Safety recalls of wood and pellet stoves

Updated: July 2022 - There have been at least seven recalls of wood and pellet burning products since 1979 and one certification revocation.  Four of those were in 2015-2016.  While there are few reports of any injuries, recalls are expensive and time consuming for stove manufacturers.

(In addition to stove recalls, the Consumer Product Safety Commission recalled a camping tent sold by Cabellas in July 2022 because the "stove jack ring" where the stove pipe exits the tent, can deteriorate.)

Almost all recalls are voluntary, which is usually to the benefit of the company.  A successful recall effort often reaches about 65% of consumers, and it the case of wood or pellet stoves, it may depend on who sold them and how much effort the company actually made.  Its easier for some stove manufacturers to track down who purchased a particular stove if it was purchased through a specialty retailer compared to stoves purchased through hardware chains.  For the following seven recalls of wood and pellet stoves, there is no data about how effective each recall was.

The dangers posed by some of the stoves subjected to recalls are significant but may pale in comparison to the ongoing dangers of self-installed stoves that never get inspected.  The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC)'s 1982 survey of more than 2,000 households indicates that 70% of stoves in use were installed by the consumer, and half of these "do-it-yourself" installations were never inspected by a building or fire inspector.  A very high percentage of self-installed stoves remains a high probability in the US, in part because of the increasingly high volumes of stoves sold through hardware chains and on-line.  The percentage of self-installed stoves purchased on the second-hand market could be even greater than the 70% figure found in 1982.  In addition to dangerous self-installation practices, the other main cause of stove-related house fires is excessive creosote build-up in chimneys that are not regularly cleaned.

 

The highest volume recalls have been pellet stoves, which pose less of a fire risk when self-installed, or from lack of chimney cleaning.

 

1. The recall impacting the most devices was the 2015 recall of the US Stove HomComfort pellet stove that could be mounted in a window or wall.  This recall involved 4,400 units, which provides one of the few insights into volumes of particular units.  The Chinese-made stove was sold at Northern Tool, Rural King, Home Depot and Lowes from 2010 to 2012.  There were 16 reports of fires and property damage, but the recall did not happen until three years after the product run.  US Stove offered $868 cash or $1,200 credit towards the purchase of another US Stove product. Those amounts are still available from US Stove.  An updated version of the stove is 2020 certified but only supposed to be mounted in walls, not windows.

 

2. The next largest recall was England Stove Works pellet Smartstove.  The US-made unit was only sold for a few months in the fall of 2015. After the company received four reports of incidents and one minor injury, it initiated recall the following year.  Englander sent consumers a free repair kit to remedy the issue.  An updated version of the stove is 2020 compliant and on the market.

 

3.The next largest recall was for 2,000 Mt. Vernon pellet stoves made in the US by Quadrafire, a subsidiary of Hearth & Home Technologies.  The $4,000 stove was sold for almost a year between 2014 and 2015.  There were eight reports of glass breaking after excessive pressure built up in the firebox but no reports of injuries.  The company remedied the issue by offering to arrange for free installation of an enhanced control board. The firm's dealers contacted known purchasers.  An updated version of the Mt. Vernon is also 2020 compliant and on the market.

 

 

4. The following year saw a much smaller recall of a Quadrafire device. This time it was a wood stove, the Explorer III, and involved 650 units.  The US-made unit was sold for about a year and a half for $3,000.  The danger was that the handle of the top lid could disengage and the lid could fall.  There were five reports of incidents, two of which involved minor injuries to fingers. The company offered to fix the problem through its dealer network. The Explorer is off the market.

 

 

 

5. A small recall of 200 Scan Andersen wood stoves made by Jotul occurred back in 2010.  A faulty door hinge led to the door falling off, and of the three reported incidents, one consumer received a bruised foot.  The stove was made in Norway and the fix was a free hinge repair.

