Waved goodbye to our 1980 Gold Marc slammer insert on Sunday morning. By Sunday evening, I was kindling the first break-in fire in a Lopi Freedom.
Many thanks to all those people here whose advice and experience helped me with this process. In the end, I found a store with a slightly better price on the insert and a much better price on the install. Installation of liner and insert took about 5 hours, almost an hour of that was spent trying to remove the old flue damper so I'm glad I let professionals do the work.
First impressions were just okay, I need to get a feel for what works and what doesn't, and our record-breaking rainfall last year didn't help season my wood supply, so I wasn't expecting too much. Lighting was a breeze, it took a little longer than expected to come up to temperature, but steady heat was maintained for several hours with just a few splits,which was an immediate improvement. Seeing the fire burning is nice of course, and I was able to get some secondary combustion but still not much to show for all the expense. Then last night, I reloaded a split of 5-year old oak onto hot coals, and within seconds watched the most amazing purple secondaries fill the firebox and the light-show continued for almost an hour. Beautiful!
All I need now is another year to let all of my wood season properly, and give me time to saw my bigger splits down enough to fit into the smaller firebox.
TE
Many thanks to all those people here whose advice and experience helped me with this process. In the end, I found a store with a slightly better price on the insert and a much better price on the install. Installation of liner and insert took about 5 hours, almost an hour of that was spent trying to remove the old flue damper so I'm glad I let professionals do the work.
First impressions were just okay, I need to get a feel for what works and what doesn't, and our record-breaking rainfall last year didn't help season my wood supply, so I wasn't expecting too much. Lighting was a breeze, it took a little longer than expected to come up to temperature, but steady heat was maintained for several hours with just a few splits,which was an immediate improvement. Seeing the fire burning is nice of course, and I was able to get some secondary combustion but still not much to show for all the expense. Then last night, I reloaded a split of 5-year old oak onto hot coals, and within seconds watched the most amazing purple secondaries fill the firebox and the light-show continued for almost an hour. Beautiful!
All I need now is another year to let all of my wood season properly, and give me time to saw my bigger splits down enough to fit into the smaller firebox.
TE