Having problems getting new Quadra-Fire Mt Vernon Pellet Stove AE seviced.

[paulex7920]

I also have a Quadra fire mt vernon stove, actually it is an insert. My house filled with smoke the other night and I noticed the circuit breaker in my house panel had tripped. I pulled apart the stove today and vacuumed out the combustion/convection blowers. I clean the baffles faithfully. Now, I see a red light flashing inside of the control panel of the stove. There are two steady green lights on top then a steady red light below those two and then the flashing light below the steady red light and kind of "inside" the panel. any ideas?

[bburton]

Bad control panel. They replaced mine twice. Still had problems. I went through two months of problems with my stove. I followed the book to the letter on maintaining it. It finally had a bad fire in the ashpan. Everything in this stove was replaced and replaced. I got fed up and worried about a house fire. The men at the Fireplace Store came and picked my stove up. They told me that they had just returned another stove exactly like mine due to same problems. They were both lemons and went back to the factory. I replaced mine with the Sante Fe model which I love and having no problems with. Hope you get things figured out. I get real tired of people posting that I wasn't cleaning it enough or properly. I was anal about cleaning and maintain my stove daily.

[jtp10181]

I also have a Quadra fire mt vernon stove, actually it is an insert. My house filled with smoke the other night and I noticed the circuit breaker in my house panel had tripped. I pulled apart the stove today and vacuumed out the combustion/convection blowers. I clean the baffles faithfully. Now, I see a red light flashing inside of the control panel of the stove. There are two steady green lights on top then a steady red light below those two and then the flashing light below the steady red light and kind of "inside" the panel. any ideas?

It is normal for the control board to flash red on the AE unit. Not sure what would have tripped the breaker? Do you have a lot of other things on the same circuit? Computers? Mini-Fridge? Its possible some other things were drawing a load when the stove went to ignite and combined it was over 15amps tripping the breaker.

[paulex7920]

Just found out that my mt. vernon insert is not an AE model. I bought it new 10/06 and was told yesterday that the latest and greatest were not mfg. until 07. figures, This flashing red light I'm told is the unit calling for heat? Ok, so I cleaned the stove out spotless, and power it back up. wifey see's a flash by the control panel and thenthe breaker trips in my house panel. This is a dedicated breaker B.T.W. Dead short somewhere I'd say in the stove.

[jtp10181]

In a standard mt vernon unit (non-AE) there should not be a flashing red light. There are two red lights on that unit. One would be the call for heat light which I belive is on the back of the stove, the other is a status light inside the control box. I am guessing the flashing is from in the control box and must be an error light, but I am not sure what it means exactly.

If you turn the stat down so its not calling for heat does it still throw the breaker?

[paulex7920]

Yes, I disconnected the battery back-up and plugged the unit back in. Once I turned the T-stat back on, the breaker tripped along with a flash at the control panel? enough to scare the bejesus out of the wife. I have a tech from the dealer coming out on Friday armed to the teeth with wiring harness, blowers, etc. etc. Through process of elimination I gather, They will hopefully fix the damn thing. interesting to note is that lately, (since Nov.-Dec.) I noticed the glass seems to get black rather quickly almost daily! Once a month I'm pulling the baffle plate out and vacuuming the whole stove out. Also, weekly I clean out the exhaust pipe which is only 4' long. I pulled the blower housing apart yesterday and inspected that and there was no blockage there as well. Combustion air problem?

In a standard mt vernon unit (non-AE) there should not be a flashing red light. There are two red lights on that unit. One would be the call for heat light which I belive is on the back of the stove, the other is a status light inside the control box. I am guessing the flashing is from in the control box and must be an error light, but I am not sure what it means exactly.

If you turn the stat down so its not calling for heat does it still throw the breaker?

[jtp10181]

if you have a battery backup cord you plug into the unit and hook right to a battery you have an AE unit. Would be easier to help if you actually knew what insert you had. If you are just using a power inverter or something (and dont have an AE unit), then the first place I would look for a problem is the ignitor. I'm sure the tech you have coming will check that, so good luck.

[Brookskh]

The stove has worked well, HOWEVER, I cannot get service. The dealer refers me to one person only who has told me himself that he works half a year and travels the other half. I have been trying to get service now for the other half of a service call that began over a year ago. I have had to work on it myself because I have been stood up over 12 times. I reported this to the Mt. Vernon folks and the lady who took the information would not tell me when someone would contact me or who the regional rep was. She said she did not know the name of the CEO or Director of Marketing. No other store dealer will help me since I did not buy this stove at their store. There is a terrible shortage of people who can work on these here in Georgia. After a 3 week delay, Mr. Vernon apparently contacted this service person directly, he called me, reemed me out for calling the factory and hung up on me. What an experience! In addition, I bought 3 tons of pellets at once because I was told by two dealers that there would only be one load of pellets to Georgia this year. I had problems last year as well. My suggestion is to make sure you can get service and pellets. I am very discouraged and feel between a rock and a hard place. I don't think this guy is emotionally stable, the people who own the store where I bought the stove don't seem to care, and Mt. Vernon will not contact me directly. Suggestions anyone? I have called every dealer listed for 100 miles. Brookskh

Put your email address in your profile, Thank you.

