Quadra-Fire Classic Bay CB 1200 Basement Install with OAK

Classic Bay CB1200-C Purchased from the Fireplace Center in Billings, MT on 8.26.2023. I rented a U-Haul trailer and drove it back to our home in Cody, WY. While I had the trailer rented, I picked up a pallet of pellets from Bomgaars in preparation for this winter.

The pallet of pellets and the stove sat in the garage while I finished working out of town for the season until 11.24.2023 after trying and failing to get the 2 fireplace installers in town to give me an installation quote or return my phone calls. While my dad was in town for Thanksgiving, we decided to tackle the installation ourselves.

My wife and I built a home last year and moved in in April of 2023. I knew I wanted to install a pellet stove in the unfinished basement so during the building process, we had the contractor install an Insulated Wall Thimble With Outside Air (PWTOI) manufactured by EXCELPellet. The PWTOI was installed through the exterior floor joist and then through the exterior of the house. On the outside of the house are 2 elbows, a straight section of pipe between them, and then a cap with the cap being ~2 ½ feet from the ground. The kit also came with a 8’ section of 3” flex pipe for the OAK.

At the time I purchased the stove, I also purchased a 4” 90 degree elbow, 3” to 4” adaptor tee, 4” 4’ section, 4” 3’ section, 4” 16” adjustable length stove pipe, and some high temp mill-pac silicone for the installation from the stove to the PWTOI.

After unboxing and taking all of the pieces that could be removed from the stove, my dad and I muscled it down the stairs and began to work on getting the stove pipe put together. Now I’ll say this – I have no prior experience dealing with stove pipe, but I wrestled to get that 90 degree elbow onto the straight section of pipe and onto the PWTOI. I finally figured out that tapping the joints with a hammer was a huge help. We dry fitted all of the stove pipe together first, then took it apart, applied the mil-pac to the gaskets in the stove pipe, and then put everything back together. Then with a 2-foot level we checked the stove pipe for plumbness and adjusted the stove as necessary.

While working on the exhaust stove pipe, we looked at the very incomplete installation instructions for the OAK in the manual. Realizing this was not entirely necessary and that we did not have the materials to install this, we skipped over this for the time being. After hooking up the thermostat, I filled the stove up with pellets and began the start up sequence. After about 26 minutes of pressing the RESET button every 2 minutes we had pellets drop into the firepot and shortly after fire! Wooo HooO!!

Initial start up was smoky due to all of the oils from manufacturing, similar to the first time you start up a new oven. It was enough to set off the smoke alarm in the basement. I was glad we had 3 egress windows in the basement to open up and get some fresh air in. After a few hours of running on high, the oils were completely burned off and the smoke dissipated.

2 days later, I began to tackle the OAK. After a quick internet search, I found out about the Firewood Hoarders Club when I stumbled on a forum post by don2222 back in 2016. Here is the link to the OP. Installing OAK on a Quadrafire CB 1200 - Back panel cutout?

This thread was a tremendous help, I am so thankful I found it and that there was so much good information and pictures with it. Thanks, don2222 and slvrblkk!

I do not have a welder, nor do I know how to weld. So I went about the approach trying to figure out how to make the 90 degree elbow and go from 2” at the stove to 3” from the thimble without fabricating something up. After a few trips to ACE and O’Reilly I got my parts list for the OAK:

From ACE:

2” galvanized street elbow $15

3” adjustable aluminum elbow $7

3 3” hose clamps $9

2 2” hose clamps $5

1 tube of high heat silicone $10

From O’Reilly:

3” OD to 2 ½” ID exhaust adaptor $5

2 ½” ID to 2” OD exhaust adaptor $5

1 7/8” ID to 1 ¾” OD exhaust adaptor $5

2” ID x 18” carburetor pre-heater hose $15

The 3” to 4” tee at the back of the stove rendered the little cutout square in the back panel for the 2” flex hose essentially useless, so I did some minor cutting to open the back panel up to allow for the installation. The smallest exhaust adaptor fit nice and snug into the galvanized elbow with a few taps of the hammer, then the 2” carb hose between the small adaptor and the medium adaptor. The large adaptor went into the 3” flex hose that came with the kit and butted up to the medium adaptor which I married together with some heat tape I had laying around. With a pair of tin snips, I was able to modify the 3” aluminum elbow to fit onto the thimble and clear the exhaust stove pipe. I ran a bead of silicone at the end of the galvanized elbow and then gooped a bead of silicone around the intake hole in the bottom of the stove and smooshed the elbow in place. To finish the installation, I grabbed a few drywall screws and some tie wire to hold the intake hose securely onto the stud and clean things up a bit. I then ran a bead of silicone around the skirt of the entire stove to make it as airtight as possible while putting a few dollops of silicone on all the holes I could see on the bottom of the stove under the hopper.

Finding this forum made me want to document this in the hopes that I can help out the next guy. I have attached all photos of the installation to help. If any of you experts see any glaring mistakes with my installation, please let me know so I can fix them!

This is my first pellet stove, so I am looking forward to learning more and am happy to be a new member of FHC!

 

Enjoy!

Way to help out the future generation of pellet burners don2222

 

Welcome to the forum! The install looks great, and thanks for all the pics. You may get more members commenting on this too, but we'll all be interested in hearing more about how well it works out.

Basement installs, especially in un-finished ones that have large amounts of concrete, are problematic. The concrete acts like a huge heat sink and sucks up any heat the stove will make. And if you were hoping it will make it's way upstairs, well, that's very problematic too. The heat won't go up (for example, the stairs well), since there needs to be a way for return air to come back down. It may work, but more times than not, it doesn't.

