We installed a St. Croix Prescott EXL two years ago and have had a really good run. We installed the Duravent 3" chimney liner kit ourselves, sealed the pipes with RTV, and were happy and warm. Two cold winters and 7 tons of pellets later, all was well...until last week.
We had a professional chimney sweep come out to clean the chimney liner that goes from the back of our pellet stove, up, through the wall, and up the 25' chimney. After he left, we started it up. Within minutes, smoke filled our first floor. We shut it off and called the chimney guy back. He came and checked the chimney with mirrors and said that it looked good. He started the stove up and saw smoke coming out from the elbow where it runs into the wall and recommended a new elbow.
Since then, we have replaced the elbow, the tee, the adjustable pipe, and the entire run of pipes on the interior of our house, sealing them with copious amounts of red rtv silicone. We also dismantled the stove and cleaned the exhaust fan, replaced the shaker plate, fire box, and fire bricks, cleaned every crack and crevice, and sadly still have a very smokey stove.
From the $150 chimney sweep to the replacement parts and the new venting, we are about $650 into this project. We have four tons of pellets sitting in the basement, a mounting oil bill, and five chilly kids. I can't help but go back to wondering why it worked fine until we had it cleaned, and why swapping out those parts (and beefing up the firebox) didn't solve the problem. It all looks fine to me...does anyone else have any ideas?
We had a professional chimney sweep come out to clean the chimney liner that goes from the back of our pellet stove, up, through the wall, and up the 25' chimney. After he left, we started it up. Within minutes, smoke filled our first floor. We shut it off and called the chimney guy back. He came and checked the chimney with mirrors and said that it looked good. He started the stove up and saw smoke coming out from the elbow where it runs into the wall and recommended a new elbow.
Since then, we have replaced the elbow, the tee, the adjustable pipe, and the entire run of pipes on the interior of our house, sealing them with copious amounts of red rtv silicone. We also dismantled the stove and cleaned the exhaust fan, replaced the shaker plate, fire box, and fire bricks, cleaned every crack and crevice, and sadly still have a very smokey stove.
From the $150 chimney sweep to the replacement parts and the new venting, we are about $650 into this project. We have four tons of pellets sitting in the basement, a mounting oil bill, and five chilly kids. I can't help but go back to wondering why it worked fine until we had it cleaned, and why swapping out those parts (and beefing up the firebox) didn't solve the problem. It all looks fine to me...does anyone else have any ideas?
Would you have recommended something else? Duravent is what the local woodstove shop carried, so that's what we went with originally. When we had a problem, I called, hoping they would swap out the elbow under their "lifetime warranty." The night before, we had had our chimney guy, a firefighter, back in the house, and he put tape on the pies to stop the smoke from coming into the house. I explained that before sending pictures. After sending in several sheets of documentation and speaking with three people at Duravent, I got the following very arrogant response from their customer service rep. (He assumed from the tape on the pipes that we had used a combination of 3" and 4" pipes. We later spoke on the phone for over an hour, a complete waste of time, and he told me that he has never heard of a problem like this and I must have done something wrong, forgotten to use rtv, not allowed proper cure time, not used the right size pipes, etc etc. Even when I read him the model numbers off of the stickers on the pipes, he told me that I was lying because those were NOT the pipes in the picture I had sent...except that they were. ?! I'll post some pics in a minute. Thanks for weighing in.
