Hass said:rakuz66 said:Thanks for your resonse. The stove is about 7 yeras old and yes I have gotten it abnormally hot in the past. I wasn't as educated on it as I am now. Live and learn I guess. I was also told that welds typically hold for about 2-3 years and then crack again. I am leaning towards getting a new insert, any thoughts?? By the way, looking into a Regency insert, does anyone have any opinions on Regency? Also , I was told to keep any new insert around 500 degrees max. I never used a thermostat before, so do they sit on top of the stove? I want to make sure that this doesn't happen again.
I'm going to jump all over this, and any other comment that was made about it.
If it is welded properly, it should not crack again. (I won't say never, because it's possible if you abuse the stove)
Under normal conditions, operating the stove within specs it should never crack again.
If the weld is done properly, the rest of the stove should crack before the stove.
and when I say properly welded, I mean you'll probably have to take it to a REAL shop, or get a REAL welder.
Not someone running a mom and pop shop, or the guy down the road that does it in his garage.
I mean a real, shop that constantly does quality work. Pressure vessels are a different boat, but same concept.
Shops that do them would be ideal if you can get a welder from there to pick it up as a side job.
I forgot to see where you lived so I don't know what type of shops are in your area...
Weld areas typically have a higher tensile/compression strength and heat tolerance than the base metal.
So you find someone, have them grind out the crack all the way.
Do a P.T. on the crack, make sure it's ground down to bare metal.
Fill in the crack as if it required to be 100% (as it is).
Do a final P.T. on the cover pass.
If the crack is all the way through, do all of the above, except on the backside you backgrind all the way through to the weld that you made... do a P.T. to make sure it's all the way down.
Fill it up and do your final P.T.
If they can't get to the backside of the weld, just groove it out and fill it up. Eassssy breezy.
It's easy, a few cracks should take a good welder 2 hours max including P.T. time.
A price of $80-150/hr is not all that uncommon though.
Just to give you a heads up.
You get what you pay for with welding. Remember that.
Or just take it to any old moron, let them throw burn up some e6013 rods in there, pass him a $20 then don't worry about it.
You won't have to worry about it, because you'll probably have died from CO.
The coffee was strong today, wasn't it?