Since I just did a bit of an overhaul to get it in operation for the season, some random notes on what I've learned. This is for the original style Santa Fe, bought on sale just before the B version was released. On the whole, it's served us well, heating about 1/3 of a 2200 sq. ft. home. Last year the auger motor gave out, so replaced that. This year it wouldn't start until I replaced the exhaust/combustion blower. While at it I replace the room blower too, as that had been getting noisy. These were all simple operations, in themselves. But in pulling the stove out from the corner I took apart the vent pipe. One of the places I took it apart was between a 3" to 4" adapter and a 45" elbow in Excel pipe. It turned out there was no good way to get these to go back together. That was fortunate.
When I bought the stove, the shop sold me on the idea that I should just have them vent it straight out, without an OAK, which the dealer claimed would lead to various problems. Of course venting it straight out meant whenever the electricity failed, smoke would come into the house. Folks in this forum were kind enough to help me find parts to build a relay to switch the thermostat off when power goes out, which along with a battery backup adequate to run the fan on cool down got around the problem. But I really should have had it installed with a vertical stack, to have avoided that.
So I grabbed a DuraVent kit from the local big box store. To get to exit the wall at the same place as before, I found an additional 6" DuraVent Pro piece through the Internet. There's some confusion about whether big-box DuraVent and DuraVent Pro parts fit together. They did. The one shortcoming of the kit was that its stove adapter took a lot of silicone to connect to the stove outlet. Other than that the kit assembled well and is tight. I put some foil tape over the seams inside the house, but there was no obvious need for it. Taking advantage of having the stove out from the corner, I also got a standard OAK kit. Between the stack helping pull the air, and the OAK providing colder, thus more oxygen dense air, and maybe the new blower too, the flame is noiceably happier. And I can shut off power without smoke in the house, so have retired the relay.
The one weird thing I ran into a few years ago has been seen by others: The baffle falling down -- https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/quadra-santa-fe-baffle-falling-down-falling-down.146529/. In my case, the metal had shrunk slightly after many firings. While the baffle itself isn't a common replacement part, it is available as part of a kit that was put out to upgrade the earliest release of the Santa Fe, which had a straight back wall, to the later model, where the two side pieces are angled inwards. That kit is still available, uk-30kpel (a search engine will find it -- also mentioned here: https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/quadra-fire-improved-air-flow-system.18797/). The replacement baffle from the kit, swapped in several years ago, has not fallen yet.
When I bought the stove, the shop sold me on the idea that I should just have them vent it straight out, without an OAK, which the dealer claimed would lead to various problems. Of course venting it straight out meant whenever the electricity failed, smoke would come into the house. Folks in this forum were kind enough to help me find parts to build a relay to switch the thermostat off when power goes out, which along with a battery backup adequate to run the fan on cool down got around the problem. But I really should have had it installed with a vertical stack, to have avoided that.
So I grabbed a DuraVent kit from the local big box store. To get to exit the wall at the same place as before, I found an additional 6" DuraVent Pro piece through the Internet. There's some confusion about whether big-box DuraVent and DuraVent Pro parts fit together. They did. The one shortcoming of the kit was that its stove adapter took a lot of silicone to connect to the stove outlet. Other than that the kit assembled well and is tight. I put some foil tape over the seams inside the house, but there was no obvious need for it. Taking advantage of having the stove out from the corner, I also got a standard OAK kit. Between the stack helping pull the air, and the OAK providing colder, thus more oxygen dense air, and maybe the new blower too, the flame is noiceably happier. And I can shut off power without smoke in the house, so have retired the relay.
The one weird thing I ran into a few years ago has been seen by others: The baffle falling down -- https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/quadra-santa-fe-baffle-falling-down-falling-down.146529/. In my case, the metal had shrunk slightly after many firings. While the baffle itself isn't a common replacement part, it is available as part of a kit that was put out to upgrade the earliest release of the Santa Fe, which had a straight back wall, to the later model, where the two side pieces are angled inwards. That kit is still available, uk-30kpel (a search engine will find it -- also mentioned here: https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/quadra-fire-improved-air-flow-system.18797/). The replacement baffle from the kit, swapped in several years ago, has not fallen yet.
