Hot fire smoke alarms went off

I think your ok. No matter how long you have your stove if you drive it above all previous temps it will smell and maybe smoke a little. You said you just rebuilt it Im thinking its like a new stove and just got to the highest temp since rebuild. I do not know what you call dried but you might have put to much kindling in and it just took off. Just a warning that some stove installations can not be left wide open. If you have a fire and need to step out to do another chore turn it down to a known safe level.

From what I understand, smoke detectors detect particles in the air, not heat. So it had to be putting some kind of particulate matter into the air for the detector to go off. I'm guessing if you had the paint burning/curing during the burn that could do it. C02 is probably unlikely, if the stove is pulling hard everything should be going up and out - unless it was drawing so hard that it pulled exhaust from another source, like a running furnace or gas-fired water heater.

My take - keep a close eye on your stove until you've backed it down and are cruising.

My new stove pipe smells everytime I get the stove really hot. It seems to leave a smokey, suspended mist in the air when this happens. Stinks as well, like a chemical/paint odor.

The smell was likely from the new section of stove pipe, when I got my new stove and I has my first few fires, I had alot of that smell and it set my smoke detector off a few times.

Agartner and others I believe nailed it . . . most likely this was the particulates in the air coming off your new stove pipe . . . incidentally you have a CO alarm -- not a CO2 alarm -- CO is bad as it can kill you, CO2 is what makes soda fizzy -- it's a good thing.

jotulburner said:

Question for the knowledgable members of this forum. I have Jotul old # 3 Been burnning with it 2 years now did complete rebuild this fall been burnning fine. Tonight set up kindling in box and started fire Fast hot burn had really dry stuff and stacked perfectly. Shut door had flue open and air vent wide open went to check dinner in about ten minutes my flue thermometer jumped up just over 500 degrees farenhieght(first time I got it that hot that quick). Strange smell in house (stove door was closed and sealled) smoke alarm or c02 alarm went of not sure whitch. I could hear a crackle top of stove to flue pipe. Shut the whole thing down and it cooled in ten minutes. Had the whole system checked 2 months ago chimmney service said did not need cleaning and it was A ok. Scary Any Ideas? was it a chimmney fire? If you get it hot quick will it sometimes just smell funny like that? After it cooled a bit I went to cellar took mirror and flashlight and looked up chimmney It looked ok. Should I be worried? I would appreciate any Info. Thanks.

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Not sure why we read so many threads like this but it makes me shudder every time I read it. Started fire, vent wide open.....went to check dinner.

NEVER LEAVE A STOVE OR THE STOVE ROOM WITH THE VENT WIDE OPEN!! It is too easy to get the mind on something else and simply forget about the stove. True, most times it ends up okay, but then, it takes only one time to end up not okay.


This always reminds me of some stories that are told in aviation circles:

There may be times you do something you knew you shouldn't have done....and you get away with it. Thank the Lord you came out okay. But the real problem is that you did something wrong and turned out okay. The next time this situation comes up, what will you do? It will be a little easier to make the wrong decision this time. After all, you did it once and got away with it. All too easy this can become a habit but what about that one time that you may not be so lucky? Think on this.

Most times that smell goes away after only a couple of burns. However, occasionally one can get some black pipe that will continue on for a while. On our last new pipe we got one that just kept smoking and stinking to the point I went to the hardware to ask. He stated that he does occasionally get this and is not sure why but if it continued I was to just take the pipe back and get a new one. I really did not want to go to the trouble of moving the stove out so waited. Fortunately within a week it was done. I might add that this was very early fall but expect if I'd had some big fires like we have not it may not have been a problem. But again, most will smell only for a very short time and once you get it really hot (maybe 500 on outside of single wall pipe), it is gone forever.

"incidentally you have a CO alarm"...

Monoxide...Dioxide - I'm always gettin them darn terms mixed up. Thanks for setting us straight.

We had a similar incident. My wonderful sweet wife woke up early this Saturday morning and started a fire from last night's embers. After coming back to bed a few minutes later, I smelled that same chemically-like smell like when we first began using our wood stove a year ago.

