Indoor Air loss after burn complete

Directed at those of you who have overnight fires but do not continue burning in the morning.

In the morning my stove might be 100F with an ember or two...but the fire will have been out for 2-3hrs. The air supply on the stove is still open & I've been thinking that a semi-warm stove & masonry flue is probably capable of drafting a fair amount of heated room air out of the house during my daytime absence. Therefore, if the fire is sufficiently finished & not smoldering, I've been shutting the damper on the stove in the mornings if I can remember to do it. However, I know that there is also some self-regulating secondary air intake that I cannot shut off.

This brings up the question whether an outside air intake could avoid this heat loss for intermittent fires? Wouldn't the air intake then only suck OUTSIDE air up into the warm (but cooling) masonry flue which would avoid heat loss? It seems like when your stove is not up to temperature at startup and cool-down, an air intake from somewhere other than room air would improve the overtall efficiency of having a fire.

Any thoughts and comments? Does anyone else damper the stove after the fire is out to avoid heat loss?

Well, it sounds like we have some proponents for an OAK, which is something of a surprise to me. I've read some strong arguments against it (maybe on heat.org?) because the air-tight stoves are supposedly drawing limited amounts of air. These arguments don't consider loss of air during periods when your stove isn't fired that I recall. Glad to see that my point was considered... the stove is drawing air up the flue ALL the time and especially after the flue has been really hot and the fire has died.

>Highbeam wrote:
>"An inline stovepipe damper (is that what you mean when you say damper?) would be one of >the only ways to slow this loss of inside air."

No, Highbeam just my main air intake all the way down when my fire is out in order to stop a draft into the semi-warm stove & up the flue. Last season when cleaning, I contemplated adding an in-line damper, but the ones I've seen are NOT totally occlusive. They have holes so that you can't accidently block your stovepipe/flue completely. My conclusion was that it would not justify me adding it.

Despite the arguments I've seen against an OAK, I think it seems more sensible to have. My natural gas furnance has it! It also seems that if I heat the air inside the house with additional outside sourced air then the heated indoor air would expand and create positive pressure and actually PUSH air out of the house instead of drawing it in. I'm not too sure if the OAK would provide ALL the air (primary and secondary intakes) needed for the stove. If it did, then it certainly should eliminate my concerns for heat loss after an intermittent fire. If it did not, then I'd be back in the same situation. Hearing that some of you have had a noticeable improvement in efficiency would probably justify the trouble to get one installed though.

I'm likely relocating before burn season & my stove & hopefully my seasoned wood is coming with me. When I get there, I anticipate trying to get an OAK installed!

Anybody out there have an OAK installed on a Jotul F600 (non-catalytic)? (if so, does the OAK provide air to the main intake AND the self regulating, non-adjustable secondary intake as well?)

Also, I didn't hear anybody saying whether they also close the damper on their stove when not firing to avoid heat loss with a warm flue?