my stove has 8 inch pipe going out ,i have tryed everything ,opening windows,doors ,to try to get draft,but cant seem to do any good ,till fire is burning ,after fire is burning everything is good ,but i need to just not have all that smoke come out in the house when starting my fire ,,,any help would be great
can any body help with a back draft
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Topdown fire starting. Firestarter/kindling on top and towards the rear of the stove. If that doesn't work and you have to start a cold stove everyday, try running a hair dryer for a few minutes up the flue.
let us know how you make out.
let us know how you make out.
Sounds like poor draft on startup. Is your stove designed for an 8" pipe? Try using a good wad of newspaper near the chimeny to get the draft going as well a hot kindeling fire before putting a load of wood in. There is a lot of good info on the web about draft issues on startup. Good luck.
laynes69
Minister of Fire
How tall is the chimney? Is it an exterior or interior? Warmer weather can make draft more difficult.
Slow1
Minister of Fire
To fix the problem permanently you need to get to the root cause - folks may be able to help here if you give enough information on your install and the house where it is installed. Drafts can be tricky sometimes even though the basic principles are in fact very simple on the surface (hot air rises, higher pressure will move air to lower pressure; what more do you need to know eh? ha!).
Now - to "live with the problem" there are many tricks that you can do to help depending on how bad the issue is. If you have a minor sluggish draft that just isn't pulling the smoke up fast enough for what the initial fire is producing then getting a smaller cleaner (so less smoke) hot fire going to start will help with this so that you get a good column of warmer air moving in the right direction. This will in turn warm up the inside of the chimney and it will feed on itself. If on the other hand you are dealing with a full fledged reverse draft (massive cold air flowing down the chimney) then you may need to force hot air up to get it warmed up - this can be done with a hot air dryer or torch etc.
Opening windows helps if the issue is pressure related (and to some degree everything draft is pressure related of course).
For my part I found that using a hot air drying did the trick for me to get around the issue, I then 'fixed' the problem with an additional 3' of pipe on the top of the stack. Small piece of pipe can make a big difference. I expect that on a marginal day (small differential in indoor vs outdoor temp) I may still have to pull out the hot air dryer but we'll see - I'm more disciplined in my burning now that the stove is a year old so I don't think I'll be lighting up when it is 60* outside too often.
Now - to "live with the problem" there are many tricks that you can do to help depending on how bad the issue is. If you have a minor sluggish draft that just isn't pulling the smoke up fast enough for what the initial fire is producing then getting a smaller cleaner (so less smoke) hot fire going to start will help with this so that you get a good column of warmer air moving in the right direction. This will in turn warm up the inside of the chimney and it will feed on itself. If on the other hand you are dealing with a full fledged reverse draft (massive cold air flowing down the chimney) then you may need to force hot air up to get it warmed up - this can be done with a hot air dryer or torch etc.
Opening windows helps if the issue is pressure related (and to some degree everything draft is pressure related of course).
For my part I found that using a hot air drying did the trick for me to get around the issue, I then 'fixed' the problem with an additional 3' of pipe on the top of the stack. Small piece of pipe can make a big difference. I expect that on a marginal day (small differential in indoor vs outdoor temp) I may still have to pull out the hot air dryer but we'll see - I'm more disciplined in my burning now that the stove is a year old so I don't think I'll be lighting up when it is 60* outside too often.
grommal
Feeling the Heat
Open a door or window on the UPWIND side of the house, on the same floor as the stove. The wind forces air into the door/window. It has to go out somewhere. Leave the door of your woodstove open for a few seconds-to-minutes, long enough to get the air flow going up the chimney. Then, light 'er up and the heat and smoke will go where they belong. Once the flue warms up, shut the upwind door/window.
This technique has worked better for me than lots of different ways of trying to warm up the flue. Of course, if it's dead calm outside, this doesn't help much!
This technique has worked better for me than lots of different ways of trying to warm up the flue. Of course, if it's dead calm outside, this doesn't help much!
i have this problem sometimes when my furnace is dead cold. I build my usual fire, light the firestarter, then put a very loosely folded or crumpled sheet of newspaper on top. Then I light the paper. It burns up in about five seconds, and makes enough heat to start everything going up. This only happens a couple times during the heating season, as the fire never goes out long enough for the furnace to cool off enough to have any problems.
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