Quad 7100 Being Installed - Auxiliary Convection Air System

[Mykayel]

If anyone could give me some advice it would be greatly appreciated. I'm building a new how and I'm having a quadrafire 7100 installed. They have it installed, but they did not hook up the auxiliary convection air system, which would be hooked up to outside air to bring in outside air as an option instead of recirculating inside air with the blower system. When I asked the builder about it not being installed, he asked the fireplace installer and they said they typically do not install it but they can if I wanted them to. Would you have it installed or just leave it closed off?

They also installed the fireplace with the SL300 series flue (which is an approved flue per the manual) which requires the "CAK-4A" kit which is a collar around the flue where it attaches to the fireplace and has a duct to outside air. Does anyone know how this flue system works? It almost seems like it is using outside air to cool the flue; is this ok? I thought you want to keep your flue temperature up to keep the flue gasses from condensing inside the flue and causing creosote build up.

 

[DAKSY]

If anyone could give me some advice it would be greatly appreciated. I'm building a new how and I'm having a quadrafire 7100 installed. They have it installed, but they did not hook up the auxiliary convection air system, which would be hooked up to outside air to bring in outside air as an option instead of recirculating inside air with the blower system. When I asked the builder about it not being installed, he asked the fireplace installer and they said they typically do not install it but they can if I wanted them to. Would you have it installed or just leave it closed off?
They also installed the fireplace with the SL300 series flue (which is an approved flue per the manual) which requires the "CAK-4A" kit which is a collar around the flue where it attaches to the fireplace and has a duct to outside air. Does anyone know how this flue system works? It almost seems like it is using outside air to cool the flue; is this ok? I thought you want to keep your flue temperature up to keep the flue gasses from condensing inside the flue and causing creosote build up.

I tend to think that drawing the convection air from within the home would be more ideal than having another hole punched through the envelope of your house, but I'll let other chime in on that part of this post. I haven't installed any of the 7100s but I have installed the Northstar system & they are quite similar. The Northstar uses the CAK-4 as well & it's not hooked to outside air, per se. It's installed to pull air from INSIDE the chase to cool the venting system, NOT air from OUTSIDE. While the chase is cold, it's still within the envelope of the house, so that air should be a tad warmer. I've never returned to a customer's home where there were creosote issues in the SL-300 venting system installed with the CAK-4. If the 7100 burns as hot as the Northstar burns, & as long as your wood is properly dry, creosote should be a non-issue. HTH.

 

[Mykayel]

Thanks for the reply. I cannot find anything documentation about the CAK-4A kit, they installed it with a vent to the outside of the chase to drawn in outside air. If this is wrong, I would really like to know.