Log fell toward door...now door won't open

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This seems ridiculous, but when I was loading our Jotul 100 yesterday afternoon, a log fell forward as I was shutting the door. I had not lit the fire yet, so no hope of a burning it away unfortunately.
Thing is, the log seems to have either caught in or otherwise blocked the door latch mechanism because now the door will not open. The handle lifts about a third of the way and stops. I have tried with a
bit of force to no avail. So am I stuck dismantling the pipe to get in from the top, or is there something I am overlooking here? Is this a common type of issue or rare?
If I have to go in from the top, how do I get past the baffle?
When looking through the window, the log is against the glass, but behind the ash guard at the bottom.

Thanks for any help!

John
 
Can you jiggle the stove a bit, maybe the log will roll back?
 
is there an ash pan on this? Any way you could stick a piece of wire or something up through there to help move it out of the way.

pen
 
This isn't going to be fun. No ash pan and moving the baffle from the top is going to be tough. Especially with wood in the firebox. If you manage to move the baffle it will just sit on the wood still blocking you.

I just went down and looked over my F100. The only shot I see, if you can't force the handle, if to remove the pipe and tilt the heavy little sucker back to try to dislodge the split.
 
if you live in PA, sit the stove out on yer backporch for a month or so.....the extreme dampness and humidity that we have been stuck with fer the past two months will probably ROT the log out pretty quick........:-0
 
Todd said:
Can you jiggle the stove a bit, maybe the log will roll back?

Actually I am gonna go with Todd here, you may have to go as far as disconnecting the flue pipe at the stove and tilting it WAY back, almost 90 degrees, to get that log out of the way.....let us know how it works out for ya...
 
JGrover said:
OK. Well at least I have my Saturday morning all scheduled with this task now. Will let y'all know how it works out.

John

John, just be careful and make sure you have the back legs secured if yer gonna tilt that stove....don't want it getting away from you.....
 
TimberGhost said:
Can you remove the hinge pins from the door?

I doubt he will be able to do that with the door latched shut....highly doubt it....
 
LOL....when i first read the title of this thread i thought what a silly question just let it burn......shows you what you get when you jump to conclusions :cheese: .
Now i am curious to see how this ends good luck this morning i hppe it is a fairly easy fix.
 
with that door latched shut, there will be pressure on those hinges if the stove gasket is sealing like it should...say you pull one pin out, the door could twist a little from the gasket being freed on that end and then you may end up breaking the other hinge....not a good idea....
 
You can't pull pins from the door hinge with the F100.
 
If you can get to the hing pins to take them out, Try putting 2 motorcycle straps around the stove near the hing pins and tightening them down before taking the pins out. it might relieve enough pressure to not damage anything.


Just thinking outside the box :)
 
yes i think you should try tilting the stove back while someone tries to unlatch it .... good luck
 
OK, the problem is fixed, and it hardly took any time. I disconnected the flue pipe, tilted the stove back as suggested and the log rolled away. Opened the door, rearranged and re attached the flue pipe. All in about 30 minutes. Since installers put this in for us, I was reluctant to take any of the flue apart,
but it was actually easy because 3 screws removed in the middle allows the pipe to slide down enough to clear the ceiling flange and it pulls away. One huge upside to this is that I can see that I can certainly do my own chimney sweeping easily so will save $$ every year with that.

Thanks to all that commented!

John
 
JGrover said:
OK, the problem is fixed, and it hardly took any time. I disconnected the flue pipe, tilted the stove back as suggested and the log rolled away. Opened the door, rearranged and re attached the flue pipe. All in about 30 minutes. Since installers put this in for us, I was reluctant to take any of the flue apart,
but it was actually easy because 3 screws removed in the middle allows the pipe to slide down enough to clear the ceiling flange and it pulls away. One huge upside to this is that I can see that I can certainly do my own chimney sweeping easily so will save $$ every year with that.

Thanks to all that commented!

John

EXCELLENT! glad it worked out for ya, and it is nice to do something like that because as you stated, now you know you can clean yer own flue.....make sure you use the right brush for your flue, but that's another post down the road for ya......be safe and keep warm.....
 
Seems like I had that happen yrs ago in another stove but is was burning at the time so the condition cured itself.
 
I'm glad you got it figured out, but I'm curious why you're loading the stove in the first place if you're not using it??
 
Oh well I guess I;ll just put the termites I collected today and put in a jar for ya back into the wild.
 
Woodpecker chum down the chimney works well too.Should roll right into the stove.This has happened before so dampers aren't installed much anymore.
 
This actually started to stress me out myself. I cant imagine not being able to use my stove for heat much less not being able to open the door as the cause. Even though I have a heat pump! So glad it worked out for ya John. Burn away bro.
 
Nothing like this has ever happened to me. In fact, this is the first time I've ever heard of it happening to anybody. Either of my stoves would allow me to pop out the hinge pins & remove the door, but that's obviously no consolation for you whatsoever. I'm sure glad to hear that you were able to take care of it in relatively short order...and learned some valuable stuff about your installation in the process. Rick
 
After switching to the englander 30 I accidentally loaded the stove up in a manner that wouldn't allow the latch to turn over as it closed ( I was used to having the latch in the middle of 2 doors and put a long log on the outside) Of course that was on hot coals and left me scrambling as the fire grew to get the ash bucket, pull out flaming logs, and reassemble.

pen
 
I thought there was a similar situation last year regarding this. The F-3 has a latch shield incorporated into the casting of the ash fettle. Too bad there wasn't a replacement fettle for the F-100 with a similar design.
 
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