Castle Serenity Owners - Poll

[smwilliamson]

Outside may be slightly different but the guts have always been the same

 

[rich2500]

It's funny, the Castle Serenity enjoys a pretty good following and over all is liked. But the stove has a dark-side and shady past when it was the Hudson River Saratoga. Same exact stove reincarnated. The Saratoga was worst stove ever assembled, period. What gives?

They are not the same, just a quick look at the Saratoga manual and it has tubes for heat exchangers the serenity does not. May have been the same as the first production Serenity HPS10 which was known for getting blocked up but the current Serenity is a different design.

 

[Idaho John]

WHAT??
Do you mean soot is there during operation, or soot gets there during the cleaning process?

There should be 0, that is an absolute ZERO gas or particle matter coming into your house from the stove, during operation of the stove. The only time you should ever have even the slightest chance of particle matter or fumes of any kind entering your house is when you open the door either to clean or for that very few seconds to scrape the burn pot while in operation. Even if you do not run an OAK, nothing should ever enter your house from the stove during operation.

So if you are seeing particulate matter that you believe is from the stove, in your house, on your furniture, during stove operation, please stop using the stove until you resolve this issue.

If however, this soot is clouding up when you open the door and begin cleaning, it likely can be your vacuum choice. If you use a vacuum that has a larger micron filter, or one that cannot trap very fine particulates, the vacuum can blow a bunch of what you pull from the stove back into the house.
But if you burn decent pellets and set the stove properly for those pellets, you should not need to clean the stove for several days or even a week.

IMO.

Just a quick update to revisit this issue. I have kept myself on a regular stove maintenance schedule and noticed that there was a definite decrease in "particulate" but it was still there. The PowerSmith helped a great deal, but was still getting a "lighter" dusting of black something on the furniture. Called the guy who installed and who said "that should not be happening" and he came today and checked the install. The bottom line is that he disassembled the wall through and then resealed the exhaust pipe and then checked for leaks after firing it up. As of 10 plus hours, no "particulate" matter. Hopefully that means that this little part of life's adventure is over... for now.