can not figure out where the smoke smell is coming from.

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brbrcron

New Member
Mar 9, 2008
1
upstate ny
I tried everything and I can not figure out where the smoke smell is coming from on my Winslo PS40 pellet stove. everything is cleaned, and sealed?????


any suggestions? I think I smell it at the 45 elbow. its all caulked. i do not see smoke but i smell it in my home. I sat there in the dark with a black light trying to see If i could see the smoke. any and all advise will be appreciated.
 
If it's leaking smoke into the house from the exhaust it's leaking heat in as well. Have you tried feeling around the pipe to see if there's a spot that's hotter than the rest? Is the smell constant? I've never smelled my stove inside but Saturday we were having gusty 35 mph winds that were blowing directly towards my exhaust hood and I could smell the stove inside. Guess the wind was over powering the exhaust blower at times so if your smell isn't constant you might check to see if it has any corelation to your wind conditions.
 
Try tossing something verry smokey in there like incense or similar. That may tell you where its coming from. My countryside managed to leak at one of the joints in the pipe section where it went out the wall and it was hardly noticeable at all. You might try smearing some hi temp orange permatex on the exposed joints behind the stove if you havent already done so. To check for gasket and front leaks you might try running it cold tossing in a few burning smoke or incense sticks close the door up and watch where it comes out how much . How about draft, is your house too tight with no outside air intake? All possibilities and things to look for and most likely really simple to fix once you figure it out. One other possibility, are you poking around in there with the door open? Mine spews all sorts of stuff out into the slip stream of the blower and wisks it away so fast you can hardly notice at the time.
 
It would seem to me if the exhaust blower is drawing air out of the stove and pushing it out the vent then the leak that's causing the smoke has to be in the vent pipe that's inside the house. I have read other people say that the factory connections on elbows and tees do tend to leak. It could also be that outside air is being drawn back into the house. My stove has no verticle venting and on rare occasions I can smell smoke that I think is coming in the outside air tube. And since the outside air tube ends just inside the stove housing (doesn't run all the way to the firebox) there is ample opportunity for some of the outside air to mix with the room air.
 
Not to scare you, but its not coming from the hopper is it? Ive just had a modification done to my Harmon for that problem and Im waiting to see if it works.
 
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