Considering Napoleon 1402, need advice.

[burleymike]

I have an old Derco Grizzly catalytic insert, the top of the firebox warped bad last winter breaking welds and destroying the cat.

I have a 12' chimney from the top of the insert to the top of the masonry. We get a lot of wind all winter long so I got a directional cap which eliminated my downdraft problems. The only wood we have around here is lodge pole or fir. I really like the price and look of the Napoleon 1402. During the day we got a ton of southern sun so I don't need much heat if any at all. With the Grizzly I would put in a couple small pieces in the morning and let it burn out until dark when it gets cold again. Before bed I would load it up and top it off in the morning again. We get a couple weeks in January where it never gets above 0f and I would keep it burning good and hot all day long.

On such a short chimney will using a flex liner cause any draft problems? I have read that they tend to cause a lot of turbulence.

Does the Napoleon sound like a good fit for my setup? My mother in law has a non cat Country insert from the early 1990s and it gets very hot and burns out quick. You can choke it down all the way but it just keeps going super hot, is this how all non cat stoves work or is it just the design of her old insert?

Lastly how does the Napoleon do as far as creosote? The last thing I want to deal with is cleaning the chimney every other week. Is the top of the firebox flat or does it taper down towards the back?

Mike

 

[burleymike]

Bump, anybody use pine with a 1402 and a short chimney?

 

[BrotherBart]

A 12' chimney isn't gonna get it done with a non-cat stove. Doubt it will with most cat stoves either. Forum member North of 60 burns pine and tried heating in Canada with a Napoleon and hated it. Burned too hot and too fast. Ended up buying a Blaze King cat stove and loves it.

 

[burleymike]

Thanks for the reply, I guess what ever I go with I will need to make the chimney taller to get a good draft. It would be ugly but I guess I could get some more clay liner tiles and extend them up 3 or 4' then run the insulated stainless liner inside of that.

Have any of you guys experienced decreased draft using a corrugated liner?

Anybody know if the Osburn 2400 insert will get out of hand with pine as well?

 

[Squiner]

That's the exact setup I have. Nap 1402 with 12' SS liner. I have only burned one season so far and burned about a 1/2 cord of pine and the rest mixed hard and other soft woods. I swept my chimney twice and from what I recall, I had more creosote than most people, but not a crazy amount at all. Search for a post by me last year.

I was able to heat my 1500 s.f. ranch with last year on about 2.5 to 3 cords.

 

[BrotherBart]

With any height chimney you are going to increase draft with a liner. Solid or corrugated flex. Mine aren't short, 21 and over 30 feet, but the increase in draft was amazing. Actually too much on the taller one and probably on the shorter one.

No, the smoke does not screw it's way up the liner. It just goes up the liner. I haven't ever witnessed smoke rings coming out of my chimneys. Though that would be really cool.

 

[burleymike]

Thanks so much Squiner, that is just what I needed to know. Money is very tight at this time my other half is going to school full time now so getting a new stove is a real strain on our budget. I cannot afford to make a $1600 mistake and wind up paying a $250 electric bill each month. Only sweeping two times in a season would be a real luxury for me. Even with this ancient catalytic stove I have to sweep every other week. I do think that a lot has to do with my masonry chimney being on the exterior.

Could you get an overnight burn with the pine?

 

[burleymike]

No, the smoke does not screw it's way up the liner. It just goes up the liner. I haven't ever witnessed smoke rings coming out of my chimneys. Though that would be really cool.

That is good to hear, I might have imagined it, but I swear I read somewhere that the corrugated liners can cause turbulence and reduce the speed of the flu gasses. Perhaps it was just marketing by a smooth wall liner manufacturer.

 

[BrotherBart]

No, the smoke does not screw it's way up the liner. It just goes up the liner. I haven't ever witnessed smoke rings coming out of my chimneys. Though that would be really cool.

That is good to hear, I might have imagined it, but I swear I read somewhere that the corrugated liners can cause turbulence and reduce the speed of the flu gasses. Perhaps it was just marketing by a smooth wall liner manufacturer.

It would be hard to argue that there isn't more resistance in a corrugated liner than in a smooth pipe. But I just do not see more accumulation in my liners or less draft than I see reported by smooth wall users here. Not as slick and clean looking when I brush them as the smooth wall pics posted here, I don't expect that because the brush can't screw itself through the congregations.

But I am sure not afraid of the little bit of soot in those grooves like I was with the tons of crap left in those chimneys before I lined them.

 

[ControlFreak]

As for the creosote build-up with a Nap 1402, I will assert that if you burn properly, you won't have any creosote.

I've heated with a 1401 (older brother of the 1402) for about 12 years now. After the first 3 seasons, I invited a professional chimney sweep over to clean things out. While he was here, I also had him help me remove the insert so we could really check things over. He came down from the roof and told me that there was nothing for him to clean out, just grey ash with some very minor creosote at the last few feet. He told me that if I continue to do what I have been doing, I won't need to have it cleaned. Now this past summer I figured that after 12 years without cleaning my chimney, I had better go up there myself and take a look down the chimney. The only thing I could see down there was some small flakes protruding from section joints of the clay liner. My installation has a short liner that runs about 6 feet beyond the stove with a block off plate.

