Montpelier vermont castings insert

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allhandsworking

allhandsworking

Feeling the Heat
Hearth Supporter
Sep 30, 2008
378
NYC
I purchased a Montpelier insert and was told it should be delivered in a couple of weeks. I did research on other products that i never heard of. We haven't heated the house with wood since the 80s. I wish i knew about this web site a week ago. Very informative! I now know the Montpelier is a new insert and doesn't have a history yet. Does anyone have one in operation? Do you like it? Was delivery on time. I have an 80 year old home with a clay tile lined chimney clean. The shop recommended a 4' liner to help with draft and instillation. Does this sound right. The chimney drafted well when used as a fire place. The insert has nice cast iron details and that's what we had back in the day so that is what sold me. Also considered jotel and lope. I was limited with dimensions. The VC Montpelier had a nice fit for my needs.
 
You are going to be the first on this block with one. It should be a really nice insert. As to venting, line that chimney all the way to the top so you don't have to pull that baby out of the fireplace every time the chimney is cleaned or pay for having it pulled. And there is no way that a "direct connect" will be as efficient as a full liner.
 
I have just started selling these units this fall and have not had time to get feedback yet but it looks like a really good unit, a real winner I think.
Ernie
 
The chimney is an interer but I will installe full liner just to get it done. any recomendations on the brand
 
Hi! I just signed up for this forum because I'm looking for some answers on my Montpelier insert. I saw your posting. We got ours about two weeks ago and we just finished with our 4 small fires to season it, and now will probably burn all winter long! We live in NY, it hasn't really been cold enough for a fire yet, but we have had a few fires to get to know it! So far so good! We like it alot. We have a 2000 sqft house and we were a bit constrained by fireplace size, so the Montpelier seemed to be the right choice. My only complaint is that the front glass has sort of fogged up a bit, and I was going to ask what I could use to clean it. Regular soap and water? A bit of black soot and some odd rainbow coloration at the top. I don't need to be too fussy about that, I bought it for its heat properties, but is there any special cleaning agent I can use or is it a hopeless battle? Maybe my wood is not as fully seasoned as it needs to be and that is causing excess soot buildup?
 
Welcome. It might be the cooler break-in fires that have fogged the glass. If so, it should stay clean with hotter fires. Use a damp newspaper, dipped in the wood ash to clean the glass. Works quite well.

Can you post some pictures of the stove? It would be great to see it installed, especially if it's burning!
 
We just had the Montpelier installed. We ordered the outside air kit but our installer said we didn't need it. Hope he is right. We've had two "break-in fires" and our glass has a light amber coating inside also. We finally got the unit hot enough that the blower would kick on and don't ya know the thing is loud! Really hums on low and sounds like something is in the blower. Our installer is coming out to check it out. Hope it is an easy fix because they had a difficult time installing it.
Looking forward to offsetting the oil bill this winter.
 
The wet newspaper dipped in ash was a terrific tip!! Many thanks for that advice, worked great!

We don't have a real comparison to say whether we think our blower is loud or not....its weird that it comes on automatically, and then sort of goes on and off for awhile....but its working and we can live with the blower noise, but we do have to raise the volume on the TV a bit!

So far, very happy with it! I'll try to post a picture once I have a fire going ....
 
Hey, if the tech tells me that the noise is normal I'm sure I will deal with it. The owners manual says the stove can handle 30 pounds of wood. Never having loaded a woodstove or insert would this be considered alot?
 
Smacker said:
Hey, if the tech tells me that the noise is normal I'm sure I will deal with it. The owners manual says the stove can handle 30 pounds of wood. Never having loaded a woodstove or insert would this be considered alot?
Click to expand...

It's Vermont Castings' way of saying you have a 1.5 cubic foot firebox. VC has used an assumption about fuel load that goes back many years in their literature, 20 lbs per cubic foot of firebox capacity.

Is it a lot? Well, the Montpelier is on the small end of the spectrum. But my VC WinterWarm is even smaller at 1.25 cubic feet, yet I can tease an 8 hour burn out of it when everything is right (good wood, careful packing of the firebox, correct air setting.) So, it's not the size of your insert, it's how well you put the wood...well, you know what I mean.

