After a month of wait time, I just got my new VC Montpelier II installed today. I am a complete newbie for burning wood, so I pretty much shopped blindly for this stove, bought the first one looks acceptable to me and fits my fireplace. Later on I read the manual and found this fantastic forum, I learned that this is a single burn rate stove. I almost wanted to cancel the deal but on the second thought a dumbed down stove may just be what I need. I don't see many people on this forum with this stove so I'll share whatever little I have from the first day of burning.
The installers that came were a little shady; I smelled marijuana on them. They are friendly enough though and climbed my 30 foot tall chimney with no complain. I asked them about the block off plate (read it here) but they didn't have the equipment to make one and don't think it is necessary. I paid some attention to the gasket of the door and the baffle blanket, they all looked in good order. The installation took about 3 hours and I lit the first fire right after they left.
The Montpelier II is a flush fireplace insert. Being a flush model, the firebox is pretty wide but kinda shallow. It measures 20'' wide at the back and 23'' at the front, but only 11'' 1/2 deep. So loading it N/S is limited but you can load either E/W or diagonally. More importantly, there is no user air control. What it has is one button, which triggers a timer that opens a separate air intake for a period of time, like 20 something minutes. So you load wood, light them, press the button to give them more air, then close the door. There is nothing else you need to do, or can do for that matter. There is also no access point to stove top or flute, to measure the temperature. The best I can do is to point my IR gun into the air outlet, which seem to be the hottest point I can find on the stove.
Being a newbie, I have sub-par wood. What I have is 4.5 month CSS'ed standing dead pine and they will do. For the first fire, I want to start easy; so I build a small fire with one split and several smaller pieces. They burned, but does not give much heat; the snapdisk controlled blower did not even trigger. The fire is small; but otherwise look ok; little smoke and clean glass. 1.5 hours later they burned down to ambers I decided to go bigger this time. So I put in 3 medium sized log on top of the coal. There was not much coal so the woods did not catch and generated a lot of smoke. I have to open the door, poke them and sprinkle some kindling on top. They caught on, and I have a maybe a medium size fire, which after a long while did trigger the blower. I set the blower on low, air is hot but still tolerable, like 150F. If I set the blower on high, the air cool down to 100F after a while. The heat is not great; I can keep the this room warm, but the far side of the room is only 68F, so it is doing little for other area of the house. I guess I need to burn harder still to warm the house. That will be the exercise tomorrow then.
Over all, I am pleased. I don't think I can do an overnight burn given what fuel I have. It gives heat, I see not much smoke coming out of my chimney, and the view of the fire is fantastic. I don't need to worry about precise air control manuver because there is none needed. Without user control there could be some possibility of overfire; but my wood this year is simply not good enough to cause that. If I had better wood, maybe I can use some wet towel to stuff on the air intake hole when overfire really happen.
The installers that came were a little shady; I smelled marijuana on them. They are friendly enough though and climbed my 30 foot tall chimney with no complain. I asked them about the block off plate (read it here) but they didn't have the equipment to make one and don't think it is necessary. I paid some attention to the gasket of the door and the baffle blanket, they all looked in good order. The installation took about 3 hours and I lit the first fire right after they left.
The Montpelier II is a flush fireplace insert. Being a flush model, the firebox is pretty wide but kinda shallow. It measures 20'' wide at the back and 23'' at the front, but only 11'' 1/2 deep. So loading it N/S is limited but you can load either E/W or diagonally. More importantly, there is no user air control. What it has is one button, which triggers a timer that opens a separate air intake for a period of time, like 20 something minutes. So you load wood, light them, press the button to give them more air, then close the door. There is nothing else you need to do, or can do for that matter. There is also no access point to stove top or flute, to measure the temperature. The best I can do is to point my IR gun into the air outlet, which seem to be the hottest point I can find on the stove.
Being a newbie, I have sub-par wood. What I have is 4.5 month CSS'ed standing dead pine and they will do. For the first fire, I want to start easy; so I build a small fire with one split and several smaller pieces. They burned, but does not give much heat; the snapdisk controlled blower did not even trigger. The fire is small; but otherwise look ok; little smoke and clean glass. 1.5 hours later they burned down to ambers I decided to go bigger this time. So I put in 3 medium sized log on top of the coal. There was not much coal so the woods did not catch and generated a lot of smoke. I have to open the door, poke them and sprinkle some kindling on top. They caught on, and I have a maybe a medium size fire, which after a long while did trigger the blower. I set the blower on low, air is hot but still tolerable, like 150F. If I set the blower on high, the air cool down to 100F after a while. The heat is not great; I can keep the this room warm, but the far side of the room is only 68F, so it is doing little for other area of the house. I guess I need to burn harder still to warm the house. That will be the exercise tomorrow then.
Over all, I am pleased. I don't think I can do an overnight burn given what fuel I have. It gives heat, I see not much smoke coming out of my chimney, and the view of the fire is fantastic. I don't need to worry about precise air control manuver because there is none needed. Without user control there could be some possibility of overfire; but my wood this year is simply not good enough to cause that. If I had better wood, maybe I can use some wet towel to stuff on the air intake hole when overfire really happen.