It appears that two things happen:

1) We get that (very) offensive odor when a hot burn gets going too fast. It seems that our Hampton Wood Stove likes to be warmed up more slowly.

2) Perhaps more important, the paint on the flue (from the stove to where it exits the ceiling) appears to be gradually "burning off." The paint used to be shiny and glossy. Now it is becoming more like a flat paint - not glossy anymore.

Yep, #2 bugs me. I feel like we're being exposed to the paint chemicals and probably slowly poisoned. The gradual turn of the paint from glossy to flat would seem to be an off-gassing effect.

We've obviously learned a lesson to not crank a fire too quickly. But I'm concerned about the slow, gradual release of fumes over time. Is there any way to just get it all burned away and be done with it?

Does anyone here have any additional info?


Thank you.

I know when I overheat the flue by the smell. I'm talking upwards of 1000*.
I consider it a heads-up smell and I doubt it will ever go away. Probably just the smell of super hot metal.

zDavid said:

We had a similar incident. My wonderful sweet wife woke up early this Saturday morning and started a fire from last night's embers. After coming back to bed a few minutes later, I smelled that same chemically-like smell like when we first began using our wood stove a year ago.

It appears that two things happen:

1) We get that (very) offensive odor when a hot burn gets going too fast. It seems that our Hampton Wood Stove likes to be warmed up more slowly.

2) Perhaps more important, the paint on the flue (from the stove to where it exits the ceiling) appears to be gradually "burning off." The paint used to be shiny and glossy. Now it is becoming more like a flat paint - not glossy anymore.

Yep, #2 bugs me. I feel like we're being exposed to the paint chemicals and probably slowly poisoned. The gradual turn of the paint from glossy to flat would seem to be an off-gassing effect.

We've obviously learned a lesson to not crank a fire too quickly. But I'm concerned about the slow, gradual release of fumes over time. Is there any way to just get it all burned away and be done with it?

Does anyone here have any additional info?


Thank you.

Click to expand...

We have the same 2 issues, and it bugs the chit out of me to think of burning paint in our house with my young family breathing it. I have had the windows wide open on 20 below days several times this winter. We have a Pacific Energy Super 27, and the
same thing happens as in zDavid's post. It's all about how fast it heats up, if it's gradual, then we don't get it, and I can burn at 5-600 without the smell. We pretty much are forced to start a fire and damper part way down all the time, no matter what size fire, otherwise it's windows open in below zero weather. I had the guy who installed it come over and we watched burning paint fumes wafting under the lights and setting off the smoke alarms, so he had his crew come over and replace the pipe, and that was in December. We now have the exact same problem. I had a theory that they were using excessive amounts of Stovebright; has anyone else found out any answers about this problem, or heard of touch-up paint issues? I would appreciate any and all info...

thanks

I don't know the brand, but I am trying to find out. Shadow Hearth and Home from Bozeman installed it for me both times. It does not have a 90, but it does make a 45 before it leaves the room. It has been sprayed with touch up paint, as I can see excess on the wallls and ceiling. I do know that he uses Stovebright to touch up, and I've been reading that Stovebright can be incompatible with some factory pipe paint.

the pipe is duravent...

I found a PDF on Stovebright that says it is incompatible with some base paints...

Most stoves in the U.S. and Canada are manufactured using one of about five different brands
of stove paint. As far as we have determined, most of these brands can be topcoated with
STOVE BRIGHT® stove paint. The one exception is the DeRusto Bar-B-Que black. This
brand causes real problems whenever it is topcoated. The DeRusto paint contains large
amounts of graphite which is oily and hard to stick to, and also contains a resin which will be
"lifted" or peeled from the surface when repainted. We do not recommend repainting a stove
previously painted with DeRusto without completely removing the old paint.

I don't have either one of those, but they are basically saying that it isn't out of the realm of possibility to have it happen to other bases.

Any and all info is welcome, as I need to solve this problem...

deadrock said:

zDavid said:

We had a similar incident. My wonderful sweet wife woke up early this Saturday morning and started a fire from last night's embers. After coming back to bed a few minutes later, I smelled that same chemically-like smell like when we first began using our wood stove a year ago.

