All sorts of issues, updated with PICS

Hello all,

I came across this site and there is a lot of valuable information here however I have some specific questions that I hope I can get answered. I believe I have a laundry list of issues...

I bought an older house (built in 1980) when I got home from a deployment in 2006 and it has a very large free standing earth stove in the living room. The house is two story with an external masonry chimney. Let me preface this before I go too far by saying the house was built by the original owner and there are a lot of quirky things in this house...

I have a chimney sweep/inspector coming out on Monday to clean the system because I have no idea when the last time it was cleaned. We tend to get a lot of smoke spillage into the room when adding wood to the fire and I thought this was my first issue.

I climbed up on the roof last night with a fire going because I was curious of the size of the chimney flue, my best guess is 7.5 x 7.5 or 8x8. Smoke was pouring out of the chimney of which the crown is about 2 foot above the peak of the house. At any rate, where the eve of the roof, at the very highest point, meets the chimney I noticed smoke leaking from the side of the chimney. It was dark and I couldn't pin-point exactly where it was leaking from though. So now I'm a bit nervous and have suspended "fire operations" until the sweep comes out to take a look... Also, there is no chimney cap, it's just open...

So, now that I've given my best guess as to the chimney flue size, 7.5x7x5 square... this only causes me to have more questions... the earth stove uses a rear exit stove pipe, and it's square, and BIG... and I mean it's like 8 x 10. This pipe exits the rear of the stove, goes through the brick hearth, and into the chimney where I assume it makes a 90 or fits into a "tee" to vent the smoke/exhaust upwards into the chimney.

With all that being said, it would seem to me from reading that things aren't quite right at all...

1. At first glance it would appear that I'm "necking down" from the stove pipe to the flue, which isn't correct... is this assumption right??
2. I haven't found any instances of this large square stove pipe being used, it's always round in my research, and it's never this large... is this some sort of afterthought?
3. The earth stove of course isn't made anymore and the manual doesn't tell me much but the door "drops down" from the front to load wood, when we do this, without a careful balet of opening windows etc to get it to draft right, we will quickly fill the house with smoke, which is aggravating...
4. I think this may be my biggest and most pressing issue, the leaking chimney near the top... what can be done about this?

I apologize for a long winded and probably vague description, I'm new to this area of home ownership and really want to take care of our home...

Can a round stainless chimney liner be placed in a square flue? If so, how on earth do I connect this huge square stove pipe to this round tube in the flue? I'd like to think this option would be best in that I could then add a proper chimney topper to it and it would eliminate the leak...

My dad thinks we should tear the chimney down and frame up and build a new chimney enclosure with regular pipe... we're wondering why would one build a masonry chimney for a free standing wood stove... one of those "quirks" I mentioned... If I can help it I'd rather not start down this path... it's a pretty house that's two story with cedar siding and I also noticed that the chimney has pulled back from the house by about a half inch... again, best guess...


Again, I apologize for this long winded series of questions and conjecturing... I'd like to think I'm a pretty resourcefull guy but this all new to me and I'd rather not burn our home down in the process, as I'm sure you can understand

I appreciate any help or words of wisdom from the forum... I'd happily pay with some good belgian beer I brought back with me from my last deployment (to the UK, lucky me, no desert this time!) but it's tough to mail, sorry.

Take care and thank you again
Casey

Sir,

Thank you for your reply... As I said, I have suspended fires until the sweep inspects it on Monday... Re-lining doesn't sound like a horrible job but I do think that someone modified the stove. There is no top exhaust, it's a clean in-tact plate... I just don't get how it's so large and square... it just don't seem right... We were looking into a new stove when this all happened, or should I say, when I started nosing around, now I just want to make sure I don't spend 10000 dollars for a 1500 dollar tax credit... although, if there's damage that has to be repaired, that may be a moot point... If we did go the new stove route, I just I just want to make sure that it'll all fit... perhaps tonight I'll try and take a picture or two to better explain my problem or show the current setup. Again, I sincerely appreciate the help...
Casey

Okay, so I've attached some pictures of this setup... I hope it's not too many but I appreciate all the help and want to give a good idea of what I'm talking about...

Okay, so I've attached some pictures of this setup... I hope it's not too many but I appreciate all the help and want to give a good idea of what I'm talking about... Please note, the stockings were hung up AFTER the no more fires rule... we usually take them down and put them up only when the stove is cool...

Todd,

I don't think it's metal, I think it's clay but I'm not real sure, I need to get back up there and bang it with something... I don't know why metal would crack like that though, although, admittedly, I don't know much about any of this...

All I know is that the stove pipe exit travels a minimum of 2 feet laterally before turning up and somewhere between the rear of the stove and the top of the chimney we lose about half of the size of pipe...

I'm sorry, I should have explained that. That divider is actually a damper so you can open or close the stove pipe... it's in the horizontal pipe before it goes into the brick wall and turns up to the chimney...

I don't have anything else connected to this system...

cmonSTART said:

Welcome Casey!

That's just messed up. See if the sweep can video scan the flue while he's at it.

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I know that's right... I just have to figure out how to fix it...

Mike,

There is no warpage that I can tell on any of the surfaces, inside or out of the stove or the square exhaust pipe from the stove...

After this discussion I am very interested in seeing what the sweep has to say after his inspection... and of course now I'm concerned i'm going to have to toss a ton of money at this thing to get it correct.

My concern is that even though I may be able to re-line the flue, I have no idea how that square contraption connects to whatever square pipe they used for the chimney flue... it's all behind a brick wall, which I hope I don't have to tear down LOL

toonjie said:

I'd get those stockings further away before you fire that thing up again.

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Yeah, no worries... like I said a few posts up, we take them down to use the stove... and put them back up on the mantle when it's cool... what can I say, the wife likes the stockings on the mantle, until it's time for a fire, then they come down...

I'm not sure if I should be happy or not with my apparent "one off" rear exhaust square earth stove LOL...

I hold no attachment to the stove at all, this whole thing started when I mentioned replacing it...

would it be that difficult to replace the stove and re-line the flue with round stuff and get away from all that squareness? Vague and open question I know... but I'd like to think it's possible...

We have no issue with replacing the stove... however this leads me to my next question... we have about 1500 sq feet of house and we tend to use the stove for quite a bit of heat. If we were to re-line the flue with 6" SS what's the biggest stove that can be paired with that size flue?

Wow,

let me first say thanks, ya'll are fantastic and have certainly dialed down my nervous factor concerning all this... I was looking at a local dealer the other day and they had some nice Lopi stoves... does Lopi offer a rear exhaust?

woodchip said:

I'm sure the Lopi Leyden has a rear flue connection, it certainly seems so from the picture on their website.

It's worth looking at their website, they have some brochures online you can download and peruse at your leisure.

I like online brochures, no pushy salesmen..........

http://www.lopistoves.com/product_guide/detail.aspx?id=240

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Uh oh... better not let the wife see that... it sure is purdy!