New Englander 55-SPH10L: A Search For Smoke!

[hiskid73]

I was looking forward to a warm house when I first fired up my brand new Englander staove. I knew from the forums that I would get burn in smoke but I was suprised I was smelling wood smoke..It was instant as the pellets started to smolder..I called Englander and explained the issue and they shipped out a complete exhaust blower assembly. My first try I just removed the blower motor itself and saw the fiberglass gasket brown in some areas from smoke passing through the fibers and leaking out..To fix it I eliminated the gasket and just used a bead on hi temp silicone to replace the gasket....I let it set for 24 hours and fired it again and to my surprise there was still smoke. I recalled Englanders tech line and someone wanted me to pull the panel and look at the blower and the welds on the firebox..I was amazed to see all the leakage around the seal where the blower casing attached to the firebox.Note all the screws were tight

My next step involved pulling the whole blower assembly..I was amazed as I removed it and saw the fiberglass gasket was dark brown from exhaust passing through it..I also saw where the housing was clamped down on top of insulation covering the firebox(that should have been moved out of the way)prevented the one side from even sealing completely.You can see at the top and bottom brow residue that had leaked out(I guess there is moisture in there.I am using Pennington pellets from Loew's.I was saddened that I had forked out borrowed money for something I had to fix before i could even use it...We'll I figured the only way this is gonna happen is that I do it myself..I figured I woud leave the gasket there so I trimmed a little from the edges and put a bead on the edge to seal the gasket end and a bead on the top to seal to the stove...One think would have helped was having an extra hand to hold the casing in place till I could get screws started as it wanted to slide down away fron the mounting holes...Anyway I am including some pics. I will keep you posted. I am also wondering if a porus gasket is the way to go. Maybe Englander will give me some kind of parts credit or a rebate for dealing with all these headaches with a new stove....May God Bless You...kim

 

[pegdot]

Kim, I can sympathize. I had to swap some parts out on my stove when it was new as well so I know what you are feeling. I was pretty disappointed. I got the problem fixed and now I love the stove. The up side, to me, is that having to work on it from the get go kind of forced me to become comfortable with the stove. I KNOW that I'm perfectly capable of fixing it should I need to and that's worth a lot to me since there are no service people in this area. It's funny but hubby freaks every time the stove makes a noise. He lives in terror of it breaking down. I'm not worried about it. I know I can fix it if it does. ;-) (Okay, I can fix it if I can get someone to help me pull it away from the wall. :roll: I swear I'm going to put that thing on wheels one day! :lol: )

Glad you got to the root of the problem! How's the stove burning now?