It appears that two things happen:

1) We get that (very) offensive odor when a hot burn gets going too fast. It seems that our Hampton Wood Stove likes to be warmed up more slowly.

2) Perhaps more important, the paint on the flue (from the stove to where it exits the ceiling) appears to be gradually "burning off." The paint used to be shiny and glossy. Now it is becoming more like a flat paint - not glossy anymore.

Yep, #2 bugs me. I feel like we're being exposed to the paint chemicals and probably slowly poisoned. The gradual turn of the paint from glossy to flat would seem to be an off-gassing effect.

We've obviously learned a lesson to not crank a fire too quickly. But I'm concerned about the slow, gradual release of fumes over time. Is there any way to just get it all burned away and be done with it?

Does anyone here have any additional info?


Thank you.

Click to expand...

We have the same 2 issues, and it bugs the chit out of me to think of burning paint in our house with my young family breathing it. I have had the windows wide open on 20 below days several times this winter. We have a Pacific Energy Super 27, and the
same thing happens as in zDavid's post. It's all about how fast it heats up, if it's gradual, then we don't get it, and I can burn at 5-600 without the smell. We pretty much are forced to start a fire and damper part way down all the time, no matter what size fire, otherwise it's windows open in below zero weather. I had the guy who installed it come over and we watched burning paint fumes wafting under the lights and setting off the smoke alarms, so he had his crew come over and replace the pipe, and that was in December. We now have the exact same problem. I had a theory that they were using excessive amounts of Stovebright; has anyone else found out any answers about this problem, or heard of touch-up paint issues? I would appreciate any and all info...

thanks

Click to expand...

This thread drew my attention because of the unusually large number of questions (from several different posters) that went more or less unanswered. I don't pretend to have all the answers but let me try to achieve just a little bit more closure here.

Starting with the two quoted questions by zDavid and echoed by Deadrock:

[1 - effect of heating very fast] Even though achieving the same external temperatures (as measured by stove or flue thermometers) faster heating rates will create different (often steeper) temperature gradients, both in radial and axial directions. In short, some parts of the stove or the flue are likely to reach higher temperatures than when achieving the same external temperatures by heating more gradually. As pointed out by several responders, anytime stove or flue surfaces reach new temperature maxima they are likely to produce some vapors or fine particulate matter that can be smelled and/or set off smoke alarms (more about that in the last paragraph).

[2 - thermal degradation of external stove/flue coatings] Since manufacturers rarely ever reveal all the chemical ingredients in their coatings, I can only try to provide a generic answer. The black color of high temperature stove, furnace or flue paints can only be provided by thermally very stable materials, viz. metals (e.g. platinum black), metal oxides (e.g. anodized aluminum) or pure carbon (e.g. graphite). These materials can either be directly bonded to the metal surface, e.g. by sintering or in-situ oxidation, or by applying one or more coatings of paint. In the latter case, the black pigment is suspended in a solvent that will need to be dried off, usually at high temperatures. Problems can occur if (a) the black pigment is not stable enough at high temperatures (e.g. when using the wrong paint); (b) the part was not dried at high enough temperatures and/or long enough periods of time; or (c) the metal surface was not prepared carefully enough. As mentioned by several others, a couple of hot runs should normally get rid of any lingering solvent. If not, I would try to use an electric heating gun to try and speed up the process. A loss of glossiness, as described by the above posters, however, might point to the effects of overheating (e.g. leading to the oxidative erosion of glossy graphite particles).

[3 -- setting off the smoke alarm]In the majority of cases where little or no visible smoke is being produced one can be pretty sure that the offending smoke alarm is of the ionization detector rather than photoelectric type. Smoke alarms working along ionization detection principles tend to be much more sensitive to very fine hazes (e.g. produced by condensing vapors) or even directly to certain volatile compounds than photoelectric cell type detectors which requires moke particles of large enough size to produce a measurable reduction in the intensity of the internal sensor beam. So, if the main complaint is that the smoke alarm goes off all the time, whether due to a hot stove or a bit of steam from a kitchen appliance, the easiest solution is to try out some photoelectric smoke detectors.

Henk