Hi:
We bought a Jotul Firelight CB about 7 years ago. We heat over 2000 sq. ft. exclusively with this unit. For a number of reasons, it started as a love/hate relationship, but it has mellowed mostly to a fondness for this unit. We live near Boulder, CO, and, in winter, the stove goes pretty constantly, year after year. This tends, over 2 or 3 years of hot fires, to warp and crack the baffle plates suspended immediately over the secondary burn-tubes. They are expensive.
Rather than buy a third set of baffles last year, I bought a set of split fire-bricks and cut them to a pattern of about 14 3/4" X 14 3/4". They are placed over & held sightly above the fire tubes by several 3/16 cold-rolled steel dowels lying 90 degrees to the tubes. Because a couple of bolts at the rear burn plate/manifold hold a couple of bricks very slightly ahead of the back wall of the stove, I left the fire-blanket over the bricks, including the slight gap.
This was done for the winter of 06/07, by far the roughest winter we have used the stove. I can see no difference in the secondary burn, except that it may take a little longer to "torch-off", and may last a little longer after banking an "all-nighter" (which I usually don't do unless it's very cold.) Upon cleaning the stove this summer, I found no bad result to the stove. The blanket and bricks remain in great shape. 'Just FYI.
Best regards,
Dexter Black
We bought a Jotul Firelight CB about 7 years ago. We heat over 2000 sq. ft. exclusively with this unit. For a number of reasons, it started as a love/hate relationship, but it has mellowed mostly to a fondness for this unit. We live near Boulder, CO, and, in winter, the stove goes pretty constantly, year after year. This tends, over 2 or 3 years of hot fires, to warp and crack the baffle plates suspended immediately over the secondary burn-tubes. They are expensive.
Rather than buy a third set of baffles last year, I bought a set of split fire-bricks and cut them to a pattern of about 14 3/4" X 14 3/4". They are placed over & held sightly above the fire tubes by several 3/16 cold-rolled steel dowels lying 90 degrees to the tubes. Because a couple of bolts at the rear burn plate/manifold hold a couple of bricks very slightly ahead of the back wall of the stove, I left the fire-blanket over the bricks, including the slight gap.
This was done for the winter of 06/07, by far the roughest winter we have used the stove. I can see no difference in the secondary burn, except that it may take a little longer to "torch-off", and may last a little longer after banking an "all-nighter" (which I usually don't do unless it's very cold.) Upon cleaning the stove this summer, I found no bad result to the stove. The blanket and bricks remain in great shape. 'Just FYI.
Best regards,
Dexter Black
