Chelsea Hearth & Fireplaces

very well.

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We had our woodstove installed in the summer.  It was inspected and passed with flying colors.  The folks at Chelsea Fire and
Hearth are very nice people and work very hard. That is where the recommendation ends. I could not possible advocate using them for an installation based on our experience. 

Every time we try to start our woodstove smoke saturates our house.  The wood stove has made over 900
square feet of our home unusable.  We have spent 100s of dollars and hours and hours of our free time on smoke abatement.  We have read and read on the probable causes,we have attempted every suggestion possible with little success.  We have purchased kiln dried wood to be sure it is super dry.  We have consulted specialists in Washington State and Ontario. 
But our big question is why?  Why did we have to spend copious amounts of our time trying to figure out a problem?  We having used a wood stove in the past were never warned that this could be a problem.  When we called and first made mention of the
problem, we were given advice from the installer which made matters worse.  No mention was ever made over the phone of
what the problem could be.  This has given us the impression that they have no idea.  Not even the common causes suggested elsewhere were mentioned.  When we called on a Saturday from a smoke filled house they gave us no suggestions as to what to do.  We did not hear back from them again until the following Wednesday. 

It is the duty of a professional to say if a wood stove is not a possibility in your home.

It is the duty of a professional to say if a wood stove is going to make your furnace stop working.

If there is a possibility of carbon monoxide, they should tell you, you should not have to ask.

It is the duty of a professional to respond immediately if something goes terribly wrong over and over again after a client has invested over $6,000 dollars.

We have suffered damage to our home, health problems and the waste or our leisure time trying to make this $6. 000 dollar investment workable.  We have not succeeded.  We have no faith that they know how to correct the problem which means more money being spent to a different vendor.

The vendor did come back back out to correct the problem of smoke pouring into the house.  He came out with his plan of installing a fresh air souce to balance out the pressure in the house.  We knew ahead of time that wood stove was designed to have a fresh air access attacked to the back.  This gentleman drilled two holes in our house and draped in a 6 inch insulated tubing.  It was hanging down inside our house with a cut off end and insulation spilling out.  Cold air poured into our house.  We just thought he was not done yet.  But we were wrong.  He thought he was done.  He did not hook the source up to the stove but just let the cold air poor into the house.  Why have a wood stove if you need cold air to poor into your house to make it run. When it dawned on us that he was going to leave an unfinished pipe poor air into our house, we asked that the difference would be if we just opened the window.  He said there would be no difference.  So he drilled two holes in our house (one was a mistake) when he could have told us to just open the window more often.  For this we own him an extra $150 dollars.

Still a nice guy still a hard worker, but we will never call them again ever.  A terrible dismal mess.