A new owners email and our response

"Carol, I am very impressed with your little fan assembly. It is amazingly quiet and pushes out the hot air from the fireplace to heat a rather large room. Before I installed the fan the fireplace was only good for one person sitting very close to the unit. Now I have re-arranged all the seating in the room so that several people can sit in cozy warmth all around the room. The company that installed my direct vent LP gas log fireplace wanted to charge me $300 plus $250 to install the ridiculously noisy blower system, so I did not have a fan at because I did not want a noisy fan. At that time I also had a problem with my wood mantel getting dangerously hot. I invented a solution to that problem by designing a sheet metal baffle that I attached to the top of the fireplace with magnets. The only small problem I now have is that the thermostat turns the fan on at an appropriate time but does not turn it off, even after an hour. I do not have a switched outlet so I may have to order the switch assembly, but want to try moving the thermostat to different positions first. If I do add the switch assembly in the future, would it be better to skip the thermostat cable.?

You are welcome to publish any parts or all of my comments under "what owners say". I am thrilled to have discovered this little American made treasure on the Internet!

Here is some one-upmanship for the 'blonde' lady who installed it herself: Not only am I a blonde, but an 82 year old 'little old lady' with 2 prosthetic knees who wears the "I've fallen and I can't get up' Lifeline button. It would have made a hilarious video to see me crawling around on my belly straining to squeeze the fan unit between the maze of wires and gas pipes to position it at the back of the unit. It is a good thing that my arthritic hands are quite small. When I turned it on it was so quiet I had to turn the radio off in order to hear the fan. I had just managed to get the fan in place when a voice came over my phone telling me "help is on the the way". I must have accidentally pushed my help button. So now I quickly had to go through the very awkward contortions necessary to get up off the floor to get to the phone and tell them not send in the firemen and EMS people. Now I had to get back down on my belly to install the thermostat cable. All the while my dog was licking my face because she was worried about me squirming around on the floor. ROFL !!!!"

O. H. TIVERTON RHODE ISLAND

Quiet Fireplace Fan response to the thermostat issue.

"With regard to the issues you mentioned about the thermostat cable being slow to turn off, that is a common problem in the early fall and late spring. The ambient temperature outside is not as low as it is in the winter. The air surrounding the firebox stays warmer during these periods and makes it harder for the thermostat to turn off. The thermostat element is designed to turn on at 120 degrees F and to turn off at 90 degrees F. However, it is a mechanical bi-metallic device and as such, has some tolerance on it's actual performance.

The other factor that can influence the turn off time is the location of the thermostat placement under the firebox. If your fireplace has a pilot light, the metal surface of the bottom of the firebox under the pilot light can become quite warm. Some of that heat spreads out through the metal bottom plate of the firebox and that can also contribute to keeping the thermostat too warm to turn off.

The solution is to move the thermostat by sliding it along the metal surface of the bottom of the firebox to a location close to the front and away from the location of the pilot light. You can test for a cooler location by touching the bottom of the firebox (after the fire has been off for several hours) and sliding your fingers around until you find a relatively cool spot away from the pilot light.

If the weather has turned cold and none of these measures solves the problem, we will replace your thermostat at no cost to you. All of our products carry a one year warranty for repair or replacement, and in the case of a stubborn thermostat, it will be replaced."