I have the same face plate which blows air down in front of glass. I was thinking of making some changes to that also. I had to get the blower replaced it was making a lot of noise.the were covered under warranty. Also I took out my cat to inspect it and it had some small cracks in it. I should see if that is under warranty too. I only turned on heat twice in far bed room when it was 2 degrees out. It should pay for itself in less than two years.and my wife is very happy with the house being much warmer than before .I'm happy with the heat production and appearance for sure. I use our whole house humidifier/duct work to move the heat around our main floor and it does a pretty good job. Still get a heat call or two at the far end of the house, but considering the amount of windows/skylights on that side of the house I don't blame the stove one bit. Other than fairly early on, I haven't been packing it full to conserve wood in the event of power outage. Really like how controllable the fire is. Really quite impressive. Some minor complaints:
- there are a few in between settings on the blower that cause a rattle. A slight adjustment gets rid of it though. I'll probably look in to this when I take it apart for cleaning this summer.
- the shadow box face plate will need some alteration to allow air to exit the blower without being impeded. I know they say it forces it down giving more heat to the lower part of the room, but I'm not buying it. We're getting the backing plate trimmed this summer and will get a few slits for the faceplate put in front of each blower output at that time. The wife just didn't like the other two options for face plates since she didn't think they felt contemporary enough.
- I don't like how you can't use the blower unless a certain temp is reached. Probably not an issue for 24/7 burners, but I deal mostly with evening cold/pseudo cold starts and would like to push some warm air out earlier. I seem to recall someone on here bypassing that on a different FPX/Avalon model.
- Not sure how other stoves compare, but the slightest bit of solid that falls over the ash lip will prevent the door from closing. Maybe that's the norm, but with my alterra, a small solid falling out would still be below the seal and have little to no impact. I probably wouldn't care about having to shovel it back in if I wasn't still experiencing some smoke spillage issue....but that's being addressed with home improvements.
All in all though, no regrets on the purchase. It will definitely cook me out of the room it's in (large room, but 8ft ceilings). The wife loves it and that's all that really matters.
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