My Harman oakwood that would not burn

[whiskeyrichard]

It has been a while. About two months ago I was on here bragging about a Harmon Oakwood I got. As it turns out, my chimney would not draft well enough for it. The manual says my configuration was supported and would work, but as many of you told me.....it just wouldn't.

I worked with my local stove shop and the factory rep and on Friday I am getting a new Harmon XXV pellet stove. It is the same chassis as the Oakwood, so it still looks v ery nice.

I am not to jazzed about a pellet stove, but it will be nce to heat my lower level again, and I still have a small wood burner upstairs.

I'll let you all know how she woks out.

WR

 

[Corie]

Can you rebrief us onthe chimney situation and why there was no way you could get it to function?

 

[whiskeyrichard]

The stove was rear vented directoy into an 8x8 masonry flu that was 19 feet tall. According to the manual this would work fine, but it did not at all.

Once I was able to talk the factory guy, he could not beleive that the manual said this would work. According to him, this stove requires A LOT of draft to work properly. Luckily, since the manual said it work, they had to return the stove.

My guess is that they will be changing the manual.

WR

 

[Corie]

Why not simply reline the chimney, rather than completely replacing the unit?

 

[carpniels]

I agree with Corie. that is cheaper now and cheaper all the years you burn wood instead of pellets.

And from your post, you don't seem to like pellets all that much.

Carpniels

 

[Corie]

If fitting an insulated round liner down the chimney, there are ovalized options available.

 

[stoveguy2esw]

The stove was rear vented directoy into an 8x8 masonry flu that was 19 feet tall. According to the manual this would work fine, but it did not at all.

Once I was able to talk the factory guy, he could not beleive that the manual said this would work. According to him, this stove requires A LOT of draft to work properly. Luckily, since the manual said it work, they had to return the stove.

My guess is that they will be changing the manual.

WR

it should have...
were you sucking air? cleanout door with no gasket? did the stove burn with door cracked and die when you closed the door? was this in new construction or newly refurbushed with windows or tyveked? 19 ft of chimney should pull most anything unless there is another underlying cause. kinda hard for me to understand, unless there is another factor not picked up on. would need to discuss at length to find out why , but i bet i could if i could find out some particulars. let me know if you want to try and we'll talk, for what its worth, its getting late in the season and i have more spare time to kick things like this around, let me know if you want to try to get to the bottom of why cause it should have pulled it in most cases

 

[BrotherBart]

I agree with Mike. That thing should have drafted like a dream into a 19' 8X8.

 

[elkimmeg]

Remember the issues past posters had with chimney block chimneys? I'm willing to bet part of the problem is the chimney's leaky ash cleanout door

the inside of an 8/8 flue is about 6 5/8" or 6 3/4 ", too small to get an insulated liner down with the insulation in tact. I have the same chimney, where I run a Cat Intrepid II
Cat stoves are suposed to be draft sensitive . All I had to do was seal the external ash clean out door and this stove drafts ,very easy to get to cat light off.

For those that do not know this. The Harman Oakwood used the same technology as the VC non cat everburn stoves. There are quite a few post concerning their opprerations and drafting.

I was wondering when issues were going to surface with other stoves using this thehnology Lopi Leyden your in the same boat.

Refresh all of us about your burning routine. What have you tried and sucess rate at different approaches did you rake the hot bed of coals to the back before re loads?

wood moisture ?? At what point did you damper it down for secondary burn. When are these tech going to take a draft reading to figure out where the problem is?
Have you tried a supermarket bundle of wood? I am willing to bet the members here can walk you threw getting that stove opperating correctly.

I have to go back and review the manual and also look at the fire box layout.

 

[Corie]

You're right.

Liner insulation is probably out of the question, but that chimney should be fine even without the reline.

 

[whiskeyrichard]

There is no leakign cleanout because there is no cleanout.

I spent almost two months trying to get this sucker to burn. the people from the stove shop came over, I talked a lot with people from the factory which Harmon does not usually do. I think maybe if the stove pipe was drafting out of the top, that I may have had better luck.

