much wood have you burned in it?

 

[stoveliker]

Unless your draft reversed how could smoke come out the seams? I don't know if jotul will communicate with you directly, I believe they only communicate thru the dealer. If it is only a few months old it's still under warranty so they should send somebody out to check it for free. Something doesn't seem right here, either a horrible dealer or we are not being given the entire story.

I think at start up this is not unheard of, if the flue is cold.
Once the stove is going, obviously nothing should leak out, as it should suck in (too much) air.

 

[begreen]

Thanks for your reply. Attached is a picture of some of the chunks that fell off and I tried to add a video of what happens when I light the stove, but it says it is too large for your server. I think it’s quite possible the cat is plugged and I can understand smoke coming out when the door is open, but should smoke ever come out of the seams?

View attachment 312817

It's hard to tell if there is an issue or not. Testing will help. The problem could be a plugged cat and/or weak draft. What was the outside temp at the time?

That is not a lot of cement. It may have been dislodged by a log bumping up against that corner. One test for leaks is to turn off the room lights, then take a bright flashlight and shine it along the seams on the inside. If there is a light leak, the seam has been compromised. A helper outside the stove helps with this test.

Did you notice a minor whuff from the stove when the smoke leak happened? When the stove is packed with smoke it may eventually leak out of almost every orifice, especially if there is a backpuff ignition of the wood gases.

 

[HighlandHT]

I posted here a while ago with similar issues I was experiencing with the Jotul Oslo V3. Specifically, I had cement fail at the top seams and had smoke come out--just at the start, not once it was going. This was easily solved with an application of a bit more stove cement. Then, I was having terrible drafting issues after about 6 months of use. I had my chimney professionally swept and the issue did not improve. I noticed that the combuster seemed awfully clogged with ash, but the only instruction from the Jotul website regarding cleaning the unit was to brush it with a soft bristled brush. This did not help at all. I went to the dealer from whom I purchased the unit and who also installed it and they demonstrated no interest in helping me figure out the problem. They said the only issue was that I was not burning seasoned wood. I explained in detail my wood seasoning protocol, and noted that I routinely monitor my wood moisture with a moisture meter and the dealer asked if I was testing every piece of wood I burned--clearly not interested in helping me get to the bottom of my problem. I contacted Jotul and had a tech call me. I spent a while describing what was happening, and he asked that I follow up with an email and include photos of my combuster. He responded to my initial email saying he would look into it, but I never heard from him after that. I sent numerous follow up emails to him over the course of a couple of months, but got nothing in return. I eventually sent an email to the president of Jotul USA, and the next day the tech emailed me back and said they would replace the combuster under warranty.

I went ahead and got the new combuster, but I have no doubt I will have similar issues. The design is such that it naturally will suck ash into the combuster unit, and a brushing it with a brush will not help. What does help is a thorough cleaning. I used a welder torch tip to clean each one of the honeycombs and sucked out the ash with a shop vac. It was a tedious job, but it worked. This will likely have to be at least an annual chore. It would be nice if Jotul at least addressed this issue and how best to clean the unit. It would be even more helpful if they admitted that the design is fundamentally flawed and came out with a permanent fix. As someone noted here previously, you have to be very careful removing the top refractory. It becomes quite brittle. Mine broke into pieces when I removed it to clean the combuster and had to pay around $175 for a new one. Anyway, hope my experience helps. Good luck.

 

[Todd]

Sounds like as well as brushing low psi compressed air might help the combustor clear. I would probably do this every cord of wood burned.

Anyone try burning the new V3 without the cat? I wonder how different the baffle and secondary burn tubes are different from the old v2?