6. Going back a bit further in time, there was a recall of 1,300 EPA certified, catalytic Vermont Castings Sequoia wood fireplaces in 2006.  At the time, Vermont Castings was owned by the CFM corporation and the units were made in Canada and the US.  They sold from 2003 to 2006 for about $2,200.  This was a more serious recall, as it involved insufficient insulation or a missing weld, and could cause these fireplaces to pose a fire hazard, though no incidents were reported.  Consumers were advised to stop using the product immediately, and it is not clear if the company offered any remedy after 2008 when they went bankrupt. 

 

 

7. The final recall listed on the CSPC database dates back to 1979, and involved glass for stove doors that posed a breaking hazard. The glass doors were in “Hearth-Glo” wood burning circulators made by the Jackes Evans Manufacturing Company. These sold in 1977 and 1978, right before the EPA began requiring wood stoves to be certified. One thousand stoves were involved and customers could get free replacement doors.

8.  While not yet a formal recall, the EPA is taking an unprecedented step of revoking the certification of a wood stove because the lab did not do the test correctly and the EPA certified the stove because it did not carefully read the lab test report.  The stove in question is the England Stove Works Model 50-T tested by Intertek, and the wood they used was too dry. It appears that Englander tried to test it again but couldn't get it under 2 grams an hour. Englander had requested a hearing, but they pulled out of the hearing process and the EPA is finalizing revocation of the model line in April 2022, which apparently will mean those models will have to be recalled from retailers.  

Automated Wood Stoves Entering the Marketplace

Updated: Nov. 2020: There are at least a half dozen stoves on the market that are fully automated or have some automated features that are gaining traction.  Many of these features help the stove burn cleaner and are aiming at a demographic looking for easier operation.

We define a fully automated wood stove as one where the consumer can "load and leave" and not have to worry about adjusting the air flow to get an optimum burn.  On all traditional wood stoves, the consumer must adjust one or sometimes two levers that control the air.  Often consumers don't do this well, resulting in poor combustion that fails to maximize efficiency or minimize smoke.  Thus, even a brand new wood stove that performed very well in the test lab can perform very poorly in the hands of an inexperienced or inattentive operator.

There is only one fully automated stoves on the US market and several more that will be released in 2021.   MF Fire, a Baltimore-based company makes the fully automated Catalyst.  It uses electronic sensors to monitor combustion and adjust air flow as needed.  SBI has an automated stove in the final R&D stage and Buck stove is participating in an automated stove project, both of which are funded by the bioenergy office of the Department of Energy.

MF Fire, a small Maryland
company is trying to disrupt
traditional stove technology.

The automation in the Catalyst is a great option for consumers who want to minimize smoke from their stoves and enjoy the ease of automation.  You can more easily leave for the day or go to sleep at night knowing that your stove won't be smoldering away, which is one of the leading causes of excessive pollution from both old and new wood stoves.

The real promise of automation is not to get a hot stove to hit an ultra-low particulate matter number in a test lab, but to improve real-world results by seamlessly optimizing performance throughout the burn cycle, reducing start-up emissions, and even reducing emissions from unseasoned wood.  EPA certification testing does not test for real-world performance, and incentive programs do not yet recognize the positive attributes of automated or semi-automated stoves, so stove companies have not had much incentive to invest a lot of time, effort, and money in developing them.

In Europe, fully automated stoves have been on the market for some time and are beginning to gain wider recognition from consumers and air agencies.  Two companies have advanced automatic stoves that unfortunately are not available on the US market: The Danish company Hwam, who developed the Autopilot IHS, and Austria's Rika, who developed the Rikatronic.  In the United Kingdom, solid burning heating devices are classified by whether they are automatic or manual. To achieve a rating to be used in more polluted areas, manually operated stoves must submit lab tests showing 5 burns for each output level because “manually controlled appliances show much higher variation between tests.”  Automatic appliances only have to be tested 3 times at each output level.  The chart below shows a wide variety of technology that exists in both stoves and boilers in Europe, but only exists in boilers in the U.S. 