According to the factory rep, there is no way this stove will work in the setup I have. He said if I were to reline it, that it would very likely fix the problem. But I was not willing to try it. There is no cleanout so they would have had to make one (for acccess to reline).

the repsonses here are funny because when I posted about this problem about getting this stive to burn with this chimney, I was told by elkkimeg and and couple others that it just would not work with this flu and that it had to be run into a 6 inch round stove pipe.

Oh well. Like I said I still have a wood burner upstairs, and we are planning on selling the house in the next year or so. I thinkt he pellet stove will help out with resale as opposed to haveing two wood burners.

I really appreciate sme of your offers to help out on this though.

Do any of you have experience with the Harmon XXV pellet stove. Other than having a flame like a crack pipe lighter (like all pellet stoves) she looks real nice.

Thanks again,
WR

 

[stoveguy2esw]

hey , the harmon pellet line is top of the line, trust me , ive looked at them for yeawrs , and am a competitor (so to speak) so my indorsement should be good if i say they are great stoves (which i do) , personally i think we offer better bang for the buck , or "btu for the buck" but if i had to choose a high end pellet unit , harmon would be my first stop, probably closely followed by the quads (also a great stove) the xxv is a newer design so i do not know as much about that particular model , but dane harmon builds some good chit so i expect it will do quite well

 

[whiskeyrichard]

cool. that's good to hear.

We plan on selling our current house. Our next house is going to be a longer term deal. I plan on using my experiences with the couple different stoves I have had in this house and geting a real nice setup.

I am most likely going to get the Country Legacy S260 or the try the Harmon again in a setup more to it's liking.

I have had such good luck with our little country s160, so I will be a little more likely to go that way. I can very easily achieve all night burns in that little stove, it heats our entire upstairs very very well, and is very responsive to the damper adjustments. On the other hand, it would be great to be able to make a steak on your wood burner....have to go with the Harmon to do that!

We'll see. I have learned a lot over the last year by replacing the stoves that were originally in our house and with all the reading I have done here. More than anything, I have learned that I really like to heat with wood.

Take it easy,
WR

 

[elkimmeg]

According to the factory rep, there is no way this stove will work in the setup

I beg to differ here it is not even close to a cross-sectional code issue and the masonry 8/8 is suggested in their own manual. So who is telling the truth the manual listed and approved by UL or some stove tech who never took the time to take a draft test reading?
without a draft reading and it well with in code acceptance what do the base their assumption on? Sir I know it does not make a difference with you now, but there is a lot of BS floating around.

So you are fine with this? ready to accept another one of their products while being bs. Why can't they find out what is wrong with your stove. I'll tell you they don't know. They would rather Bs you then admit it.

 

[Corie]

The relining thing makes zero sense. There is no logical reason that relining that chimney would cause any difference in performance, since the liner could not be insulated.


If an 8x8 chimney has the dimensions that Elk specified, it has a cross-sectional area of 45 cu. in. Round 6 inch liner has 28.27 cu. in.


I understand its a 59% increase in cross-sectional area, and a 50% increase in perimeter.


What I don't understand is how the stove could possibly emit such a miniscule amount of heated gas that it isn't sufficient to maintain draft in these conditions. Tradergordo is running a stove with the same combustion system and seeing stack temperatures in the 1000 deg F range. You can't possible tell me that 1000 degree flue gasses aren't sufficient to maintain the draft in a chimney that is just over 50% larger in cross-sectional area.

 

[elkimmeg]

Corie It does not make sense, these stoves are tested for that chimney size. some labs test in 8/8 masonry chimneys.

I think it is understanding the new technology and learning how to work with it and how best to bring out preformance.

Well I read the manual sure sounds and looks like the VC everburn system. Harman call it the Firedome or secondary combustion chamber..

Corie tke a look at the manual look familliar? with VC ?

