Hate to revive an old thread but needed to vent on this again.
After my post above on this topic. I emailed P&M about this issue and my request for a resolution. After multiple emails and phone calls with Robert, Brian, and Rory over 2 months and an internal consultation with their engineer at the factory (Robert?), I was finally told that they would stand behind their product and ship the new design fire bricks as a replacement. The catch was they wanted to wait until a stove was coming this direction so they could piggyback on the truck and save on freight. Understandable, given that the bricks were shipping from Canada to NW Arkansas.
Well, after months of waiting with no word from P&M and no bricks, it's now about time to fire up the stove for the season. I finally gave up last weekend and decided I was on my own. Since I don't have a welder to make the spacer, I decided to take a different route and modify the existing bricks along the lines of the new design. I broke out my trusty circular saw and a concrete blade and went to work. I notched the edge of the bricks 1/2". It wasn't fun (didn't realize there are metal fibers in fire brick lol), but it got the job done. I also cut down some fire brick I had laying around from our old indoor wood furnace to 3" to fill the gap left after pushing all the brick tight. I should have taken some pictures before firing the stove up so everyone could see the finished result, but hindsight right? So far it is working well. I'm finally getting good, even airflow into the firebox without having to worry about the spacing every time I rake the ash. We'll see how it does through the season as the stove get more use.
I'm pretty disappointed with P&M on this. I don't feel like they have lived up to the reputation of customer service that helped sway me to this brand of furnace or that they kept their word as Rory agreed to with me. As I maintained in my previous post, I see this as a design flaw that has a major impact on the proper function of the stove and was addressed through a design modification in the factory. P&M should do the right thing and have some integrity with owners of the earlier design. Just my 2 cents.