Wood Stove & Insert Service in Durango, CO

The Insert Is the Common Denominator in This Town

Durango's older housing produced a very specific appliance population: original masonry fireplaces with wood-burning inserts fitted into them, mostly between the late seventies and the nineties, many of which have never been pulled forward since.

Servicing one is two jobs. There is the appliance itself - gaskets, baffle, firebrick, glass, air controls - which is the same work as on any stove. And there is what is behind it, which is only visible if the unit comes out: the liner connection, or the absence of one.

That second half is where the surprises live. Slip joints that have separated with thermal cycling. Positive connectors that were never fitted, so the flex liner simply sits above the appliance outlet. Liners that stop short in the smoke chamber. Every one of those is invisible from the room and invisible from the roof, and every one changes how the appliance draws and what ends up on the flue wall.

Old Appliances, Available Parts

A lot of these inserts are thirty and forty years old. Some are excellent castings that will outlive their owners with gaskets and firebrick. Some are discontinued units whose baffles and burn tubes no longer exist in any catalogue.

We will tell you which yours is before you spend anything. Where a part cannot be had we say so rather than fabricating an approximation into a firebox - that is not caution for its own sake, it is that a substituted baffle changes the gas path the appliance was certified with.

Draft in Tall Town Chimneys

Downtown chimneys are tall, and tall is usually good for draft. What is not good is tall plus oversized plus cold - a big masonry stack on an exterior wall, unlined or oversized for the appliance, sitting in shade. Those are slow to establish draft and prone to spilling smoke into the room on lighting, and the owner is often told the stove is at fault.

It generally is not. Priming the flue, a top-down fire, or in stubborn cases a correctly sized liner solve it. A new stove does not.

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