In 2013, 2014 and 2018, the Alliance for Green Heat partnered with Brookhaven National Lab to assess and test automated stoves and prototypes at stove design competitions.  Their designers aspire to be part of a real trend towards cleaner, more automated residential wood heating.  But can they do it at an affordable price point?  And, are consumers ready for them?  Here, we look at stoves with partially automated features that are already on the market.

Partial automation solutions

A bi-metal coil acts as a heat-
sensitive thermostat which can partially
control the opening and closing of the damper.

1. The bi-metal coil. One of the oldest forms of automation of steel wood stoves is the bi-metal coil which has been used on scores of stove models and is now mostly just used by a few catalytic stove makers, principally Blaze King and Vermont Castings.  A bi-metal coil is simply a thermostat run by a metal coil that can close a damper down when it's really hot, and open it up when it's cooler. The stove’s air inlet can still be operated manually, but the bimetal coil will adjust the air inlet further. They tend to not work nearly as well on non-cat stoves, because the temperatures in a non-cat firebox can be more unpredictable, and if the coil shuts down the air, or opens it too much, the stove would operate poorly, which adds far too much uncertainty in passing the EPA emissions certification test. A new, more sophisticated version of this technology is the VcV valve developed by a Australian company and Ben Myren.

The rotating trigger mechanism in the
Smartstove Collection by Englander
reduces air flow once the stove is hot.

2. Better start-up: Several companies have features that help start-up: the Quadrafire "Automatic Combustion Control" and the Travis "Green Start."  They all use different automated approaches to starting the fire quicker and with fewer emissions.  After the start-up period, the stove operates like any other.

Quadrafire's Explorer 2 Start-Up air
control helps give the stove more
air in the first 25 minutes.

Another recent arrival on the market is Quadrafire’s Explorer II, which provides a similar automated start-up.  The website says “Automatic Combustion Control-provides the fire with air when it is most needed-leading to longer burns.”  A marketing video says the operation is so easy that all you have to do is “load the wood, light the fire and walk away.” According to the installation manual, ACC is basically a timer which the operator must manually initiate with a control mechanism.  Essentially, it opens the front air channel which allows air to enter for 25 minutes before closing.  Once the front air channel is closed, manual controls are used to deliver preheated air to the top of the firebox to burn the rest of the unburned gases in the remaining three combustion zones.

The slider on the Cape Cod
adjusts the rate of burns.

Travis industries Hybrid-Fire technology™ developed an automated “Greenstart” which shoots 1,400 degree air into the firebox for 15 minutes to start your fire, or when you reload.  The Greenstart can significantly reduce start-up emissions, and emissions during reloading on a low temperature bed of coals, by jumpstarting the start-up process and heating the wood up faster than it would with newspaper.  After the first 15 minutes, the stove has no automated features, but some of the Travis stoves that use catalysts are among the cleanest in the industry.  The Travis Cape Cod stove won second prize in the Wood Stove Decathlon.

3. Remote operation. A remote control device does not necessarily provide any automation to the air flow.  It can just allow you to do it manually from the couch.  However, some like the Nestor Martin’s Efel has a partial “automatic mode” that can keep the room at a desired temperature.  In timer mode, it can adjust the room temperature at a pre-set time. The stoves uses a simple ambient air thermostat in a remote control device that you can operate from the couch or anywhere nearby.  If you don’t use it in automatic mode, the remote control allows the user to adjust the intensity of the fire just as you would with a manual air control. One of the key things that distinguishes this Efel from truly automated stoves is that there are no sensors in the stove that can prevent the stove from smoldering or override an adjustment by the operator that would make the fire smolder.

HWAM's Autopilot technology uses
sensors, along with a bi-metal spring to
regulate combustion temperatures.

