For at least a year now, I've been noticing that my Heat n' Glo Northstar doesn't seem to burn as long as it used to, and it's been hard to get the usual lazy rolling secondary flame that it had when it was new. Part of the skinny white gasket around the right door's glass got brittle and fell out last year, so we stuffed it back in there and didn't give it much thought. I finally got brave and ordered up new fiberglass ropes, so on a slightly warmer day over the weekend, I took the door out to the shop, and went after the gasket problem.
First - props to Heat n' Glo for making it pretty easy to do. The door just lifts off the half-barrel hinges, and the glass is held in with some steel brackets and a handful of easy to locate screws. Pick up the glass, and it comes right out. Also, the gasket channel has a nice little recess you can squirt some stove cement into and makes centering the new one pretty easy.
Second - holy smokes, the gasket was totally crumbling! The spot that had fallen out was basically powder and fluff, and the rest of it was downright crunchy and fell apart when I picked it up. I put that directly in the garbage.
Installation of the new gasket was straightforward. Scrape the channel clean-ish (used a screwdriver, I'm sure there's a more 'official' way to do this), put down some black Rutland gasket cement, laid the rope through it and trimmed about 8" off the end when I got there. Reassemble the glass, put the door back on, start a small fire and slowly get it hot. I've got most of my burn control back, and the lazy blue secondary flame is back too. I've got enough 1/4" gasket to do the other glass, and some 1/2" ropes to redo the doors. Next time it gets warm out, I'll be doing those too.
First - props to Heat n' Glo for making it pretty easy to do. The door just lifts off the half-barrel hinges, and the glass is held in with some steel brackets and a handful of easy to locate screws. Pick up the glass, and it comes right out. Also, the gasket channel has a nice little recess you can squirt some stove cement into and makes centering the new one pretty easy.
Second - holy smokes, the gasket was totally crumbling! The spot that had fallen out was basically powder and fluff, and the rest of it was downright crunchy and fell apart when I picked it up. I put that directly in the garbage.
Installation of the new gasket was straightforward. Scrape the channel clean-ish (used a screwdriver, I'm sure there's a more 'official' way to do this), put down some black Rutland gasket cement, laid the rope through it and trimmed about 8" off the end when I got there. Reassemble the glass, put the door back on, start a small fire and slowly get it hot. I've got most of my burn control back, and the lazy blue secondary flame is back too. I've got enough 1/4" gasket to do the other glass, and some 1/2" ropes to redo the doors. Next time it gets warm out, I'll be doing those too.
