Smoke Filled Room on Initial Start-up

Try a peace of news paper crumpled up and put it in the stove then light i before you start your fire.

It sounds like you have a weak draft at startup - cold air in the chimney. Key then is to get that first bit of warm air flowing up there.

You can do the burning piece of paper in stove (place as close to the chimney as you can to get the heat to flow where you want it). Alternatives include using other firestarters such as a SuperCedar or such - these may have the benefit of less/no smoke if you do have a reverse draft (air flowing down the chimney) while you wait for the flow to go the right direction. If the situation is really bad or you are particularly impatient, take a hair dryer or heat gun and point it up the chimney for a minute or two.

Overall - start slow so you don't have a lot of smoke until the chimney is really pulling it up. If you just have a slow draw at first, a top-down fire building technique may work well for you too.

Like Corey said, you want to preheat your chimney pipe. My Esse I always put a few crumbled sheets of newspaper on top of the load, light it close the door and forget it. Works well.

Cracking a window near the stove during start-up can also help initial draft.

This is my first year burning in a new Jotul 550 insert. I have a reasonably tight house, and have notice draft issues at start up like you.

I do as mentioned above: build my stack: super cedar, kindling, small log, big log, and top it off with a couple piece of crumpled up news paper. Light the super cedar, light the news paper, and close but do not latch the door. This allows in a lot of air initially to help get things going quickly. In a few minutes I latch the door, but leave the damper wide open for a while longer.

I also found that I need to open to door slowly to reload, or I will suck a puff of smoke out of the insert, and I also turn off the blower fan when I reload.

Fiziksgeek said:

This is my first year burning in a new Jotul 550 insert. I have a reasonably tight house, and have notice draft issues at start up like you.

I do as mentioned above: build my stack: super cedar, kindling, small log, big log, and top it off with a couple piece of crumpled up news paper. Light the super cedar, light the news paper, and close but do not latch the door. This allows in a lot of air initially to help get things going quickly. In a few minutes I latch the door, but leave the damper wide open for a while longer.

I also found that I need to open to door slowly to reload, or I will suck a puff of smoke out of the insert, and I also turn off the blower fan when I reload.

Click to expand...

My first year as well, realizing that when I have to light my Progress Hybrid I have to leave the door cracked just a little bit to get the fire to take off with just newspaper and kindling... Took me about 8 tries to figure that out, now the fires are super easy!

Hold burning news paper where your draft goes to get a draft going faster. If the weather is playing a roll in my draft and my stove does what yours is doing, I close the door all the way for a second or two and the smoke stops coming out around my stove.

Was the door shut? On most stoves the door has to be shut or left with a small crack just as soon as you light your fire starter. Once the fire starter heats your flue and gets you some good draw up the flue then you can open it back up some and see how its goes.

Fire starter = something that burns hot and fast to heat up the stove and catches your kindling on fire also.

Super Cedar is one example.

And read this post:

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/kindling-and-firestarters.91650/

corey21 said:

Try a peace of news paper crumpled up and put it in the stove then light i before you start your fire.

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Or better yet, 3 or 4 crumpled up newspapers. Even a hair dryer to send some warm air up the chimney can sometimes do the trick. Or a blowtorch. Just get the flue warm and it should than not give you that smoke.

Backwoods Savage said:

Or better yet, 3 or 4 crumpled up newspapers. Even a hair dryer to send some warm air up the chimney can sometimes do the trick. Or a blowtorch. Just get the flue warm and it should than not give you that smoke.

Click to expand...

I would be interested in hearing ideas on preheating a chimney.
I find that if my insert being on an outside wall will be much colder than the room when I open the door to start a fire. At that point i get a steady downdraft of cold air. I usually use a torch to warm the stove before I start the load. This helps a bit. I would like to find a better way to kick start my draft or at least get the cold air stopped before I light the fire.
To start the fire I open a window and use top down burn. I use a firestarter and kindling lighting it with a torch. Once I get it started my fire and draft are fine. It is really just getting the air moving up my chimney that is my biggest challenge. Ideally I would like to start a fire without needing a torch or firestarter. Newspaper just does not provide enough heat energy to get my draft started.

A hairdryer is another option and I would also look into adding insulation around your insert. Check out this thread: https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/finally-got-around-to-insulating-my-fireplace.75755/

If possible I would also keep the insert running most of the time then you should not have problems getting the draft established.

Does this happen all year? I had an issue in my last house, but it usually happened in early spring. I lived on a prairie where the wind blew on a normal basis. There must have been heavy air in the spring because I would fight the same thing. I ended up installing a chimney cap that would pull air out of the chimney when the wind blew across it. This helped a lot.

seabert said:

I would be interested in hearing ideas on preheating a chimney.
I find that if my insert being on an outside wall will be much colder than the room when I open the door to start a fire. At that point i get a steady downdraft of cold air. I usually use a torch to warm the stove before I start the load. This helps a bit. I would like to find a better way to kick start my draft or at least get the cold air stopped before I light the fire.
To start the fire I open a window and use top down burn. I use a firestarter and kindling lighting it with a torch. Once I get it started my fire and draft are fine. It is really just getting the air moving up my chimney that is my biggest challenge. Ideally I would like to start a fire without needing a torch or firestarter. Newspaper just does not provide enough heat energy to get my draft started.

Click to expand...

The outside wall is my problem too, but several crumpled newspaper sheets on top of the wood usually solves it. I light the newspaper, leave the door cracked, let it whoosh, then light the fire.

TE

I would get one of these:

Use it to preheat the flue and then light the fire.
Place a fire starter around the middle of the kindling, open the door just enough to stick the torch head in and light the starter,
works like a charm.

How about a heat gun from HF. They're cheap enough with a 20% off coupon (look online for the coupon).
http://t.harborfreight.com/1500-watt-dual-temperature-heat-gun-572-1112-96289.html

You could also try a top down fire. Basicly you put newspaper (rolled up and tied in a loose knot) on top of the kindling. The theory is by the newspaper being on top it will help to heat the flue quicker.

I tried it just a few days ago when the newspaper I had under my kindling failed. Rather than moving all the kindling to start over I just threw 4 pieces of rolled up newspaper on top and tried it. To my surprise, it worked very well.

tarzan said:

You could also try a top down fire. Basicly you put newspaper (rolled up and tied in a loose knot) on top of the kindling. The theory is by the newspaper being on top it will help to heat the flue quicker.

I tried it just a few days ago when the newspaper I had under my kindling failed. Rather than moving all the kindling to start over I just threw 4 pieces of rolled up newspaper on top and tried it. To my surprise, it worked very well.

Click to expand...

I started doing the top down method after seeing it on here. Where has that been my whole life? Works great.

I put my hand near the baffle first to see if any cold air is coming down. I crack open a nearby window and use pieces of newspaper to get things going in the right direction.

Nobody is addressing where the smoke is exiting the unit. The OP said, "when I start my fire smoke backs up and comes through the vest ( probably meant vent) and blower unit." The only way smoke can be getting into the blower unit so that it can leak out the vent is if there is an opening in the firebox letting smoke escape into the shroud around the outside of the firebox. If this is the case then you would need to locate the crack, hole, etc. and see if it can be corrected.

Ummm . . . maybe that's because the OP wrote this back in the Fall of 2012 and hasn't been on here since January of this year.

Dolp and Dolp