I recently bought and installed a 10 year old Enviro Empress in my somewhat drafty 150 year old cape cod with original single pane windows and decent insulation. I'm using a small fan at floor level to attempt to move the heat through the very non-open floor plan downstairs. It's keeping the living room and bedrooms nice and warm, and the rest of the downstairs acceptably warm. I'm pretty darn happy so far.
I didn't install an OAK when I put in the stove. I'm thinking about putting one in, but I'm a little confused. When I look at the installation manual, it would appear that the OAK on this particular stove doesn't connect to the actual stove. It seems like the OAK is a 2" pipe that begins outside and terminates at the sheet metal at the back of the stove. But the housing into which the OAK terminates is itself open to the room through a series of vents. When I don't have the stove on, isn't the OAK on this stove just allowing air into my house?
If you look at page 8 of the manual (linked below), you see the back of the stove. The exhaust pipe on the right actually connects to the body of the stove. The fresh air pipe on the left, however, terminates with the body of the housing. There's no pipe connecting it to the combustion chamber. There's a void where air from the room and from the OAK mingle and are both sucked into the combustion chamber.
It doesn't seem like other stoves do this, correct? Am I misunderstanding?
Here's the link to the technical manual: http://www.enviro.com/images/manuals-brochures/tech-manuals/Empress-FS-Manual.pdf
I didn't install an OAK when I put in the stove. I'm thinking about putting one in, but I'm a little confused. When I look at the installation manual, it would appear that the OAK on this particular stove doesn't connect to the actual stove. It seems like the OAK is a 2" pipe that begins outside and terminates at the sheet metal at the back of the stove. But the housing into which the OAK terminates is itself open to the room through a series of vents. When I don't have the stove on, isn't the OAK on this stove just allowing air into my house?
If you look at page 8 of the manual (linked below), you see the back of the stove. The exhaust pipe on the right actually connects to the body of the stove. The fresh air pipe on the left, however, terminates with the body of the housing. There's no pipe connecting it to the combustion chamber. There's a void where air from the room and from the OAK mingle and are both sucked into the combustion chamber.
It doesn't seem like other stoves do this, correct? Am I misunderstanding?
Here's the link to the technical manual: http://www.enviro.com/images/manuals-brochures/tech-manuals/Empress-FS-Manual.pdf