 

[jejennings]

Well whiskeyrichard, I hope your experience with Harman is better than mine. At least you have a dealerthat is willing to work with you on the problem.

when I bought a Harman Model 2600 multi-fuel central furnace in 2000 to replace an ancient wood and oil burning furnace that we had had for many years. I now regret the choice. Three seasons ago I decided to run the furnace on oil only until my wife recovered from her lung cancer surgery, so that there would be no chance of even a whiff of wood smoke entering the house. When the furnace fired we smelled oil. This has continued right up to this season and we’ve tried everything to get it repaired, complete cleaning and resealing of the oil heat exchanger (twice), various adjustment to the oil burner, chimney cleaning, etc. We even had the air conditioning oil pulled so that the heat exchanger could be inspected for cracks (none found). My heating technician is at his wit’s end and blames it on poor furnace design. Emails, telephone calls, and faxed and snail mailed messages to Harman asking for technical help or referral to a technician who could solve the problem have been unanswered. They won’t even send me a replacement manual. Their standard reply is that all service and parts orders must go through the dealer who sold me the furnace. I of course called the dealer from whom I bought the furnace and was told by the owner’s widow that when her husband died, Harmon pulled her dealership and gave it to someone else, even though they sold 84 Harman units a year. She said her very experienced and qualified service technician would no longer service Harmon products because of the way
Dane Harman and his company treated her. The two Harman Dealers within reasonable driving distance from me do not handle furnaces, only stoves, and do not have service technicians qualified in the oil heat part. The bottom line – Do not purchase ANY Harmon product unless you are absolutely sure the your delaer will remain in business for as long as you own the stove.

Jack Jennings
Sicklerville, NJ
[email protected]

 

[carpniels]

HI Jennings,

Sorry to hear you had such a crappy experience with Harman. I hope this information gets back to them so they can take action. It only takes a few of these posts to ruin someones reputation. At least now they can find out and do something about it. Too many customers don't complain to the company but will spread bad rumors about the company thus ruining their reputation. You tried and they did not respond. Weird. I wouldn't go about it that way if I were Dane.

Anyway, as to this non draft issue. I don't understand. Something else must be wrong. Elk and Corie are right. 8x8 is a regular chimney and all stoves should be able to burn in it, especially if it is 19 ft high. Wish we all lived closer so we could come by and check it out.

Also, remember it takes about 2 years to really learn all the finesses of burning a certain type of stove. They all have their own quirks and it take a lot of burning to figure them all out..

carpniels

 

[HarryBack]

Ive seen Oakwoods run well in 6" liner situations, with less cross sectional area than you have. I must say as well that the Oakwood, due to its afterburner, requires very good draft to function well. Im guessing your chimney, for whatever reason has poor-marginal draft, or you arent getting the temp up enough for seconday combustion to occur, or both. The stove just isnt THAT complicated. The XXV should run fine in the flue, but pellets are a different fuel, require electricity, etc.

 

[jejennings]

carpniels,

About the Harman isuues - I tried, in my second letter to Dane harman, that sometimes it is necessary for a manufacturer to get involved in end user problems and it can also be a benefit to the company, Here is a quote from the second letter:

"As the former Director of Engineering for a firm that had dealers, I can fully appreciate the inconvenience that direct customer support places upon a manufacturer. On the other hand I can also cite numerous instances when it was necessary to redirect the efforts of my engineers from their primary duties of product design and improvement to direct support of end customers with specific problems that could not be handled by our dealers. Our goal was customer satisfaction and fortunately we were able to strike a balance between direct corporate involvement with the end user and product development and production. Direct customer contact also allowed us to improve the quality of our product instructions which resulted in fewer product problem inquires."

I can only think he doesn' care,

About the chimney draft problem. I agree that an 8 x 8 flue should be more that sufficient. It souldn't hurt to inspect it, however. Even a flue this size can be clogged by squirells nests, dead birds, or even a slipped tile. Creasote can build up more quickly that expected, particularly if you fuels contains too much mositure.

Jak

 

[carpniels]

HI Jennings,

I agree with your posting. The paragraph is more of an excuse than a real offer for help.

Sorry it had to be that way. Also, HB has a point that stoves with cats or afterburners do need a lot of draft. I had one for a while and it was hard to get it going properly. I also had a short chimney, but at least it was a regular 6 inch SS straight up.

I hope your replacement helps resolve the issue. Personally, I would have waited until winter was over and gone on the roof and really cleaned out the chimney myself. The tools are cheap and you would spend much more time than a pro would. I would rather spend some time investigating than spending more money now knowing what the issue is.

Good luck and I hope it all gets resolved.

Carpniels