I have a Hearthstone Tribute 8040, purchased & installed in 2008. We’ve used it perhaps 40-60x each winter that we’ve lived here.
This past year, we ran out of the wood that we had from clearing our land 13 years ago & bought split, kiln-dried spruce & have been burning much more often than before, perhaps 4-6x/week since early December. We cleaned the flue in late December.
And we noticed it burning kind of hot. Then we noticed sometimes we would get the smell of burning wood in the house. So, we replaced the gaskets and thought that would take care of it. While it burned much better and the smoke smell was less, we still smelled it. We tried using a focused light beam in the dark to see if we could detect the leakage but found nothing, but noticed the smell was strongest at the back of the stove, at the height of the stove.
So we did some more research. First we considered poor draft; swept it again & checked the clearance on the chimney cap. All good. Then, with more research, I inspected the baffle as I’d never known it should be replaced. Sure enough, the thing is disintegrating and has two large, irregular holes in it. We were planning to get that replaced & have someone do an inspection overall. Then I read about finding cracks in the soapstone so I looked it over really well. Sure enough, it appears that we have cracks going all the way through the soapstone, & in fact there is creosote leaking out. There are two spots like this, one on either side of the stove; on the inside of the firebox, those two interior areas are also covered in creosote. A third area in the firebox, at the back, has also accumulated creosote but the back stone doesn’t show leakage though there may be a crack there.
So now we wonder if we need to replace much more than the baffle... I read that cracks can be patched with stove cement, but is that true if the crack goes all the way through, AND has creosote coming out? Does that imply a loss of integrity of the firebox wall? And the interior stones? I’ve also read that taking apart a Hearthstone stove to replace those kinds of pieces can be a headache and result in a stove that is never tight enough afterward.
Another question is about that creosote—- when the flue was swept earlier in the winter, some creosote came down & while we tried to remove it, I don’t think we got it all... I didn’t think much of it, figuring it would burn in the firebox. Did that cause or contribute to the problem?
We have a small super efficient home... the stove is rarely run over 400 and usually around 250, but this winter it has spiked up a couple times before we caught it and shut down the air intake. We have an outside air intake to the stove. Because we have 1200 sq ft, we really can’t have a standard wood stove that would burn so much hotter than a soapstone stove. Replacing this with another Hearthstone would likely be $6000+ installed here in Fairbanks.
Even if we had to replace multiple parts on this, I’m thinking it would cost $2K-$3K including labor though I don‘t have an official estimate yet. But if it resulted in a basically unusable stove, that would‘t be worth it.
We could get rid of it entirely, and because we live in a nonattainment area (air quality), we’d actually get a fair chunk of money in a change-out program, BUT we’d have to promise not to install a new woodstove AND make that a binding part of any sale of the home. We WANT the woodstove— it’s a life and house savior when electricity goes out in the winter.
Any insight you can offer is greatly appreciated.
This past year, we ran out of the wood that we had from clearing our land 13 years ago & bought split, kiln-dried spruce & have been burning much more often than before, perhaps 4-6x/week since early December. We cleaned the flue in late December.
And we noticed it burning kind of hot. Then we noticed sometimes we would get the smell of burning wood in the house. So, we replaced the gaskets and thought that would take care of it. While it burned much better and the smoke smell was less, we still smelled it. We tried using a focused light beam in the dark to see if we could detect the leakage but found nothing, but noticed the smell was strongest at the back of the stove, at the height of the stove.
So we did some more research. First we considered poor draft; swept it again & checked the clearance on the chimney cap. All good. Then, with more research, I inspected the baffle as I’d never known it should be replaced. Sure enough, the thing is disintegrating and has two large, irregular holes in it. We were planning to get that replaced & have someone do an inspection overall. Then I read about finding cracks in the soapstone so I looked it over really well. Sure enough, it appears that we have cracks going all the way through the soapstone, & in fact there is creosote leaking out. There are two spots like this, one on either side of the stove; on the inside of the firebox, those two interior areas are also covered in creosote. A third area in the firebox, at the back, has also accumulated creosote but the back stone doesn’t show leakage though there may be a crack there.
So now we wonder if we need to replace much more than the baffle... I read that cracks can be patched with stove cement, but is that true if the crack goes all the way through, AND has creosote coming out? Does that imply a loss of integrity of the firebox wall? And the interior stones? I’ve also read that taking apart a Hearthstone stove to replace those kinds of pieces can be a headache and result in a stove that is never tight enough afterward.
Another question is about that creosote—- when the flue was swept earlier in the winter, some creosote came down & while we tried to remove it, I don’t think we got it all... I didn’t think much of it, figuring it would burn in the firebox. Did that cause or contribute to the problem?
We have a small super efficient home... the stove is rarely run over 400 and usually around 250, but this winter it has spiked up a couple times before we caught it and shut down the air intake. We have an outside air intake to the stove. Because we have 1200 sq ft, we really can’t have a standard wood stove that would burn so much hotter than a soapstone stove. Replacing this with another Hearthstone would likely be $6000+ installed here in Fairbanks.
Even if we had to replace multiple parts on this, I’m thinking it would cost $2K-$3K including labor though I don‘t have an official estimate yet. But if it resulted in a basically unusable stove, that would‘t be worth it.
We could get rid of it entirely, and because we live in a nonattainment area (air quality), we’d actually get a fair chunk of money in a change-out program, BUT we’d have to promise not to install a new woodstove AND make that a binding part of any sale of the home. We WANT the woodstove— it’s a life and house savior when electricity goes out in the winter.
Any insight you can offer is greatly appreciated.
![[Hearth.com] Worth it to rebuild 2008 Hearthstone Tribute 8040 or is it even necessary](https://www.hearth.com/talk/data/attachments/292/292179-806fc68071e7d9909e9668f5d2353c87.jpg?hash=YAl2wCHjpz "[Hearth.com] Worth it to rebuild 2008 Hearthstone Tribute 8040 or is it even necessary")
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