I have the Quad Castile insert, but I should have bought the Harmon. In my opinion Quad has a poor design on several points.
One is the pull rods that you pull out to brush off part of the heat exchanger tubes, during startup at times if its real smokey you get smoke smell coming out around the holes that the pull rods go into because its a very sloppy fit, and you can wiggle those pull rods around. Quad could have insured that these rods seal when they are in the closed position, but here again, its a cheap and dirty way to brush off the tubes. And it doesnt even clean all the tubes its only wiping the tops of 4 tubes out of 10..
Another very poor design feature is the cast iron trim door or fake front has rectangular openings that do not line up with the openings of the heat exchanger tubes. What happens is the hot air blowing out of the tubes does not go completely through the openings in the cast iron fake door. The hot air partially gets caught on the cast iron, and its deflected up and backwards into the hopper. When I first got my Quad and had it on a medium setting, the hopper lid got so hot I had to use a pot holder to grab onto it to open the hopper. I also noticed inside the hopper was so hot, that it caused me great concern that maybe the pellets were going to reach the ignition point but the dealer tells me that wouldnt happen. So what I do is I burn the insert with this fake cast iron trim door open, this lets ALL the hot air blow into the room and none of it is being restricted or blown backwards up into the hopper. Poor choice for Quadrafire, they needed to address this design flaw, and set it up so the blower tubes extend out into that cast iron opening thus eliminating and back pressure.
Another down side is the rod you pull to empty the ash in the burn pot, when I go to pull this rod I almost have to yank the insert out of the mounting position, and I end up cussing Quadrafires poor design. Why should I have to modify the pull rod cleaning system after paying almost $4000 for this gem ? Quadrafire has some really poor design issues and I really regret that I didnt buy the Harmon. Harmons have been proven runners, they have been the standard in stoves for many years. This pull rod setup is so bad that I think at times if I go to push the rod back in its' going to bend and I'll have to have a new one put in.
Another poor design is to save on cost of manufacture Quad put out what I call a paper thin steel firebox, its not half the thickness of a Harmon. Harmon, and a few others are built like a tank. Quadrafire put the cast iron on the outside as a decoration, not on the inside where it counts most. They do have cast iron firebrick plates, 2 of them but these are small items, and here again I think its decoration, they could have used a 1/8 inch thick steel plate for firebrick instead. If you tap on the steel firebox inside the Quad unit you think youre tapping a tin can, and Im sure they only made it as thick as they thought was safely possible. When it begins to rust, it wont take much for it to rust through the box, and that will be a costly repair if it ever happened.
These are just a few of my beefs about this Quad insert I have, it also vibrates, and sounds like its growling at times, and when it does I walk over to it, open the door, and take the scraping tool and lift the top baffle up about 1/2 inch and let it drop back in place, and that stops the growling sound for a few hours until it vibrates back to its uneven position again. I have already pointed all this out the Quad dealer I bought it from and he still says Quad is built to last and they work well and are proven performers, I told him when I pull that stupid pull rod completely out of the unit he will be making a warranty trip to fix it . You can tell that I really love my Quad insert.
Like I said I would buy the Harmon, I only wish I had bought it instead of this Quad. Now the Quad Mt Vernon AE would also have been a better choice than this Castile I have because the Mt Vernon AE has the 12 volt system and you can use any ordinary car batter or marine battery to run it during a power outage, without buying any inverter or generator. The dealer didnt have a Mt Vernon AE handy in the showroom, and didnt mention much about it other than it was a lot more expensive, and it was a much bigger insert with a larger BTU output, and given the size of my house, ( 1600 sq ft) that the Castile insert was more than enough , so I figured I would save some money and didnt pursue the Mt Vernon at that time.
Just my 2 cents on the Quad Castile that I have owned since Sept of 2008. I realized after a week of using it that I had made a bad choice, as I was considering the Harmon, and the dealer was pushing the Quad Castile, and I think he just wanted to unload the units he had in stock. My unit is a 2007 model, and I was given a couple of hundred off on it.
Harmon in my opinion is a proven performer and built to last a long long time. Looks like I wrote a book here, sorry for all the text, but these are points of concern for me and I sincerely hope Quadrafire addresses these issues and puts out a better built unit someday.
Good luck in your decision,
