Hearth extension is not supported nor attached?

[bholler]

Here I just go to Sherwin Williams with a sample of what I want and what I am staining. And they make it

 

[TomasB]

Here I just go to Sherwin Williams with a sample of what I want and what I am staining. And they make it

Interesting. I will try them. I was there asking for a clear coat, but I should pay a visit asking for the stain. Good tip!

 

[Ashful]

I just buy the little cans of MinWax and Varathane, at Lowes Depot, which might be cheaper here than BC. I thought they were all half pint (8 oz), which is often enough to do a small project, with enough left over to use as a sample for future projects.

After a few years and few projects, you get a nice collection of them built up on the basement shelf, so each new project requires you to purchase much fewer, if any new cans. I'd bet I have damn near the whole Minwax catalog in those little cans, and probably a good chunk of Varathane's, as well. I never throw them away, some of my cans have "1998" marked on the lid, as I mark a date on every can of paint, stain, or finish that I buy.

 

[TomasB]

I never throw them away, some of my cans have "1998" marked on the lid, as I mark a date on every can of paint, stain, or finish that I buy.

Funny. This reminded me that we inherited few stains when we bought the house! Off I go to try these. At least they'll eliminate some colors.

 

[av_bc]

Hey Tomas, slightly offtopic, but I found you were one of the more recent people to talk about a Stuv on this forum. Checking your recent posts I see you ended up going with the Spartherm 700IN - can I ask what swayed you, and how you're liking it so far? It seems like a similar very clean viewing area.

 

[TomasB]

Hey Tomas, slightly offtopic, but I found you were one of the more recent people to talk about a Stuv on this forum. Checking your recent posts I see you ended up going with the Spartherm 700IN - can I ask what swayed you, and how you're liking it so far? It seems like a similar very clean viewing area.

I like quite a lot the way it works, and the thing that swayed the decision toward Spartherm 700IN was a manual air input control. I put some videos in this thread where you can see the effect of that. After few burns, glass mostly stayed clean, some soot on sides, but I'm not burning the best wood. Cleaned with water + vinegar pretty easily.

I saw in some video on youtube that STUV is releasing a LOT of smoke inside when opening the door to reload with wood, saw someone complaining about that, so that was another consideration point. Mind you, even with Spartherm 700IN you will get some smoke, but since you have manual control of air intake, you open it full before slowly opening the door, and while some smoke escape, I think it's a lot less. In some instances, when the fire dies down, almost no smoke escapes.

When it comes to installation, STUV installs much easier, since the outside envelope can be installed separately, and then the firebox itself is roll-in on wheels. Because of that, connecting outside air intake when installing STUV is much MUCH easier, since you would install air intake when installing the envelope, before installing firebox itself. You can look at instructions, it's all there.

When installing Sparthem, this in particular part was quite a puzzle for me to figure out. But I'm resourceful, and I was pretty sure I can figure out.

Third point, the company who is selling STUV, one sales manager in particular, is quite an arrogant poophead *cough* Vaglio *cough* That didn't help STUV's case either.

Price wise, both are are insanely overpriced, Spartherm might have been a tad cheaper, but it didn't affect our decision. In Canada, they cost >5K CAD. Back in Europe, similar inserts made in France cost 1.5K €.

Now, let's talk about the experience of getting Spartherm 700IN.

First time, it came with bent chimney connection, and firebricks were damaged, the fireplace trim had some damage too.
I was ok to replace just those damaged parts, but they decided to replace the whole unit.
When the second unit arrived, the trim was bent (they don't do good packaging!) and the very top firebrick had corners broken.
This time I asked to exchange the firebrick with the one from the previous fireplace (which has a little bit scratch mark, but, oh well, I guess), and re-send me a new trim.

Urban Fireplaces stepped-in dealing with all those back and forth replacing damaged items, so kudos to them.

Oh, it didn't help that Spartherm doesn't have distribution established in the Western Part of America, and so a distributor in the East, Powrmatic, was sending the fireplace to retailer (Urban Fireplaces) to sell to me, which is kinda stupid, because I didn't find Spartherm insert through retailer anyway, but rather in this forum (!), and retailer wasn't in charge of installing the unit either! In fact, if you go to Urban Fireplaces website, they don't even list that fireplace as an option!

So, for that matter, the distributor in the east could have sent the unit directly to me. But they wanted to keep all the money that they would pass to a retailer otherwise, and weirdly enough, getting through a retailer was a bit cheaper than getting directly through a distributor.

And, the last thing. When I was finalizing installation, I removed the door, and have found that the spring is missing in the door hinge. I think it's supposed to be there to keep the door shut? So, I'll be writing them to see what's with that. Maybe they abandoned this idea, and not installing the spring anymore, and the documentation (which is full of mistakes) hasn't been updated.

So, the experience getting the fireplace insert wasn't the smoothest, but I wouldn't be surprised that this is "industry standard", and even if I went with Stuv, might have been the same experience, but who knows.

I know it all sounds pretty bad for Spartherm, but given the options, I'd still buy it, since the box itself works very well, and the welding job is pretty nice. They just need to address their documentation, installation procedures, and packaging, so that things don't get damaged in transition. Other than that, I like it a lot.

 

[av_bc]

Terrific info, thanks for sharing!

 

[TomasB]

Terrific info, thanks for sharing!

I must call myself an idiot. I just found that I had a nice draft out of my house, since our kitchen hood isn't installed yet, and I forgot to plug 6" vent, so it was constantly drafting, and pulling air, like a chimney. So, basically, once I plugged it, not only the room is heated by the fireplace only, but it doesn't really puff the smoke when I open the door even when I had a decent fire! So, that was a complete user error (among IT is known as a blown gasket issue between a chair and a keyboard)