By the way, I looked at the Montpelier insert in the hearth store the other day, and I thought it was a very handsome unit. That extra 0.25 cubic feet made the firebox seem HUGE to me! Good luck with it.
 
It has a sleek look. All the ones we had flew out of here in two weeks. I heard they were on back order till like December. Let us know if the two weeks holds. Maybe we will try to get our hands on some more.
 
I hope it's made better than their Dutchwest 2478!
 
December

Dealer told me end of Oct. We will see? I have seen some nice videos on youtube mostly jotels secondary burns. If any Montpelier owners couldost a video that would be great. VC websites pic of the insert are terrible. its a picture of good looking people sipping wine with an insert in the background. My wife wants to see what I spent lots of money on!
 
It would be great to see some pictures posted here of the Montpelier burning. I'd love to see them.
 
I had the Montpelier installed 4 days ago. So far so good. The glass does stain up easily but burning the insert hot a couple of times "toasted" the layer of stain and it came off easily with a moist paper towel. The blower is not quiet by any measure. The noise sounds more like the humming of the motor - a low frequence noise with its frequence and intensity remain nearly constant at all fan speed while adding on top of it is the wind noise that goes up with the fan speed. On medium speed the noise level is acceptable but not pleasant by any measure. I found the hinges on the door weak and the door drops enough to scratch the iron plate jutting out near the bottom of the insert when it swings open. If you apply a little force on the door the hinges would flex a bit.
 
My wife and I were looking at the Montpelier earlier in the year and when our dealer said they were back order we quickly switched to a Jotul. Our dealer told us the the Jotul has a great track record with few repairs issues and the Jotul was slightly cheaper. Anyway, we loved the look of the VC insert and surrounds, I just didn't want to wait to find out VC was having delivery issues as we got closer to winter.

Please keep us up to date with about these and let us know of problems.

If anyone is interested the blower noise on the Jotul is very quiet to compared to others I've heard.

Good luck with your inserts!
 
jeremiah said:
I had the Montpelier installed 4 days ago. So far so good. The glass does stain up easily but burning the insert hot a couple of times "toasted" the layer of stain and it came off easily with a moist paper towel. The blower is not quiet by any measure. The noise sounds more like the humming of the motor - a low frequence noise with its frequence and intensity remain nearly constant at all fan speed while adding on top of it is the wind noise that goes up with the fan speed. On medium speed the noise level is acceptable but not pleasant by any measure. I found the hinges on the door weak and the door drops enough to scratch the iron plate jutting out near the bottom of the insert when it swings open. If you apply a little force on the door the hinges would flex a bit.
Click to expand...

It does not sound too promising! I'm not surprised.
 
Is it so far so good or not? Your review sounds negative?
 
We had our installer come back out for the fan noise. It is MUCH more acceptable and a very easy fix.
Remove the lower cover and the blower. This only involved removing 4-6 screws. You can then move
the blower assembly around until the positioning yields the lowest possible noise. Also, the "card" that has
all the stove info was remove and is stored next to our fireplace. The only noise that could be still be
considered objectionable is when the fan is on low. In checking with some friends with electrical knowledge
I have learned that when the rheostat is set to the lowest setting the "hum" is a result of applying the
minimum amount of power to the motor which should not be considered unusual. Hope this helps.
 
HI, I JUST ORDERED THE MONTPELIER AND HOPE IT WAS THE RIGHT CHOICE, WHATS YOUR HONEST OPINION OF IT ANY OTHER PROBLEMS ASIDE FROM THE BLOWER? ALSO WHAT KIND OF HEAT OUTPUT WITH THE BLOWER OFF? NOT MUCH INFO OUT THERE YET BEING A NEW MODEL, ANY INFO HELPS THANKS
 
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I really like the insert. It looks great. The owners manual says to have three to four smaller fires to temper the cast iron and we just had our forth.
Our home is one the small side but with night temp at 32F we were able to raise the room temp from 60F to 76F (thermo about 15' from fireplace) in a few hours
and 68F in the next room where our oil burner thermostat is (30' away). The most wood I have put in at once was four logs that were only about 4.5 inches (split).
So...according to the manual the stove can handle 30lbs of wood and I had maybe 8-10lbs in and achieved satisfactory heat. Overall at this early point I really do like
the product.
 
I can't seem to get a picture on the site. My pixels are under what is required but I get get it to load.
 
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