We just bought used cast-iron gas heat stove . . . (furnaces, heaters, stoves)

[dustie9]

. . . and discovered online that the model has been "discontinued." the seller told us it is about four years old (and it looks that old at most -- it's in excellent condition). this stove is made by empire, model number CIDV-30-20.

the thing is, it's saturday evening and i can't get this question answered by empire until sometime next week. i'm hoping someone here can tell me: when a model is "discontinued," does finding parts for it, should any need replacing down the road, become difficult or impossible?

this is really important to us. this empire stove is replacing another used stove (vermont castings stardance model) that we bought only a year and a half ago; it broke down last june; and only then did we discover the stove was about 20 years old and the part we needed couldn't be found anywhere. the stove is now useless, with a lot of money down the drain, and we're not rich.

we are disturbed (yikes!) that this fiasco could be happening again. if anyone can tell me that more recent stove models which have been discontinued are very likely to have parts available for several years, we can get rid of our anxiety now instead of whenever next week empire would get back to us. in fact, we'd appreciate the knowledge and experience of people like us rather than a dealer anyway.

please help if you can!
thanks so much,

dustie9

[chet everett]

You previously had a stove that was so old you could not get parts to repair it. You subsequently decided to buy another used stove. That stove too is discontinued.

Were you unable to research the stove before you handed over money to buy it?

[dustie9]

Originally Posted by chet everett

You previously had a stove that was so old you could not get parts to repair it. You subsequently decided to buy another used stove. That stove too is discontinued.

Were you unable to research the stove before you handed over money to buy it?

thanks for your reply. we saw the stove still for sale by retailers of new stoves online when we were considering it. it was only after we bought it that we noticed -- in one hard-to-find spot on the empire website -- that it was listed as discontinued.

this stove is four years old, and the latest online manual for it is dated 2007, so apparently it was discontinued very recently. we are hoping, i think reasonably, that finding parts for a four-year-old stove should be easier than for the twenty-year-old stove.

if big names like vermont casting and empire stopped providing parts for stoves they manufactured very recently, and apparently are still having retailers sell, we are now thinking they'd have many unhappy customers and thus it wouldn't make sense. do they care about making sense? i don't know, but they're still in business.

[misplaced1]

Check ebay to see if they have any parts listed.

[TempesT68]

You'd have to contact the company directly to see if they still make parts for it which they might, but if it does get you another few years, by the time you need them, will be obsolete. Personally i'd just sell it or see if you can take it back. It's really not a wise decision to buy something used that is this critical.

[M3 Mitch]

What the devil broke on your Vermont Castings stove that rendered it useless?

Lehman's frequently has parts for discontinued stoves.

Some parts can be made or adapted from other parts.

I have seen gas furnaces and heaters that had to be 50 years old that were working fine. A manually-adjusted gas burner has almost no moving parts, unless the main heat exchange surface breaks or cracks, they are generally repairable.

[dustie9]

Originally Posted by M3 Mitch

What the devil broke on your Vermont Castings stove that rendered it useless?

Lehman's frequently has parts for discontinued stoves.

Some parts can be made or adapted from other parts.

I have seen gas furnaces and heaters that had to be 50 years old that were working fine. A manually-adjusted gas burner has almost no moving parts, unless the main heat exchange surface breaks or cracks, they are generally repairable.

i probably can't use the proper terms, but it was the "starter" or main valve. we had two different (and recommended) guys over here at separate times to try to fix it, each of whom thought it would be no problem, but spent many many hours on it, only to give up. the upshot: we spent over $300 for repair attempts that still left the stove useless. after finding out from dealers that the part hasn't been made for a long time and is basically impossible to find, we decided to move on. painful though it was.

today i heard back from an empire guy i emailed over the weekend. he says the stove was discontinued two years ago (to change style, no operational problems) and parts will continue to be available for it for many years except for the burner itself, which he says is reliable and very longlasting. so we'll install the stove, since it's four years old, and hope for the best. it wasn't used much, it must have a lot of life left in it.

thanks a lot to everyone who replied.
dustie

p.s. we live in maine -- you'd think at least one of the two guys we had over to fix the 20-year-old vermont castings stove would have known how to cob together something, and one guy especially was extremely determined, but nada. we've learned a few lessons from this experience, one of which is: never pay a repair guy, no matter how determined or nice, until the job is completely finished and your unit is in good working order! arghhh.