American Propane

Chris Rizzo visited our house and we discussed installing a wood pellet stove. He answered all our questions and seemed to know what he was talking about. We then visited their showroom in Revere and looked at stoves and talked some more. We arranged to have the work done. The stove was installed in a corner of our living room. Instead of venting the stove through the roof , we agreed to vent the stove out a side wall. It was my understanding that from the outside, the vent would look like a standard dryer vent, and it would protrude from the face of the house only an inch or two. This was important because the area where it came out was at the bottom of the steps that lead to our front door. When Chris finished the work, there was 12 inches of stove pipe sticking out from the face of the house. The stove pipe was 4 inches in diameter, and had a sharply pointed cap at the end. Very, very dangerous since this was a place people were walking by. I couldn't believe he would install something like this. He said he explained the installation to us and that we had agreed to it. I was willing to concede that we must have misunderstood, but Chris gave no ground - he was not willing to recognize that he might have made a mistake and he had no concept of how dangerous this was. Chris is in his 20s. When his father, Bob, got involved, he recognized immediately that we were being nice about a bad situation. He corrected the installation and sent the stove pipe up through the roof and repaired the siding. They should have done this free of charge, but we paid for the additional stove pipe. We used the stove for two winters. Chris was never available to service it so we found another company to do that. Then in April 2009 we sold our house, and had to have the stove inspected. The stove did not pass inspection because the hearth did not meet the installation guidelines of the manufacturer. I called Chris and he said that the inspector was wrong. I confirmed with the manufacturer that the inspector was right. After that, Chris did not return my phone calls. I had to pay another company to install a new hearth that met the guidelines. We like our stove but we won't do business with American Propane again.