First burn tonight! Any tips?

I'm about to fire up my stove for the first time.

Stainless steel liner in a 75-year-old, 30ft brick chimney with poured vermiculite insulation. Double-wall stove pipe. Unit is on a large (6'x5') tiled base and is 12" in front of a 3'x7' tiled (CBU base) wall. The stove is a Pacific Energy Specturm.

ONE BIG QUESTION:

There is some (quite a bit) vermiculite that found its way (I thought I heard the installer cursing) into the liner tee. I'm gonna guess that I need to remove it first.

Other than that, any tips whatsoever would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

BTW, I got a tip from a friend about using egg cartons filled with dryer lint and paraffin as firestarters. I did a search here and found lots of variations on that theme. I don't have any birch in my wood, so I think I might try it out.

Keith

Ed,

If I do need a damper, how much height will it add? (I'm using Selkirk's brand of stove pipe.) As I said, I'm using double-wall pipe, which can't be cut. And my inverted "L" install (up from the stove and hangs a hard right into the chimney) is already uncomfortably close to level with the floor. The addition of a damper will have my pipe going downhill. Not good. Say it ain't so.

I hear you about the "I'm not saving money!" or "Why do I still need to wear clothes?" complaints that seem to follow new installs. But I've lived with a woodstove before (though not one as efficient as this one is supposed to be), so I know that it won't work miracles, especially not in a 75-year-old home that still needs exterior wall reno.

Thanks for the tips.

Keith

Cozy,

Don't get me started on the install. (Actually, I already did get started. See my earlier posts on how this install has gone. Lots of issues.)

I'll start with small fires, with eyes peeled, nose flared, and an extinguisher at the ready. I'll keep doing that until, say, November.

BTW, how many CO detectors and smoke detectors do people recommend?

Keith

HA!

I'll put two CO detetcors on each floor, and one smoke detector in every room.

K

Obviously there's a lot left to do.

-Grout wall
-Tile borders
-Tile section between wall and floor (Don't ask)
-Update electrical (Ha! Nice, eh? I'm putting in pot lights above)
-Build full-wall bookcases (seriously) around windows and tile section of wall.
-Remove pink insulation and connect pipe. In that order.

FYI, there were two wooden studs embedded in the wall behind the tiled wall. I replaced them with metal studs because they were too close to the stove pipe. Not fun. Hadn't used metal studs before, and they seemed kinda shaky at first. But once you brace them enough, they tighten up a lot. They were good practice for when I reno my moist-ish basement.

Yes, the tile floor is HUGE. Long story, but it kinda had to be. It sort of dwarfs the stove in this pic, but it doesn't look so puny in person.

And yes, everything is off-center. Again, had to be. (Or a thousand times the headache that it already was.) But I had a choice between a stove that wasn't centerd and a chimney connection that wasn't centered. It's obvious where I went with it.

Gotta get to work on those bookcases.

K

Yeah, the brickwork has a certain non-Lego quality to it, doesn't it? When I removed the fireplace facing (which, unlike this, was neat and rectilinear and yet butt ugly—black mortar), I almost ran out of the house, expecting it fall in on me straight away. But my liner installer says that this kind of work isn't uncommon—at least in these parts. The exterior chimney is like any other, all straight and normal and such. But the work they did to connect the chimney to the facing was, well, it was what you see: utter crapola. If the facing hadn't been so ugly (my wife says "dated" instead), we'd have done an insert and saved ourselves lots of headaches. But I think that eventually we'll be happy that we went the freestanding route. The fireplace was nasty, too.

I've read that heat blocks using sheet metal require 2 inches of air on either side of the block. If that's the case, the brickwork is full of built-in heat blocks. You may say it's ugly. I say it's high-tech.

K

BeGreen,

Thanks for the link to that vid. I'd never heard of top-down burning. In fact, there's not much in that vid that I knew. Still have lots to learn.

K

Seems like there might be a damper in my future.

Are there any PE Spectrum owners with similarly long chimney runs who can weigh in here? I'll damp if I gotta, but I don't wanna if I don't hafta.

K

OK, the first burn was delayed. I did some reading here and asking around and found several recommendations for doing the first burn (and maybe the second and third) by yourself, while the wife and kids are away, and in the middle of the day, because it's harder to freak out in daylight. (Although that didn't stop me.)

I found out today that this "do it alone" was some good advice. Reason: the symphony of smoke detectors that erupted when the stove got up and humming—literally—and pinging and clanking and you name it. I of course panicked, assuming that something else apart from the burn-in fumes (mine's a Pacific Energy Spectrum) was causing the alarms. I imagined everything: my CBU smouldering behind the tile, the Stainless Steel liner somehow compromised, etc.

Then I wised up and opened every window in the joint. I had put a 20-inch fan in the window nearest the stove (five feet away), but I guess that didn't do it. 20 minutes after opening the windows, after about 25 depressions of the various detectors' hush buttons, things calmed down.

No pics yet. I was too shaky to hold the camera still anyway. Phew!

K