Not burning this year. What to do with chimney?

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Sorghum

Sorghum

Member
Apr 16, 2009
27
south central Minnesota
Probably won't be using the wood furnace this year. Due to various reasons. The question is. What-if anything, do I do with the chimney?

The chimney is clay lined-brick, and runs 30-40ft from the basement up through the center of the house. There is no cap.
Should I install a cap to keep rain-snow out? That might be a good idea anyhow.
Should I cut a piece of foam and tightly seal the top or bottom somehow?

I'd appreciate your thoughts.
 
I don't believe you need to be concerned about the chimney. Very little rain should get in & won't hurt the morter joints. Same chimney I got & they are nice. I'm sure you will get someone that feels it needs to be under a nitrogen blanket, I think these are about as maintainance intensive as an anvil though, Randy
 
Should I close the damper completely, or would the natural draft help keep rain/snow out?
It drafts well. I think the outside dimension of the liner is 8" x 12", which might be too large for the Hotblast that has a 6" flue collar.
 
I would put a tight sealing cap over the top of the chimney to stop air from leaving the home. Having an open chimney will cause some air loss of the home resulting in heat loss. With your hotblast furnace and a 8x11 flue, yes your chimney is too big for the furnace. You could burn on it, but your draft will suffer with a chimney so large. Down the road you should look into a stainless liner. In the end you will be much happier with whatever you would put on that chimney.
 
Open or closed, it should be fine. I think I have about an 8 X 12 chimney also & it has quite a draft. I put a manual damper in the stove pipe as I only need .1 WC, 6" flue on the Atmos also, Randy
 
laynes69 said:
I would put a tight sealing cap over the top of the chimney to stop air from leaving the home. Having an open chimney will cause some air loss of the home resulting in heat loss. With your hotblast furnace and a 8x11 flue, yes your chimney is too big for the furnace. You could burn on it, but your draft will suffer with a chimney so large. Down the road you should look into a stainless liner. In the end you will be much happier with whatever you would put on that chimney.
Click to expand...
You got your post in just before mine. I don't have any trouble with draft with the same chimney as the thread starter, on the contrary, I have excessive draft that is easily throttled down, Randy
 
When I put in our new woodfurnace, the flue temps were much lower than the old furnace. When the damper would close on the new furnace the draft would fall below .03" Now with a 5.5" rigid liner, when that damper closes the draft is .05" where I have our baro set. We had draft issues, which caused bad performance with the new furnace as well as condensation in the chimney. Without our baro with the damper open, the draft exceeds .12" with the liner. With a chimney thats too big when alot of heat is put into it and the height also there will be a bad overdraft. But when a low fire is burning, the chimney will not produce a proper draft with it being too big. I measured draft with all different scenarios with a manometer and in the end the liner fixed all my problems. My chimney was too big, which in this case bigger wasn't better.
 
Think I'll get a manometer and set the draft properly. If it was ever set correctly it didn't stay that way. I won't get any cap put on, and will have a few fires when it's very cold out. Didn't have much wood ready this year. as I was never happy with the setup. And don't want dad going up and down the stairs much.

The 8x12 chimney in the 100+ year old house was for the huge old coal/wood furnace. One of those big old asbestos wrapped octopus like, gravity things. We would climb inside to clean it out. That was replaced by a Yukon - Husky wood/oil combo which worked pretty well for 25 years. The Yukon-Husky has been gone for about 8-9 years. I've never been happy with the way the Hotblast was installed. Wish dad had kept the Yukon, but the heat exchanger was shot. Neither he or the local furnace guy contemplated replacing the heat exchanger. They just installed an LP unit, and added on the Hotblast as an afterthought.
 
Sorghum said:
Think I'll get a manometer and set the draft properly. If it was ever set correctly it didn't stay that way. I won't get any cap put on, and will have a few fires when it's very cold out. Didn't have much wood ready this year. as I was never happy with the setup. And don't want dad going up and down the stairs much.

The 8x12 chimney in the 100+ year old house was for the huge old coal/wood furnace. One of those big old asbestos wrapped octopus like, gravity things. We would climb inside to clean it out. That was replaced by a Yukon - Husky wood/oil combo which worked pretty well for 25 years. The Yukon-Husky has been gone for about 8-9 years. I've never been happy with the way the Hotblast was installed. Wish dad had kept the Yukon, but the heat exchanger was shot. Neither he or the local furnace guy contemplated replacing the heat exchanger. They just installed an LP unit, and added on the Hotblast as an afterthought.
Click to expand...
I have a Magnehelic gauge permanently hooked up so I know what the draft on mine is doing. I do not have draft troubles at any time with my approx. 8 X 12 chimney. My house was built in 1921 & the chimney seems the same as yours. It would be a shame to fix something that might be ok so I think the gauge is a good idea. The magnehelics can be cheap off Ebay, sometimes 10 to 15 bucks new. You want the 0 to .25 WC model, the standard HVAC unit. Randy
 
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