The newest installed Osburn 1800i

[Osburn1800i]

I have had this insert installed a month and half ago. It was very hard to decide which stove insert should be installed and there was not many people has been using this model and we could not find anyone have this installed that we could see its operation. Finally, it was installed by a local dealer with 5" s.s. flex pipe inside the existing clay oval 8"x6" at about 15ft long. My brick chimney is located outside but we do not feel warm touch on the outside of brick chimney. It works very well with good heat and good draft too. During the start, the door is left open about an inch to make up the quick fire for about 20min. The thermal sensor switch is working perfectly once the stove heats up to the operating temperature. We never had burned wood to heat the home before and this is a new experiment for us. Hopefully this message will aid to potential osburn users to make up their mind.

 

[Mo Heat]

Judging by the date on the photo, this may be a non-USA model and might actually have a different sized flue.

I like that bevelled surround. It's a really nice touch.

 

[wg_bent]

Hey, no fair...You beat me to it. I got mine in yesterday. No shroud around it yet...it's back ordered

You could help me though. The shroud has the scale for the air control on it. I have no idea where low or high is.
how far from the fan is low and high?

Warren

 

[Osburn1800i]

Yes, It's in Halifax, east coast of Canada.
The flue outlet at the top is 6" round and they transition to 5" in order to get the flex down inside the 8"x6" clay flue.
I talked to other dealers and they do the same thing. I'm not sure if this is against the code. BTW, The dealer is WETT cetified so I assume they know what they're doing. Thanks for comments.

I have a question about the firewood. The firewood was bought last month and they said the wood was cut down last year 04 and splitted in this August 05.
Are they dry enough and safe to burn now? I find the glass get dirty easy on every burn like the attached picture. Any comments welcome. They will educate me as a first time wood user. Thanks.

 

[Osburn1800i]

Warren, I am not sure what you are referring to.
Please take a look at the notes below taken from the manual for this stove that I downloaded from their website.
Sorry if not much help.

"6. Ideally the large kindling should be burned until a thick bed of red embers is obtained. At that
point, add cordwood fuel and continue to operate the draft control wide open until the fire is well
established. Once the firebox is hot, the draft control can be partially closed by moving the knob
to the left to adjust the intensity of the fire.
Use Table 3.2 to adjust the draft control to the desired burn rate:

Draft Settings

Burn Rate Draft Setting
Low Move Control left to end of travel.
Medium Low Move Control right by 9/16” - 1” (14.3 – 25.4mm) from closed position.
Medium High Move Control right by 7/8” - 1 3/4” (22.2 – 44.5mm) from closed position
High Move Control to right hand end of travel.

Table 3.2

Closing the draft control down too soon will lower combustion efficiency, and may result in creosote
build-up in the chimney (which could lead to a future chimney fire).

CAUTION: THE ADJUSTMENT RANGE SHOULD NOT BE ALTERED FOR INCREASED FIRING FOR ANY REASON."

 

[wg_bent]

My Osburn 1800i does the same thing on the glass. I have a theory. Mine doesn't deal completely on the latch side. I think it needs adjusting. The handle needs to be made tighter. notice it's a screw, so it can be backed out a turn. Then I suspect it will keep the glass clean.

I'll try it and let you know.

Warren

 

[Osburn1800i]

Very good analysis and osbersvation Frank. This could be design mistake or poor design. The problem is we can not see it in real action at the shop. So what can we do? I will make myself available to answer to anyone who potentially is looking to have it installed. Warren, I did tighten up the door after testing the door with a paper couple weeks ago and it didn't help either. One thing I did seemed to help the glass is burning hot with small kinlings close to the glass will reduce some. Thanks Frank.

 

[Rodney]

I use to have an osburn 2200 freestanding stove with the bay window. Man o man was it a good looking stove with that Bay window.....but in the end it was grief to me. I really like a nice clean window to see the fire and I could not keep the glass clean. I was going through glass cleaner like no tomorrow. The design of the air intake is that it has a fixed secondary intake with no adjustment and has the adjustable primary air that flows over the window glass. It is very hard to keep that amount of glass with that bay window clean. I also found with that stove that I had a hard time controlling the temperature, it seemed to be overfiring. If I dampered it down then the glass would really soot up. I sorta solved the overfiring condition by taping off half the secondary air intake hole with high temp exhaust tape which brought the temperature down a bit without affecting the secondary burn. Anyways long story short, I sold the osburn and switched over to a Regency 2400. I absolutely love it. But, keep in mind that is just my opinion with the osburn. Other people may have no problems with them. My wood was good quality dry wood. And I don't think it was a problem specific to Osburn it is just an inherent problem with bay windows. With the Regency I clean the window once every 2 weeks and it stays extremely clean. When I do clean it, it is just a wipe with a cloth dampened in water. No window cleaner needed since there is no real build up on the glass. Just my 2 cents.

 

[wg_bent]

Interesting comments. Thanks for posting. My new Osburn does fog up the glass pretty quick, and it doesn't seem to matter how hot the fire is. I've even see the secondary fireball litterally flowing down the glass and it didn't clean it up any. I think that frequent cleaning is a price to pay for the large glass area of this stove.

So a question on other stoves: Does the glass stay clean on all other "box" stoves? By box, I mean the design similar to the Osburns, Lopi's, Napoleon, Avalon, Quadrafire's ...In other words The square Steel stoves.

Compared to the bay window on the Osburn, I think I'd feel like I was looking into a port hole at the fire unless the stove was very large. I saw an Avalon Olympic this past weekend in a local stove shop, and that had a good fire view and was a pretty nice looking stove, but it's huge and was heating the entire show room (guess about 5000 sqft) by itself and it was HOT in there.

Very clean glass on that beast though. No clue if they had cleaned it at all.

 

[Osburn1800i]

Any explanation of how to recognize the secondary burn in the stove? Thanks.