Monitor Heater Dependability

[fj62lc]

Good morning All

Just finished rebuilding the hot section of my 15 year old 422.

Other than the usual gaskets and burner mat, I chose to replace the combustion ring assy. It was not the least bit deformed, but a spot weld on one of the three legs broke while I was cleaning it. I'll re-weld all three legs and use it as a backup. I even went so far as to weigh both the old and new rings in order to determine if there was any loss in mass due to 15 years of use. Total weight loss was roughly four grams or 3% compared to the new ring. I also cleaned out all of the intake/exhaust paths as well. Only light carbon and soot. Should be good to go for ten more Alaskan years.

During the past 15 years, I've owned both a Monitor 441 and a 422, Two Toyostove 30's, a 73 and an OM 22. I've been asked which brand is more dependable and I must say, I've seen no significant differences. Keep in mind these heaters are electro/mechanical, designed and built by humans. End result is there will be problems with them. Thankfully very few. The vast majority of owners never have problems with their heaters and we never hear from them on the internet. Those of us with issues (heater or other) know where to turn for help. Remember, the key to a long and healthy life of ether a Toyostove or Monitor is preventive maintenance.

Five years ago I left the monitor brand in favor of the Toyostove. Not because I disliked the monitor, but because it was tough to find any service information on the Monitor brand. Not so for the Toyostove. Times have changed and now information is available for both. The quote for the 422 rebuild was $500. It cost me $135 in parts and one day of labor. The pdf. file linked below, was very nice to have as reference and was not easily available to the general public just a couple years ago. I took the exploded view/parts list with me when I went to the dealer to pick up my rebuild parts. His first question to me was "where did you get that list from"?

My reason for putting together this small bit of information and sharing it with others is because I have rebuilt both brands of heaters and now and feel the need to pass along the limited knowledge that I've gleaned when comparing and working on the two. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to email me.

On a personal note and only my opinion, the comments made by Al Luce over the years at alsheating.com are vindictive in nature and should be taken as such. If he realy wanted to make a difference and help you and I, he would have posted the service manual for the Monitor years ago. Instead, he has chosen to bad mouth a product and the people who service them, leaving us to our own demise seems to be more his stye. My hope is to give a more balanced though limited perspective on the heaters.

My thanks to all who have contributed to this site as well as others.

I've linked the two sites below that have the service information for the heaters.

Rostov For your furnace, heater, and stove needs. Rural Energy Enterprises, Inc.

Monitor. Thanks mikados Monitor Service Manual.pdf

[HayZee518]

Thank you for sharing all that information. My first exposure to the monitor is when I moved into this house in upstate NY. People would mention the "monitor" and I had no idea what they were refering to. I was very cautious in even looking at the heater. But having a strong mechanical back ground and electrical back ground it got my curiousity up as to what makes this thing work. I had no operator's manual or service manual. I had to figure out what the buttons did on the M41's top panel. There's a distributorship about 30 miles from me and my first problem was the combustion blower. I called the guy and explained that it sounded like a jet engine winding out. He said it was bearings going bad. I paid $146 for the blower motor and put it in. I had mounted the blower wheel backwards and after fully assembled it, it wouldn't spin. So I took it apart again and got the blower wheel in correctly but I forgot to put in a spacer so again it wouldn't work. Back apart and this time everything worked. I called the mpi guy and asked if I could get a service manual for the M41. One guy said "no way!" his partner said He'd get me one. So I was on the road to servicing my monitor. I broke the quartz window one day and went to the mpi guy for another window and he quoted me $90 for the quartz window. Since it wasn't really cold I got on the web at mcmaster-carr industrial supply site and found BORO-SILICATE glass. The temperature rating of boro-silicate is much higher than quartz and not so brittle. I only paid about 8 bucks for a piece four by 8 inches. I looked into gasketting material too. Again I found asbestos free gasket material with a higher than monitor's temperature ratings and bought this I got a sheet approx 1/2 inch thick, layered, by 3ft by 4 foot for 15 bucks. I tried it with kerosene on fire and it wasn't touched by the flame. It got black but did not disintegrate even after a 8 hr burn time. shortly after solicitating questions on the home repair site I started to get inputs to my problems and enhanced my studies further. one guy had copied the monitor service manual into a pdf format and I downloaded this. so I got a saved copy of it. Now people are writing ME with their problems. One man is calling me the monitor guru. I'll try to help but I am far from being a guru.

[catamount]

You guys are both huge assets to this community of Monitor users. I came from lots of experience with Rinnais but then bought a house with 4 monitors and was definitely worried about them when I couldn't find any information online.

Then I found this forum! So glad to have both of you here.