Pe summit back draft lesson learned

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Prockncj

Member
Jan 24, 2012
41
Livonia MIchigan USA
form all the fine people in here that helped me over the last two years I have another question.

Been burning my heat beast PE summit insert for about 15 fires now.

It has since sat for a good week and Since last fire I have installed Roxul around the pipe.

I decided to fire it up Sunday. And had a small fire starter , loaded it with some wood. And hello smoke , no matter what I did I could not stop the smoke back draft and the house had a nice fill of start up smoke, then came the lashing from the wife.

I have my unit in the basement , so I did open a window to get the positive pressure but was not enough. Tried a heat gun ... No go , newspaper in the flue no go again. I shut the door to only have the smoke coming out of all the air feeds. It was a Nasty smoke draft.


Any tips for a cold unit/pipe , to establish a good draft?


Thanks.
 
I have a basement install too, and this happens to me also. Main thing is you have to reverse the draft before you begin.

For me, with a freestander stove in this situation I shove the shop vac's hose (in blower mode) up the air inlet in the back of the stove (used to use an old hair dryer but it finally gave up the ghost) and let that run for a few minutes, with the air open on the stove and the door closed before I begin. Then, when I build a fire, I build a top-down fire, as they start-up cleaner and will heat the top of the firebox (flue) up quicker. Also, I start the fire very near the front of the stove so the heat from the start-up immediately goes up and over the baffle.

With an insert, or a stove with an OAK where the air inlet might not be so easy to access, I'd try setting something in the stove like a small metal tart plate (like the ones pot pies used to come in) or a piece of firebrick, tile, etc, something to let a clean burning piece of firestarter (like a supercedar) sit on so it can burn like crazy and not be nestled down in ash if there is any in the stove, and let that burn until you are confident that the draft is going the right way, then build the fire.

On another note, I had this happen one time where I couldn't get the the draft to reverse for the life of me,,,,, house was filled with smoke, fought it longer than a reasonable individual would being the wife and kids were out of the house...... As I was grabbing the ash bucket to take everything outside and give up for the day, I happened to notice that someone had closed the flue damper on the stove, and I didn't notice, and forgot to open it before beginning <>

good luck,

pen
 
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