having trouble with my Harman TL300

Does your stove use a cat?

 

Pallet Pete might have some info on this

 

O Gosh I hated that stove… It lasted one winter I dumped it lol. It isn't a bad stove in the right setting but downdraft is by nature very finicky. The issue is you need a huge coal bed in the TL300 to keep the combuster hot enough to stay lit and burn. The problem with that is if you have a small amount of downdraft or not enough draft your going to experience exactly what your describing. If you have burned three years this way you will defiantly need a new combuster installed in the stove as it looks like a honeycomb and is very very easy to clog and very fragile.

The cheapest solution is to do a draft test first and find out if its drafting right. Have a stove shop come out and do it for you and ill bet you need extra pipe added. That stove needs a ton of draft to work right. Ours never did and I went up and down with the chimney before giving up. We had a slew of bad parts in the stove as well and spent a lot fixing it as Harmon simply has zero support which is why we sold it. This is why I say get a dealer to be the middle man…..

My apologies I don't mean to be negative we had a bad bad experience with it. I think it could be a great stove if everything is figured out. I did get an 18hr burn out of it one time only when there was no wind but only once.

 

Guys, swamp is a buddy of mine from work (I don't admit that to just anybody, either) Anyway, I'm gonna go up and take a look at the stove on Saturday sometime and see if I can help him figure it out but, judging by some of you and your experiences with the stove, it may just be a finicky bastage........

we're gonna see what the MC is on his firewood and if needed, gonna split it down smaller.......

do you think smaller splits (for shorter HOTTER fires) would help him get the stove box temps up where it would run better? Or should we just yank that stove our of the house and pitch in in the lake??

 

I really don't mean to be negative but what a pain….

My buddy has the Oakwood and it works flawless but it took 2 years to figure out the draft issues before that happened. Now that it works good 16hrs is common for him to still be getting heat out of it. I wish I could give better advice but it simply it never got figured out with us and was a royal wast of time and money. Because of that I can't honestly say how to fix it as we could never get ours fixed.

Harmon not only didn't honor the parts warranty but they started to ignore me when I tried and I finally had to pay for the parts or freeze. The stove shop was just as bad and I lucked into a hardware that carried their stoves and they came 135 miles to look at it free. It got somewhat usable and we fought through winter.

Not all dealers are bad you may be able to call around and get a helpful dealer that REALLY knows what they are talking about. If they want your future business they will help. I have an excellent dealer now that I wouldn't trade for the world…………………… If I had kept the TL300 I would have 135 miles to the other dealer because they where excellent.

 

Scotty try to build a BIG coal bed at least 4 inches deep then load it up. If you do that it may light the cumbustor off and run. It sounds like a mini jet when its going and you'll hear it. If that don't work draft test and if that don't work dynamite! As for cleaning the combuster DONT it will flake apart as its housed in a fiberglass type material and the combuster has the strength of thick paper. If you break it your screwed its expensive.

 

Its basically the same but when we removed ours it literally disintegrated. Interesting as it wasn't even three months old and we had very dry wood… The Harmon Rep told us to remove it and check it out over the phone and then when it fell apart they said we voided the warranty by removing it! Ok I'm gonna go away now this is boiling my blood they are the worst company I have ever dealt with! I hate seeing others go through it too…. You are offering far better advice than I am.

 

Im shaking on the floor holding my head giggling!

 

I bought it from a stove shop that burned a PE T6 HMM.. Didn't really think about it at the time but they where a Harmon dealer not a PE dealer. Anyways Back on topic which means I need to shut up!

 

I fell in love with a stove on craigslist, decent deal. Thank goodness I could get real world opinions here. I did not buy it.