Meridian alternative?

[defrauded]

My user name describes my experience with Kamado - I ordered a Meridian in Feb 2006, made a down payment of $599, and never received it. After countless emails, phone calls, a certified letter to the San Diego location, a formal complaint to the San Diego BBB, and (since deleted)posts to the Kamado forum, Laura is supposedly giving me my down payment back, after they claimed it was "almost ready" 5 months ago, but they had actually never built it. I'm not holding my breath.

Anyway, I was attracted by the Meridian because of its (alleged) heating characteristics, (alleged) complete combustion, its looks (and way of customizing it), and most importantly, that you did not need a noisy fan to circulate the heat.

I have been very unimpressed with the typical fireplace inserts out there, where much of the heat still goes up the chimney, even with the noisy fan.

Does anyone else make something like this? I left an email for Dennis over at KK, and he never got back to me ...

Thanks

JohnG

[curly]

[foxhound]

defrauded wrote:

[u2plt]

You are lucky. I had a K9 & my son had a K7 both sold in June 2007. Because I had ordered a Meridian Insert and one year later finally got it in Octobe of 2006. I installed it according to RJ's directions, and started the break in process. After completeing 4 break in burn cycles, during which I experienced: the glass door became covered with black deposit that we could not get off. and the smell coming out of the vents was very bad. When I tried to burn one small log it set off my smoke detectors. RJ answered me that he would get to his window maker and find an answer to the black film. That was the last I heard from him inspite of reapeted emails and calls. I had to pull it, and asked RJ for his warranty refund of my cost of $1000, not including shipping costs. A year later I have received no refunds. You are lucky that you are only out $599. He is an out & out crook of the highest order!!!!!!!!!!!

[Admin]

[u2plt]

Lost them due to computer problems.

[tkline01]

I have a picture of it after install....nothing after it was used.



It looked nice...too bad it was junk like the cookers!!!

[u2plt]

You can see that the window is clear because the white interior shows up. Starting with the first small load of charcoal briquets it started to cloud up.
By the 4th and final burn it was covered with black coating. I had emailed RJ after the first burn asking what to use to clean it up. He answered to use vinager, which I tried but it hardly made a dent. I asked again and he said he would call the manufacturer of the clear ceramic glass about what to use.
I kept asking about this and he only said I must have been using bad wood logs. But you see I had not yet started with logs because his instructions said use charcoal briquets to break in the Meridian. After the other problems it was obvious that it was not going to be useable.

[defrauded]

Check out Finnish company Tulikivi that sells soapstone fireplaces, countertops ... this is very interesting. Many thanks to forum member that suggested soapstone.

There are other companies that build fireplace inserts whose firebrick is soapstone.

JohnG

[Knotter]

Sorry to hear U2.

Been driving me crazy not knowing why you left the forum. I knew you purchased a Meridian, and suspected that may be the problem.

[defrauded]

Perhaps your wood or charcoal has a lot of moisture content, which caused the blackening.

Kamado's Meridian FAQ takes a fact applicable in a specific instance, and erroneously applies it generally:

[tkline01]

U2PLT already pulled the crappy junk out of his fireplace. You couldn't hardly sit in the room when it was burning....some kind of toxic gas kept coming out of the Meridian.

[curly]

[Knotter]

If by chance you were using KEL for break-in, and it came from the bad wet moldy batch. The smell doesn't surprise me at all. I've not only smelled it, I've tasted it on my food.