PE Summit not heating the house?

[greenhoney]

Hello Hearthies.. I've looked around the forum for a solution or a similar problem to mine- i'll keep looking, but in the mean time, i'll share our experience.

We are coming from a Harmon MK3 freestanding coal stove converted to burn wood. We used it exclusivley to heat last year- our first in this ~2k Sq ft house and it was amaaaaazing! We were in shorts and tank tops with bare feet while it snowed about every 3 days and temps were routinely in the teens or single digits for weeks. Our second floor felt like we had radiant heated floors!

While we loved this wood stove and it's large firebox that we only needed to load 3 times a day, it took up a large footprint in the room where I work from home. The heat output was so great, I had a wooden room divider to shield my desk area so I could sit comfortably in the room without sweating to death. We decided to go with a PE Summit insert to gain a few square feet of usable space with the most heat output.

It was installed on Dec 21st and we loved the way it looked. The reburn made the large glass door even more mesmerizing and we watched it like it was our new television. However, it never really got very warm in the room it was in, let alone the whole house. Outside Temps have been unseasonably warm and a few days we didn't even light it because it was nearly 70F outside.

Once it finally started getting below 40F, we really found we are not getting the output we expected. We are loading the stove 5x a day and it seems to plow through the wood even with the air intake banked all the way or nearly down. The room where the stove is will not go above 65-67F. Obviously colder in the further away and 2 upstairs rooms. Even with the doorway fans which we used with the Harmon, the other rooms were in the lower/mid 50F range while the fireplace roared.

Our house is about 60 years old with plaster walls, extremely well insulated. The fireplace is masonry fieldstone set on a concrete pad you can see from the basement looking up. The chimney is on the outside of the house with a SS insert and adequate draft judging by the previous stove we used.

We let the dealer know within the first week something didn't seem right and they agreed by the description of it, something is not right. They sent a technician to replace a fan likely damaged in shipping who looked at the chimney liner and the general install and couldn't see anything outstanding.

We went a few more days and called again to ask for help. The owner came out the next day and spent an hour with us looking at the stove, checking our wood moisture (ranged 14-20%), and poking around the house searching for some answer as to why we are not heating up. He explained he heats his house for years with the same stove but it is a mystery for him why this isn't working. The hearth doesn't get warm at all - the stone hearth and mantel are cold to the touch even the stove surround is icy cold on the bottom, barely warm on top.

The fireplace itself (without an insert or woodstove -pics below) is a steel or iron (?) box inset into the masonry with channels flanking the top & bottom. The channels lead to either side of the metal of the fireplace- I guess the intention was for when an actual fire was burning, it would heat the airspace and provide additional source of heat output. This was one of the areas he thought we were getting draft. We put some foam block in the space to see if that was a source of heat loss.

We also spent a few days checking our doors & windows for draft- sured up the door seals on the exterior doors and sealed up the outside chimney where there was a small gap running where it attached to the house.

None of this seemed to help at all. We have concluded the convection in the room is so great that it is churning the air rather than heating it, to the point where you need a blanket to be comfortable in the same room as the fire. :'( it's like the air is moving to fast to adequately heat up regardless of the blower speed or completely off.

When we walked the house with an insence stick to see where a draft might be, we saw the smoke in the air in the top of the room was moving in one direction while the air in the bottom of the room went in the other direction. Lighting a lighter, you can see the flame go neatly horizontal from the air movement. This did not happen with the Harmon. We're so bummed. We've let the fire go out and are now using oil (from the same nearly full tank from Nov 2014) and electric baseboard to heat the house while we figure out any possible next step.

The dealer has been absolutely amazing and responsive. Very sympathetic to our situation. He has offered to work with us to isolate and solve the problem or refund our money. I feel terrible but we want to be satisfied. Boyfriend is ready to put the Harmon back but it would be great to find that ah-ha!! issue to solve the problem and let us be like many others who rave about the Summit.

Here are some pictures of the Summit insert, the Harmon freestanding stove and the fireplace without either.

Thanks for reading and any suggestions.. we are about 2 days away from having the Summit removed.

 

[DAKSY]

My first thought is: "Did the install crew put in a block-off plate?"
Without it, you will have to get the ENTIRE upper portion of that
stone chimney warm before the bottom of it starts to absorb & radiate heat.

 

[kennyp2339]

I agree with Daksy, if there's no block off plate the existing masonry is acting like a big heat sink, I would also do the incense trick near the stove first with the surround on and then the surround off.
The other thing I'm slightly worried about is the use of foam block, please you fire rated insulation (even when exploring) like mineral wood, If you hit a hot area with that foam block it could have started to off gas and you don't want to breath that stuff.

 

[MaintenanceMan]

To reiterate, my first thought also was is there a block off plate. You could be loosing the majority of the heat to the chimney.

 

[greenhoney]

My first thought is: "Did the install crew put in a block-off plate?"
Without it, you will have to get the ENTIRE upper portion of that
stone chimney warm before the bottom of it starts to absorb & radiate heat.

hmm.. i know they stuffed some hefty insulation up there.... but they did not put a full on blocking plate. I was also wondering if that was enough. It is clearly not pushing enough heat out into the 15'x16' room where it's installed. The dealership owner is coming back out tomorrow and i'm making a list - we don't want to take it apart without him so there is no question of the installation.

 

[greenhoney]

I agree with Daksy, if there's no block off plate the existing masonry is acting like a big heat sink, I would also do the incense trick near the stove first with the surround on and then the surround off.
The other thing I'm slightly worried about is the use of foam block, please you fire rated insulation (even when exploring) like mineral wood, If you hit a hot area with that foam block it could have started to off gas and you don't want to breath that stuff.

Just checked the incense around the surround with the stove cold, and it is like there is no draft- the smoke just goes straight up to the ceiling all the way around.. When the fire was lit, it went behing the surround, especially at the bottom of the surround where the stone and metal were icy cold... interesting.

 

[DAKSY]

Just checked the incense around the surround with the stove cold, and it is like there is no draft- the smoke just goes straight up to the ceiling all the way around.. When the fire was lit, it went behing the surround, especially at the bottom of the surround where the stone and metal were icy cold... interesting.

That tells you that the heat is rising because whatever they put in the damper area around the liner isn't sealed. There probably wasn't anything jammed around the liner UNDER the cap, either. Your heat is going up your chimney.

 

[greenhoney]

I agree with the block off plate, that will help the brick to retain heat more quickly. However, I believe switching from a free standing stove to an insert is why you are loosing heat. The free standing stove had all four sides of the stove exposed in the living area, thus having more radiant heat being dispersed. The insert only has one side of the stove exposed to the living area.

We knew we'd lose some heat with the unit in the fireplace rather than in the room & fully exposed. I grew up with 2 different inserts in my parent's house as the primary heat source.. our house is way smaller than my parent's and they almost never used the oil furnace - i would expect the same... really appreciating all the tips from this group!