Fahrenheit Endurnace 50F Project

Hey Guys,

So I've only been a member here for a few day and just am happy I joined. I've been talking with many members about the Endurance 50F that I bought in the spring. This thread is going to be about the unit I bought, how bad of shape it was in, questions I have and overall the road to putting it into service. I hope to keep it going for future owners and to add to it as I progress with upgrades and changes I make to the stove. I look forward to others who have the unit adding in their 2 cents as well.

So to start, I became interested in buying one of these units from lurking around a few forums, reading up on whole house pellet heaters. I have a Harman P61A, but wanted something to put in the basement and hook into the ducting.

From what I read, the 50F seem to be amazing units, so I thought I'd give one a try. I ended up driving a long azz way to get mine and it was in sad shape as it was very neglected. The owner didn't even know what the exchanger cleaner rod was and in the 5 or so years he'd had it, he'd never operated it to clean the exchanger tubes.

I've got the unit cleaned and pretty much ready to install, so I'll show a few pictures of the condition of the unit when I took it apart. Sorry that it's not step by step. It's serial number 2661.

Oh, and just to throw his out there, came across another 50F last week about an hour from my house and in much better shape, for a marginal amount more than I paid for this one.


The door glass was really dirty and you can see where the gasket was leaking out.


The heat exchanger was clogged nearly solid. The cleaning rod was seized. It took a buddy and I around 2 hours to get everything cleaned and freed up!


This is a picture showing the debris in the exhaust passage.


A piece of debris I pulled from another area of the exhaust manifold.


Debris in the combustion blower housing.


Signs of smoke and debris in the rear housing of the furnace. I don't know how this guy never burnt his house down.

I'll post a few pictures either tomorrow or over the weekend of where I'm at now.

 

Hey Dex,

I agree. As I was rationalizing why in the hell I got myself into this it became very clear that it's very helpful if a stove owner knows his/her stove inside and out. I'm the same way with my Harman, I do all my own work and know the stove very well. I just wished I'd got my azz into gear when I bought the stove in the spring!

I'll definitely be picking your brain, as I am sure I'll have issues when I fire the stove for the first time. The biggest issue is that I still have to get a chimney up. Hopefully dad and I can get it done before the snow comes!!!

If you think of it, I wouldn't mind a picture of the holes you filled in on the bottom of your burn pot. Or at least a description of what ones you filled in.

Thanks for the tags on the other guys with the same stove, I hope they'll chime in.

 

WOW! Mint, thanks for the quick reply. I have the V3 burn pot, but contacted Matt at Fahrenheit today. He sent me some drawing breakdown of the V4 pot and what parts I can add to my burn pot to do a semi upgrade. Still not sure what upgrades I'll do, I'll have to see what the ol' funds have to say on the matter. I think the first thing I should do is upgrade the blower impeller.

Another question. My unit was in such rough shape, that I couldn't tell if there was a gasket sealing the main burn pot body to the back of the firebox. I'm going to assume yes, but it'd be nice to get some confirmation.

 

Welcome to FHC. Clock is ticking before old man winter passes through. I will follow your progress closely so I want to see lots of pics,

 

Don't remind me about winter lol.

I'm dying to get it all installed. We still need to get a chimney up. I am hoping to get it done in the next couple weekends. But we'll see. Shouldn't take dad and I long to put one up. I am opting to go with a Masonry chimney due to clearance issues with windows.

My only other option was to do a standard vent on the other end of the house and that gets me away from where I want the stove for duct connection purposes.

 

I thought mine was dirty when I bought it, but after seeing those pics, I award the victory to you. Not sure if that's a good thing or not.

Welcome to the forum.

 

Yeeeahhh. Not sure that's a victory on my end lol. Thanks for the welcome!

 

I just have a bungalow, but how the windows are won't allow for proper clearance. So that's why I'm going to put a masonry chimney up. I'll post a picture of the back of my house in the morning, maybe even tonight if I have one kicking around. The only thing is I am off work tomorrow now, so I planned to start the masonry chimney.

 

I wish it were that easy. Due to the layout of the house and where I want to put the furnace in the basement I can't just go straight up. Current plan is to go out through the basement wall into a masonry chimney. Not sure how it will work. Do you know of any guys on here that run into exterior chimneys?

My other option was to put it as the end of my basement and do a standard PL vent. But that would put the stove right under our bedroom and tie up more space in the basement. I'm trying to keep all my mechanical all in one area but I'm really starting to wonder.

 

What i did is expanded my mechanical room to place my Fahrenheit in close to the oil furnace. The furnaces face each other and the rear of the Fahrenheit is facing the exterior wall. Leave lots of room to maneuver around the Fahrenheit to service it. The shortest horizontal runs is preferred and the less exterior vent for less condensation. Fresh air intake would be beneficial for less drafts in the house and some say combustion.

 

Thanks for letting me know. My concern doing an exterior masonry chimney is keeping the draw. It's nice your brothers is up through his house so he doesn't have to worry about it.

The manual for the 50F says you need to watch that the flue temp doesn't drop too low in the really cold weather, which makes sense. Even though it is a forced ventilation, I'm guessing you still want natural draw to help out.

Ideally I'd like to do a standard install, but my list of "I wants" is too long to check off everything. I'm going to spend time today looking at tit before I get punching any holes. My biggest "want" is to be able to cleanly hook into my duct work, and to do that I need to do some sort of a chimney.

 

Nice, do you have pictures?

I want to make sure mine is accessible as well. Nothing worse than standing on your head to work on something. I'll try to keep the horizontal runs short. I think I can do it with maybe only 3' or so. I'm definitely doing an OAK. You guys all seem really big on them and they just make sense to me. My Harman isn't, but I plan to at some point.

 

I meant to ask you. How do you like the v4 pot? Also, my furnace had thin pieces of tin on either side of the burn pot, is that a factory item? I don't recall seeing these pieces in any of the stove pics you guys post.