My advise is to get those stud walls filled with insulation & then sheet rock, and consider insulating the floor too. THEN, you might have a chance of heating that space decently.

Not trying to rain on your parade ....just figure you need to have information from people on this forum that have been there, done that.

 

Welcome to the club 307Jake307

 

Thanks for the input regarding the challenges of heating the basement. It is our plan to finish the basement in the next 2-3 years, so hopefully that will mitigate those challenges in the future. I will need to consider adding a return when we do the basement finishing. Our HVAC system has 3 returns, 2 upstairs and 1 downstairs. I don't know if that contributes to circulation enough. I have 5 duct vents in the basement, which I have closed at the moment so the furnace heats the upstairs. (house is ~1700 sqft up and down) upstairs HVAC thermostat set at 69-70. I like to think the furnace has been turning on less the last few days, but maybe that is just some wishful thinking. The proof will be in the coming months when we see our gas bill.

As you are looking at the stove, the thermostat is about 10 feet to the left and 5 feet in front of the stove. I currently have it set at 60 degrees from 00:00 to 04:00, 72 degrees from 04:00 to 10:00, 60 degrees from 10:00 to 16:00, 72 degrees from 16:00 to 24:00. At the medium heat setting with the fan setting on high, I will get the stove to cycle on and off some when it is set at 72 degrees. During the day between 10:00 and 16:00 the temperature will drop in the basement from 72 degrees to about 67-68 degrees. The high/low outside is about 30/15 right now. Been burning about a bag, bag and a half per day with it running.

I am burning Heartland softwood pellets made in Spearfish, SD. The rating on the bag is 8,400 BTU/lb. I will do some experimenting with other available pellets. There are some hardwood pellets available in town at the lumber yard I want to try out next.

 

Former basement heater here but not in a unfinished one imacman or Pete (Told you part one) thanks for all the pictures my name is David I no longer heat with pellets I had a stroke in 2016 which I was recovering from until over medication dumped me on my butt and busted my hip. Now I have vascular Parkinson's 307Jake307 welcome to ye ole funny farm. Lots of "crazies" on here.

 

slvrblkk ,Heat Seeker,Kapell15 and Jtakeman all are pellet heaters from way back pre this site but are here now. jtakeman heats from the basement, is a machinist and mod on this Forum. We cause him grief, His name is Jerome.

Snowy is multi-talented and counts a vintage Qaud in her three heaters. She uses rebuilt Whits modified to burn cracked hazelnut shells.

 

Everyone has great points about the unfinished basement. Once you get insulation on those walls it will make a huge difference in the amount of pellets used. I insulated my basement several years ago, but it was bare cinderblock with concrete floor the 1st couple of years I was here. My basement is 3/4 underground on 3 sides, then the fourth side abuts a small underhouse garage.

When you go to finish the floor, either make sure you put down insulating material first, or use a system with an air gap. That will keep the feet much warmer and cut back further on what your stove is trying to heat. I keep my basement thermostat set at 65* until it really starts getting cold outside, then I raise it to 68* which helps keep the upstairs floor warmish (no insulation on basement ceiling except near the outside walls). I am barefoot in the house all the time (or with regular socks on), so know what a huge difference that can make (I used an airgap system since dampness wicks up thru the basement floor).

Getting air to rise to the next floor can be challenging - some people have no issues, others find it nearly impossible. I cut holes in the nice wood floors of this 1960 house (the only nice thing when I moved here) and that did not help even with all kinds of fans and placements pushing air up, down and sideways. Some heat did come up but not what I was hoping for even though the P61a, on paper, would easily heat the entire square footage with plenty to spare.

I ended up putting a smaller pellet stove on my main floor. Now the P61a is overkill in the basement with all the insulating and other work I've put in down there. Whenever I think about replacing the P61a with another P43, I decide not to since if needed, that stove can keep the main floor nominally warm if it has to.

Make sure to check out the other sections of the forum. Not ony are all the pelletheads helpful, but even those woodburners are happy to share knowledge and experiences about nearly anything (especially in the DIY and hobbies sections) as well as BS about anything in general (within the forum rules )

 

Thanks for the help! I adjusted the thermostat yesterday evening to a 6 degree setback. My main goal is to heat the basement, so I'm not particularly worried about getting heat upstairs, but any heat getting upstairs would be an added benefit! I walked around the basement with an infrared thermometer last night and on the very far end, concrete wall temp was 61 degrees while the thermostat was reading 72 near the stove. The underside of the subfloor was reading 72-75 in some spots so I know that is making some difference upstairs, at least heating the floor!

 

Thanks for the input! We are looking forward to having the basement finished. I'll have to do some reading up on the floor insulation/air gap pros and cons and the different types of products available.

I'll check out the other sections of the forum too!

 

Good to get some feedback on the Heartland pellets, I will steer clear from Rocky Mountain - thanks for the heads up!

 

Humor me with a picture of the outside you are likely over EVL and which way is the prevailing wind.

 

Here is a picture of the outside stovepipe. The wall faces southeast and the prevailing wind is out of the west, blowing to the east. About 40mph today too

 

I heat my whole house from the basement, but I think I'm just lucky with the layout of my house and setup.

Insulated floor or carpet with pad and finished walls will make a big difference.

 

Oo oo oo....can I humor you?

 

You are over Evl for 3" venting check with your installation manual. You have 10.5 EVL outside.

 

No!!!

 

damm...