Jotul 400 Castine burning fuel too fast

[MFL1]

Hello All,

We have a Jotul 400 Castine woodstove and we love it. It has been a great stove.

Lately, however, we have noticed we are burning through wood faster than usual. We are using the same wood from the same load, nicely seasoned ( a year in the sun), and roughly same size logs.

I checked the gasket on the ash door and it was badly worn. I replaced it with proper materials from the wood stove store here in town (Ithaca, NY). Seems pretty snug to me.

I checked the door with the "dollar test" and it is nicely snug all around.

We notice the fire is just burning fast now, almost as if there is an air leak somewhere.

I have to move the silver lever on the air control to the leftmost setting to get the burn to slow down.

No changes to the chimney, high quality installation, high quality parts.

I do see a small crack in the rear burnplate (the sunburst) --- the stove is in its 5th season.

Thoughts or ideas?

Thanks,
MFL

 

[begreen]

When the stove is fully cleaned out, take a close look for cracks in the base around the grate. If none found, good. Then with a partner, shine a very bright light in the interior while the other half looks on the outside for light leaks.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

And you might also try looking around the stove at night with all the lights out and a fire in the stove.

 

[MFL1]

Thanks --- helpful suggestions! The flashlight technique helped me find the problem. It was the ash door not closing completely. The door on the upper left side was not snug up against the stove. Turns out the spring loaded handle has a little flange like clasp on the inside and it is supposed to catch on the frame of the base. This flange was bent --- probably just too much opening and closing over the years. With the bend, it did not pull the ash door firmly against the base. So, I dismantled the handle assembly, went to our wood stove store and got the new flange and a new spring (the old spring had become compressed and lost some tensioning capacity), put it back together, and used the flashlight again --- total darkness, good seal, now burning wonderfully (no racing overburn, just gentle blue flame burn). Good to know about the old ash door of the Jotul Castine 400. Thanks again.

 

[begreen]

Nice going, well done! I'm glad you got it fixed. Thanks for sharing the solution.