[jtp10181]

Call the factory again and make sure they log everything in off your serial number. Tell them about the bad service you have received from the other person and demand they find someone else to service it. Where is the dealer you bought it from? Do they not have any service people? What did all these other dealers say? Are they Quad dealers and wont help? Maybe find your nearest and most promising sounding dealer and suggest Quad tell them to work on it.

[sysint]

The stove has worked well, HOWEVER, I cannot get service. ...I am very discouraged and feel between a rock and a hard place. I don't think this guy is emotionally stable, the people who own the store where I bought the stove don't seem to care, and Mt. Vernon will not contact me directly. Suggestions anyone? I have called every dealer listed for 100 miles. Brookskh

I'd say your only recourse is calling the factory. Quadrafire seems to have a solid history of unqualified dealers. So much so that any other store won't stand behind a Quadrafire product they didn't sell. Personally, I find this garbage. If you sell it, you support it. PERIOD. Why Quadrafire allows this is totally beyond me. Significantly ridiculous.

Here is what you need to do: WRITE A CERTIFIED LETTER TO QUADRAFIRE. Call and ask to whom to address it to and then require them also to give you mailing for their (apparently completely incompetent) CEO. Send a cc to him.

Make sure you outline your service and response from that jerk supplier. Further, list each of the other dealers that refuse to service your unit.

Make a sentence in there that kindly asks for a quick response to your situation.

If this company has any brains they contact you quickly with the solution. If they are stupid (still a high probability) then they ignore you. Wait no more than a month and send a follow up letter certified. If still no response, contact a local attorney to send a letter after investigating the company responsibility and policies. At that time also make sure you have him report all these losers to the BBB. Possibly also contact the local TV station. They love stuff like this.... incompetent dealers and stupid companies make for good TV. Quadrafire seems so stupid that news reporters and attorneys seem the only thing that gets them off their chairs.

I can tell you I'm fed up with this company man-handling honest purchasers, giving them the run around and screwing them over. Time to turn the tables on these losers.

FYI: Please read the rules and remove your personal email from the post and insert it in your profile.

EDIT: I think what this industry has is about 5 good techs, one of which is retired in Seattle... and posts on a message board. Those remaining 4 techs work for about 2 companies, one of those guys is definitely located in Wisconsin and the other Certified Fire Place Inspector I think is from the east coast. So, if you live anywhere else, service isn't going to be good unless you find those other two techs...

[haz2beblue]

Glad my wife found this forum.....at least others are feeling my same pain about my Mt. Vernon AE unit! I've had to replace (at my own cost): The firepot TC - I'm sure that this was a design flaw simply b/c the new one I got was WAY bigger and meatier (assuming so it didn't burn out so quick); The circuit board - I broke the TC lead into the board, couldn't solder it; The heat exchanger baffle is cracked and bowed - well within the 5 year warranty on that luckily; And now perhaps the combustion blower - see question below.

New issue: I need to replace my gasket around the combustion blower. Thought I could use just some standard, high-heat rubber material about the same thickness as the fiberglass stuff they use. But now, my comb blower is making an AWFUL clanking sound. Anyone had this issue yet? Do I absolutely need their gasket to make the placement of the blower fan in the unit perfect so that it doesn't space against the back or front of the blower unit?

As for service, well, it's been really tough. I live in North Carolina, so these types of stoves aren't so common down here. So, basically, I know twice as much as my service tech. My biggest issue is that I can't get through to Quadrfire themselves to ask questions; they just say to bring out a serviceman. All well and good, but to spend $120/hour to have someone come out and simply get through to the techs at Quadrafire and get the questions answered that I myself could have asked and fixed, that's a bit disconcerning.

[jtp10181]

If you order a new comb blower gasket from your dealer it will be a red silicone gasket now, instead of the fiberglass one. This should last quite a long time. I would recommend doing that and stop using the stove while the blower is making noise in case it is being damaged.

[haz2beblue]

Turns out Quadrafire owned up to both the comb blower and baffle issues. Both covered under warranty. At least something finally went the way I needed it to, besides the fact that I now will waste $$$ on running my heatpump for 2 weeks.

[ScottQuad]

Okay, it's about time for someone to say something positive. Then again, if you're not having problems, you're probably not going to go online and search for things right? I have to believe you guys are the vocal minority.

