Garyvol said:
Hi Stephen,
The stove also has a thermostat lever on the back left top of the stove with a chain extending down to a flap plate that
can cover the air opening at the bottom. I still however question if this coil type thermostat is fully functional. I did verify
some functionality using a hair dryer. BTW, my stove has an extra insulator back and botom plate, thus the thermostat lever is exposed compared to other units displayed on exploded diagrams showing a cover box over the thermostat and lever. I'm wondering if the lack of the box cover does not allow for the thermostat to fully function. Does yours have the back lever thermostat I describe and does yours function for controllin the air intake.??
Yes, lack of cover does not allow the thermostat to fully function. This is easily rectified with a custom heat shield for the stove back, which will retain a zone of hotter air close to the back and give the coil a more powerful stimulus.
I have this same stove, the Scandia 315. As you know, it is a very close copy of the Defiant, and some parts are interchangeable. Blow off the hate speech you will get about this "Taiwanese Junk" of a stove from the $2500 stove snobs on this site (Get a life, guys! Isn't there a chainsaw or flashlight forum for you to hover on?). I am here to tell you my $50 Scandia is an awsome heater, and a reliable and safe appliance. Of course, it wasn't reliable when I paid $50 for it, but it is now that it is "tight and right". Sure, it makes a little "old school" smoke before it gets up to temp. Don't tell Al Gore.
If you look at the back of your stove, you will see four cast bosses which have been drilled and tapped for a heat shield. Maybe the 2" steel standoffs for the heatshield are still in place on these bosses, as mine were. If not, no worries, these are easily fabricated. My heatshield was long gone, so I had one made this year, and now the bimetalic coil controlling the primary air intake works MUCH BETTER with a DRAMATIC increase in movement.
By better I mean it results in steadier output. Before installing the heatshield last week, I ran this stove daily through four Vermont winters, sometimes 24/7 for weeks, with the thermostat control exposed, as yours is. So I have a good basis for comparison. With the new heatshield on I burned the stove last night with a 2/3 load, first burn of the season after a total knock-down rebuild, reseal and repaint. Once warmed up and put into horizontal burn mode, it ran rock solid between 525 and 625 degrees (measured at center top) for four hours with no adjustments to the primary air lever. I was checking frequently. The stove has never performed evenly like this before, so the thermostat seems to be doing a much better job of controlling primary air.
When I went to bed, the air control was cracked open about 3/16" at the bottom of the door. Again, I left this untouched. When I went down to check in the morning, stove top temp was about 200, and the air control had opened considerably to about 1" due to action of the thermostat control. A good bed of coals remained, glowing angry red, clearly getting plenty of primary air. This is a major improvement over the performance of the unshielded thermostat.
I had my heatshield made at a local HVAC outfit for 45 bucks. Start with 36x24 galvanized. Measure for the mounting holes so that the top of the shield is the same height as the top of the stove, and centered in the horizontal dimension. If the shield is set up higher than the stove top, your air control lever will be difficult to reach and operate. I had the holes for mounting stamped out as slots to allow for a little expansion and adjustment -- came out very nice.
Apart from solving the thermostat problem, the shield is a very nice addition in my application because it adds a powerful convection chamber to the back of the stove.
A couple more observations about the Scandia 315.
(1) The castings are not particularly precise in the way those of a genuine Defiant are. But they do respond to some lovin' from the grinder and the file. I spent 15 minutes improving the fit between panels here and there, knocking down the obvious high spots, and the result was worth it.
(2) The design of the secondary air passage is, in my opinion, a weakness in the original Defiant, and that weakness was faithfully copied with poor execution by Scandia. The problem is, the passage is vulnerable to leaking when the stove cement sealing its dozen nooks and crannies begins to fail. When the passage looses integrity, secondary air doesnt arrive properly and secondary combustion falls apart. So it is VITAL to the efficient performance of this model to get this passage well-sealed and isolated from other passages in the stove. I was liberal with the Rutland stove cement and aluminum screening on this during my reassembly. The condition of this passage deserves your attention at least annually for a clean-out, an inspection with a powerful flashlight and patch job when needed.
(3) Comments about the Scandia being hard to control have a measure of truth. If the stove is not properly maintained and gasketed, you might not be able to shut down primary air as much as you wish. But isn't this true of any powerful woodstove with a 3 cubic foot firebox? I found that the fit of the front loading doors on my Scandia 315 is definitely not Vermont Castings quality. So some creative gasketing was in order along the bottom edge, where I have used a larger diameter gasket to get proper sealing.
(4) The dimensions of the stove are all in inches because it is a rip off of the made-in-Vermont Defiant. But the fasteners are metric, because it was made in Taiwan by the metric people.
(5) It's pockmarked complexion reminds me of the underappreciated actor, Edward James Olmos.
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