Bringing "outside air" from the basement via the ash pit, brilliant or dumb?

Is this an outside wall chimney? Can you drill through your chimney from the outside into your ash dump and vent your oak that way? IMHO even a leaky house can benefit from an oak.

i am in a similar situation... i am thinking moving my insert out putting oak on running some type of pipe down the ash all the way over to a window which will have to be fitted for a pipe.. problem is for such a long run i might need a fan on it as well as run a 6 inch pipe since we are going down 10 ft then up 7 ft and across 15 ft... might just be better to crack a window..... and fyi .... i have left my ash door open and it doesnt really draw air from there .. you cant feel air getting sucked in .. it will draw from where ever is easiest

hey your from western mass! what part???

sksmass said:

iceman said:

...for such a long run i might need a fan on it as well as run a 6 inch pipe since we are going down 10 ft then up 7 ft and across 15 ft... might just be better to crack a window.....

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Sounds similar. A long length of ducting and lots of bends and elbows would be required to get to daylight. I worry that any OAK that needed to go to such great lengths would actually decrease the efficiency of the stove because of the friction losses of trying to pull combustion air through all that resistance. What we might end up with is a stove that burns cold outside air but does so really inefficiently.

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yeah, looks like thats where we are headed... i wish i would have found this site about 8 yrs ago then i would know better

But you very well might find after the install that you do not need the OAK. We planned on putting one in but have not as we simply do not need it.

sksmass said:

After getting all this good input and considering it for awhile I've decided against trying to do anything fancy with an OAK. The benefits don't seem greater than the likely cost. I'll just install the Fireview and see what happens. If I notice any increase in cold drafts in the living area then I'll just tell myself I'm helping to clear the house of radon. %-P

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Yep dont fix it till its broke, see how it works and go from there.

here’s a little trick i learned from a rep we have in canada.

if you cannot directly connect an OAK but need makeup air and do not want just an unregulated open hole , make a simple airlock with some PVC and a 5 gallon bucket.

go through the basement wall (aboveground) and insert your PVC (3 inch would be preferrable but 2.5 will still work) after coming in through the wall elbow down and carry the pipe to about 3 inches off the floor INSIDE the 5 gallon bucket.

here’s how it works, the negative pressure in the house will pull the air in and being as the air will be colder than the air in the basement the bucket will “trap” it and only allow enough out to satisfy the pressure difference in teh summer it will not trap as much air as the temp differential is not present but in winter when you do not want a big air “leak” the colder it is outside the lesser amount of air is pulled out unless you are running the stoves/fireplaces which increases the draft and pulls more make up air out. it really works.


oops re-read didnt catch the stove was not gonna be in basement

Brilliant!

I have a similar situation in my house. An OAK would have required a long, twisty run, I didn't want to drill through 18" of masonry to run an OAK, and the ash pit opening was just so perfectly conveniently underneath the stove. Putting the air intake into there works great. The basement isn't too cold - it's two to four degrees cooler but still above 40 degrees. And when it is really cold outside, I'm also running the boiler anyway, which keeps the basement a little warmer.

In fact, the basement is better as a root cellar than before.

same setup but my OAK continues out the ash door in the basement to the outside thru a boarded up window. I think you are on the right track.. just find a way out of the basement now!