I had my first couple fires of the season this past week in my Woodstock Fireview, which I've owned for 3 years now. Everything was fine, and both my fires burned to my expectation.
Yesterday morning, I lit another fire and kept it going all day. Around 9pm I stoked it up pretty good (the same as I've been doing) gave it about 15mins or so, engaged the cat, and after another 15mins I closed the damper pretty far down, to about a 0.5. The flames were non existent after a couple of mins and I went to bed.
My wife woke me up around midnight saying she smelled smoke. I did too as soon as she woke me up, it smelled like damp creosote. I figured I must have closed the damper down too far so I came downstairs and opened it up a bit. I did smell a decent amount of smoke.
Went back to bed, woke up in the morning and it still smelled a bit, but much less. I stoked up the fire again and got it going really good, I still figured the smell was from damping down the air vent too much.
However, as soon as the stove got good and hot, I noticed some smoke, and a few drops of liquid creosote, seeping through the joint at the end cap of my stove pipe (the cap at the bottom of the liner, where the Tee is).
Here is what it looked like.
Here is a little more info...
This will be my 3rd year that I've been using this same exact setup. I didn't really do anything different that I can think of.
I have a full length stainless steel liner properly installed.
I swept my chimney last month with the proper poly chimney brush, and got a little over a beer can full of creosote, all in all the chimney still looked pretty clean. It was my first time cleaning this chimney liner after 2 yrs of burning this woodstove (I have learned a lot since then and now know to do it more often).
It was burning fine with no smoke leaking out for the 2 days prior, and burning at the same temps, although I didn't damp it down.
When I cleaned the liner, I couldn't get the last couple feet of the liner, and I did not clean the Tee pipe coming out of the woodstove.
Any ideas why I'm getting this smoke/creosote leak? I was going to take the pipe apart and make sure there is no buildup at the cap.
I'm hesitant to fire up the stove again until I know why this is happening. I was told to "burn it hot, to burn out the creosote that was left over from sweeping" does this sound like sound advice?
Where should I go from here?
Yesterday morning, I lit another fire and kept it going all day. Around 9pm I stoked it up pretty good (the same as I've been doing) gave it about 15mins or so, engaged the cat, and after another 15mins I closed the damper pretty far down, to about a 0.5. The flames were non existent after a couple of mins and I went to bed.
My wife woke me up around midnight saying she smelled smoke. I did too as soon as she woke me up, it smelled like damp creosote. I figured I must have closed the damper down too far so I came downstairs and opened it up a bit. I did smell a decent amount of smoke.
Went back to bed, woke up in the morning and it still smelled a bit, but much less. I stoked up the fire again and got it going really good, I still figured the smell was from damping down the air vent too much.
However, as soon as the stove got good and hot, I noticed some smoke, and a few drops of liquid creosote, seeping through the joint at the end cap of my stove pipe (the cap at the bottom of the liner, where the Tee is).
Here is what it looked like.
Here is a little more info...
This will be my 3rd year that I've been using this same exact setup. I didn't really do anything different that I can think of.
I have a full length stainless steel liner properly installed.
I swept my chimney last month with the proper poly chimney brush, and got a little over a beer can full of creosote, all in all the chimney still looked pretty clean. It was my first time cleaning this chimney liner after 2 yrs of burning this woodstove (I have learned a lot since then and now know to do it more often).
It was burning fine with no smoke leaking out for the 2 days prior, and burning at the same temps, although I didn't damp it down.
When I cleaned the liner, I couldn't get the last couple feet of the liner, and I did not clean the Tee pipe coming out of the woodstove.
Any ideas why I'm getting this smoke/creosote leak? I was going to take the pipe apart and make sure there is no buildup at the cap.
I'm hesitant to fire up the stove again until I know why this is happening. I was told to "burn it hot, to burn out the creosote that was left over from sweeping" does this sound like sound advice?
Where should I go from here?
