Smoke

I have a basement installation, and often have to deal with a reverse draft in the chimney if the stove goes stone cold. So long as the stove's temp is 100 or so (just so I can feel some warmth somewhere on the top plate) I get easy startups. If it's as cold as the basement, it can be hard to switch the draft.

My best advice is to learn top-down fire building if you aren't doing it currently. I only do it on a stone cold start, as it does take longer than a bottom or middle up, approach. However, the top down is the only way I can start that stove "naturally" and not have smoke come back in the house before the down draft is reversed.

Another option to start the draft in the right direction before starting a fire could be a torch of sorts..... Anything with enough heat (safely, obviously) to cleanly get things moving in the right direction. For the right or for the wrong, I have a buddy with the same stove as mine (engander 30) that uses a "weed burner" sort of torch, that fits to a 1lb propane cylinder. He refuses to try top down fire starting, and pre-heats his stove / chimney by letting that run a few minutes in the stove, the building the fire.

Each situation is different, I've run the same stove on several different chimney systems over the years to see it for myself. That said, you just have to keep trying until you figure out what works for you to overcome the downdraft safely.

mrpee said:

I have never had this happen before with the three wood stoves I have had in this house with the same pipe distance. In 1977 we put in a Earth stove than the Orley . I should have mentioned the newspaper did not want to burn either like I said the smoke from peoples stoves was on the ground, I don't know what weather condition would do this

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Modern stoves often need better draft than old timers. The old stoves had a more direct shot to the flue and no secondary tube system to reburn the smoke. That's why the minimum chimney height for an EPA stove is typically 15ft..