I live in Northern Vermont. I heat my house exclusively with this stove and have since November 2007 when I installed it myself in my fireplace opening.
It has burned 5 tons of wood pellets a year, except for last year when it used only 4 tons. I guess it was a warm winter. My home is 1900 sq. ft. not including basement. I have used all brands of pellets I have come across that were cheap. Only one brand, Pennington, did not work well. The rest have worked fine.

Last week my Quadra-Fire AE Fireplace insert stove had the vacuum sw error code for the first time. I googled it and found all you people. I must say, none of you were of any help. Lot's of complaining but no solutions.
I called the dealer I purchased it from. He was helpful and said to clean the stove and check the vacuum switch.
I did not clean the stainless flue pipe last summer (I've only cleaned it twice now, including this weekend) so I thought that would be a good idea. I did that and also took the stove out of the fireplace and did a complete cleaning of parts, removed the firepot, cleaning system, blower and exhaust blower, for cleaning. Almost immediately though, I found the problem. The vacuum switch is mounted in a steel box which houses a baffle system. The switch was glued into position with some kind of white glue which had deteriorated, cracked and fallen apart. The switch was loose and fell out of the steel baffle box. I used 500 degree temp silicone and reset the switch. That was two days ago and my stove is has been working flawlessly ever since.

I usually clean my stove once a week, on Sunday. I remove the baffle, vacuum and scrape the firepot with the scraping tool that came with the stove or my leatherman and wash the glass. That is about it. I think I've paid for this stove sometime last winter, through energy savings. I used to burn about 1000 gallons of oil a year. Now I only burn enough oil for hot water, about 170 gallons a year.

Honestly, I don't understand all the problems everyone here is having. Someone mentioned that the Froeling is a much better built product. Well, if you're willing to spend 15k I suppose it should be. They still recommend a back up heating system so that pretty much kills that product in my book. From the work I've done on my stove, it seems pretty straight forward to me. It looks nice because it's one of the few models with a cast iron front and it heats. I'm a Quadrafire owner. All my immediate family also own pellet stoves. They all own cheap models and they got what they paid for. My unit is the best of them all and puts out twice the heat. I'm happy with my purchase and would do it again.

[jtp10181]

Good to hear. Just FYI if you do need to replace the VAC switch they use a fully molded plastic switch now which will not have the problems yours had.

[Sruments]

I have a tech from H&H coming this week. I have been having problems with smoke for three years. Have you found any resolution ?

[darthvader]

Where and when are you getting smoke? also do you have a Mt. Vernon AE? Insert or freestanding? As a general rule most smoke problems occur from improper installation of venting.

The best way to find a leak is to do a start up with a bright flashlight ready and shine the light along the length of the venting, you can usually find where its leaking.

Another less common smoke issue occurs when unburned pellets are outside the firebox somewhere. Pull the ash pan out remove all unburned pellets from under the burnpot. Search around the area for any places pellets might be.

PS I did not read any of the older posts, they may have gone over some of these and other problems.

[ashtree]

Just going through old posts and a couple thoughts:

its cool that you guys try to help the customers on the site, many of the Mfr. have facebooks now and its pretty funny because you have customers like the originator of this post with clear gripes of operation and on their facebook pages customers just let the Mfr/dealers have it and they have to eat it and or rectify it publicly and openly just some fun reads to say the least.

Just starting out I am starting to realize poor customer service is a big issue as with all other industries.

In my area majority of the customers have package units and don't solely rely on the pellets stoves/inserts/freestanding for heat.

I ran across a small percentage that do so but understand the wave will be coming this season.

I spent over an hour troubleshooting a pellet insert today because the auger motor would skip at times (maybe gear chipped a tooth), initially it would throw pellets then on the next light wouldn't then constant for the next 1/2 hour or so.

direct lined the motor, everything ran accordingly stood there and fired it up and it ran great but the complaint was that it just wouldn't drop pellets. Showed the customer that it was operating properly but just had the feeling the damn thing would act up as I walked out the door.

I am fairly new to the industry and testing motors/switches should be a cinch, but having that day in day out technical experience from trouble shooting and actually seeing faulty auger motors/models over and over instinctually knowing, is something I haven't attained and probably won't until I have many seasons under the belt.

To the originator poster, thanks for showing me what not to do when I come across a repeated constant problem unit. I will educate the customer and keep then on page until the issues resolved and fixed. I try to keep the customer involved with much that I do to give them a sense that we are all on the same team.

It seems alot of problems too would be averted if more dealers sold and installed and serviced their equipment and I also understand that some customers are too cheap to allow that to happen.

[Steve M]

I have a Edge 60 quadrafire and i keep getting message Conv. Jammed, I have replaced the conv. fan and cleaned it out totally, it only has 3 tons use on it.
and ideas?????

[OLDANDCONFUSED]

Apologies, new to the site. I too have a Mt Vernon Quadra Fire Stove and the auger is not feeding the pellets, It is cleaned, new wiring and has power to the auger. Please help?