I had my Manchester installed a few weeks back, and so far I'm loving it. Many thanks to everyone here that provided very helpful advice and feedback when I was making my decision. As this is a relatively new stove design, I thought I'd use this thread as a bit of a catch-all for my observations, questions, etc.
As for my install, the Manchester is in the main living area on the first floor of my roughly 1500 sq ft Cape Cod in northern CT. It's vented with double wall pipe into a central masonry chimney, about 18 ft in height. Un-insulated 6" flex liner.
Some observations so far:
1) It takes some time to heat up all that cast iron and soapstone, but once it's been running a while, the stove is more than plenty to heat our whole house. We've mostly been running it on evenings and weekends. This weekend it ran continuously from Friday night to Sunday evening, and we loved the heat it produced.
2) We've had no trouble getting burn times in the 10-12 hour range. We can load the stove before bed, or sometimes even more like 8 pm, and have plenty of hot coals in the morning.
3) We're getting some black water dripping from the stove on cold starts, around the back two legs. I thought this was probably due to some moisture in the soapstone bricks, but it's still happening after a dozen or so full fires. It doesn't happen on reloads, and my wood isn't wet. Will this stop eventually, or should I put a call in to my dealer?
4) It likes to run hot - hotter than I'd like, and I'm not sure what to do about it. As an example, on Saturday morning I added a load of about five medium sized splits to the stove. Stove top was under 200F. I raked the remaining coals forward, loaded the stove, turned up the air all the way. Once the wood was blazing, I started turning down the air in increments; the stove top was just under 300. Had it fully closed down within 15 minutes or so. An hour and a half later, with the air all the way closed, I had a ton of secondaries at the top of the firebox, and the temp peaked at 720F, measured through the center hole in the convective top with my IR gun. It didn't stay there long; it cooled off and settled in between 600-650, but it made me nervous. This happened to me once before also. I'm assuming that this is too hot - but what can I do differently? Do I need a pipe damper? Could it be solely a result of how I'm loading the firebox, i.e. too much air space?
I haven't had any problem keeping the temps between 400 and 550 on smaller loads, but I'd really like to be able to use the full 3 cubic feet of firebox if I can for longer burn times. Any suggestions? What are other Manchester owners seeing for temperatures?
As for my install, the Manchester is in the main living area on the first floor of my roughly 1500 sq ft Cape Cod in northern CT. It's vented with double wall pipe into a central masonry chimney, about 18 ft in height. Un-insulated 6" flex liner.
Some observations so far:
1) It takes some time to heat up all that cast iron and soapstone, but once it's been running a while, the stove is more than plenty to heat our whole house. We've mostly been running it on evenings and weekends. This weekend it ran continuously from Friday night to Sunday evening, and we loved the heat it produced.
2) We've had no trouble getting burn times in the 10-12 hour range. We can load the stove before bed, or sometimes even more like 8 pm, and have plenty of hot coals in the morning.
3) We're getting some black water dripping from the stove on cold starts, around the back two legs. I thought this was probably due to some moisture in the soapstone bricks, but it's still happening after a dozen or so full fires. It doesn't happen on reloads, and my wood isn't wet. Will this stop eventually, or should I put a call in to my dealer?
4) It likes to run hot - hotter than I'd like, and I'm not sure what to do about it. As an example, on Saturday morning I added a load of about five medium sized splits to the stove. Stove top was under 200F. I raked the remaining coals forward, loaded the stove, turned up the air all the way. Once the wood was blazing, I started turning down the air in increments; the stove top was just under 300. Had it fully closed down within 15 minutes or so. An hour and a half later, with the air all the way closed, I had a ton of secondaries at the top of the firebox, and the temp peaked at 720F, measured through the center hole in the convective top with my IR gun. It didn't stay there long; it cooled off and settled in between 600-650, but it made me nervous. This happened to me once before also. I'm assuming that this is too hot - but what can I do differently? Do I need a pipe damper? Could it be solely a result of how I'm loading the firebox, i.e. too much air space?
I haven't had any problem keeping the temps between 400 and 550 on smaller loads, but I'd really like to be able to use the full 3 cubic feet of firebox if I can for longer burn times. Any suggestions? What are other Manchester owners seeing for temperatures?
Hey CTSoxFan...curios to see if you are still having the issue with the dripping from the back of the stove. Apparently I jinxed the hell out of myself mentioning on here that I no longer have that problem. It is definitely creasote. I took the soapstone firebricks out of the back of the fireplace and looked in the back corners. To me it just looks like its designed poorly because in the back corners the stove is cast together in such a way that if you have any creasote accumulation in the back it will run down directly and fall into a joint. The stove is air tight not liquid tight so it will run out.