Fully automated stove on the European market

1. The final two stoves are more fully automated stoves and are on the market in Europe, but not in the US.  Danish company HWAM has integrated a new patented system: Autopilot.  Along with the Austrian Rikatronic, described below, the Hwam is one of the most advanced and fully automated stoves in Europe. HWAM 3630 IHS features a control system that electronically measures combustion conditions through the use of a lambda oxygen sensor and a thermocouple.  An onboard computer then allocates combustion air through three separate valves to help the consumer achieve the same results at home that are obtained in test labs under ideal conditions.  According to the Danish Technological institute, HWAM stoves with this system are 17% more efficient and produce 40% more heat.

Rikatronic has a microprocessor-controlled
motor and a flame temperature sensor
which drives the RLS air distribution system.
The light tells you the optimal time to reload.
By pressing the button, the stove knows
 it has fresh wood to handle. 

2. There are numerous versions of the Rikatronic wood heater system. The Fox II stove features manual and automatic control settings.  In manual mode the air distribution can be controlled in each combustion phase-even in the event of a power outage.  Automation in Rikatronic technology works with a microprocessor-controlled motor and flame temperature sensor which operates the RLS air distribution system.  Airflow in each of the 5 combustion zones is effectively adjusted for efficient burn.  A red light indicates the optimal time to reload the stove.  You can set the room temperature you want and once the required room temperature is reached, you can activate the eco mode by pressing the Rikatronic³ button.  This causes the air supply to be optimally controlled to maintain the fire for as long as possible, without smoldering, and to leave behind as little ash as possible.  Power consumption is 2 – 4 watts.

Meet the Contestants; SmartStove

With the first Wood Stove Decathlon only a few months away, we are doing weekly blog posts to showcase the Decathlon teams and the innovative technology they are developing.

The SmartStoveTM control system was developed to introduce very affordable, modern technology to wood-burning products that seem locked in the past. Smartstove^TM uses a thermocouple, microprocessor, and controller to automate airflow throughout the combustion cycle of the stove. Thus, stoves are not allowed to smolder, not to overfire, but rather to operate at optimal temperatures.

In 1998, Dan McFarland, an electrical engineer, began heating his home with an EPA certified fireplace insert. After six years of what began feeling like babysitting the stove, he searched the web for a control system product to take over for him. After discovering it did not exist, he began formulating a method to develop his own. In 2005, the first functioning proof-of-concept prototype exceeded his expectations, reliably managing the draft control for him, keeping the fire burning clean and maximizing the burn time. As Plato stated, “necessity is the mother of invention.”

With the encouragement of some close friends, McFarland continued the self-funded development of what evolved into the intelligent and versatile SmartStove^TM control system, a powerful device the size of a regular thermostat.

By the winter of 2006, he developed an upgraded system that added proportional control of the insert’s blowers, enabling the system to efficiently manage a fire and also optimize heat transfer into the home, reducing the need for backup heat on cold nights. 

The next year, SmartStove^TM made its first public appearance at the HPB Expo in Reno, Nev. While some expo attendees and fellow exhibitors could not imagine computerized controls on a wood stove, others were excited by the project and encouraged McFarland to continue.

The following year, after developing upgraded system architecture, a stove manufacturer requested to evaluate the system on one of their new stove designs. After delivering a stove fully retrofitted with SmartStove^TM, and excitement by the manufacturer about the success of the project, the subprime economic crisis stalled development as stove manufacturers moved to protect their finances. SmartStove^TM system was upgraded again in 2010 to add a radio link between the User Interface wall panel and the stove.

SmartStove^TM system is now shipped to individuals who are searching, much like McFarland was, for a control system to integrate into their own stoves.

SmartStove^TM will be hosting an open house and fundraiser, including demonstrations of the system, on Saturday, Oct. 12. Further information and updates about the system and event will be available on the Inven Inc. website, Twitter, and Facebook.

We are looking forward to seeing SmartStove in action at the Wood Stove Decathlon November 16-19, 2013. Vote for your favorite stove at Popular Mechanics.