I don't run the stove exceedingly hot (max 550-600 deg F), and get dependable 9-hour burns (time between reloads without needing kindling).

So, I will maintain that if you burn properly seasoned wood and watch your draft control carefully to keep the stove running clean, you'll have a clean flue. I burn 24/7 in the winter, so that probably helps by keeping the chimney nice and hot. If you're constantly lighting fires in a cold chimney, I suspect that there could be some creosote buildup.

I should take some pics

 

[burleymike]

That is amazing to have so little build up in 12 years. I was under the impression from my experience with my mother in law's old country stove that all non cat stoves would leave a some creosote. Of course nothing can be as bad as my dad's old smoke dragon timberline on an exterior chimney with a 14" liner, the chimney literally had about 1" of tar near the top. my mother in laws country stove is vented into an exterior masonry chimney with a 12" clay liner so I am sure that has something to do with it. coupled with the fact that she just get a fire burning and shuts the air control down all the way and goes to bed. That thing smokes like a smoke dragon the way she uses it.

I am also considering an Osburn 2400 just because of the larger firebox. I wish Napoleon made a model with a firebox 3cuft or bigger. My fireplace is huge so I have plenty of room for a larger model. I really like all the positive feedback on the Napoleon and the how it looks.

I have thought about not installing the shroud and doing some fancy tile work inside the fireplace to get even more heat into the house. If my wife would let me I would just put a chain around the chimney and pull the whole thing down and block off the fireplace and put up a free standing stove. I hate having to rely on a blower. We had a power failure for a few hours last year and it got cold in here with the Grizzly hardly any heat comes off of it without the blower running full bore.

I was expecting to have to clean the chimney once a month but if I could go even just once a year I would be tickled pink. I hate climbing up there with my bad back in the snow with a nice icy 30 mph wind. It is so windy here all winter I could probably eliminate my electric bill with a wind turbine.

 

[ControlFreak]

There is a larger version of the 1402. The firebox is the same configuration, just a few inches deeper. The 1100, which is also like the 1402 has a more shallow firebox. The width and height are the same on all three, with a flat top. One nice thing about the 1402 is that the secondary air manifold runs front to back, so when you're loading wood, you're not colliding with burn tubes running side to side. The secondary air blows out from the center to the sides, creating a very nice mixing effect as the air works its way forward and smoke is combusted. Additionally, the top refractory baffle glows red hot which aids in the ignition of smoke as the secondary air passes directly below it.

If you burn up the creosote in the stove, then you get more heat AND it doesn't gunk up your chimney.

Just closing off the draft control without paying attention to how it affects the fire is the recipe for creosote.

 

[burleymike]

If you burn up the creosote in the stove, then you get more heat AND it doesn't gunk up your chimney.

Just closing off the draft control without paying attention to how it affects the fire is the recipe for creosote.

I hear ya, I think that is most certainly a big part of her problem. I have tried to explain to her that a hot fire will burn cleaner. She just argues that the fire will get too hot and the wood will burn too fast. I did make some progress with her, I got her to hire a chimney sweep which has not been done in 5 years. He was amazed she has not had a fire yet with all the gooey tar coating the clay liner.

She is used to her old smoke dragon when she lived in the country, she used to burn railroad ties in it. That is another story for another thread though.

 

[ControlFreak]

She just argues that the fire will get too hot and the wood will burn too fast.

I think that people who switch from a pre-EPA to a modern EPA stove have a lot of adjusting to do. If you look at my 1401 stove when it's at the peak of the fire, you would swear that it's a nuclear reactor with the refractory baffle at the top glowing red with flames shooting out of the secondary manifold, and bright orange coals throughout the load. There is so much radiant heat being thrown through the glass that you can toast bread or roast a marshmallow if you hold it a couple inches from the glass. For a non-EPA wood burner to see this, they would instantly think that the stove is being overfired. But at this point, the draft control is fully closed, the fan can be run at any speed without stifling the fire, the fire is very lazy, the glass is perfectly clear, there's not a speck of smoke coming out of the chimney and I won't need to reload until after it has gone 8-9 hours.

I'm not a big fan of the EPA, but they did a good thing when they tightened up the emissions on wood stoves.

Relative to your earlier comment: "I was under the impression from my experience with my mother in law’s old country stove that all non cat stoves would leave a some creosote."

All stoves will emit creosote while they are first starting up, and especially if the draft control is closed down too early. On a cat stove, if you close the bypass too early I think you can end up with a real mess if the cat doesn't light off and it just continues to generate smoke. The beauty of a cat stove is that you can slow down the burn to a gradual smolder in the main firebox and the cat will clean it all up. With a non-cat "secondary burn" stove, I think you can get the same clean burn but you can't slow it down that much. My biggest complaint of a cat stove is the additional complexity of a bypass and the limitations of what you can throw in there to burn -- you can poison the cat if you burn glossy paper. On top of that, you can damage the cat by flame impingement if you leave the bypass open too long. Flame impingement is when flames come in contact with the cat, and the thermal shock leads to cracking and crumbling of the ceramic substrate that the cat is made from.

Dan

 

[BrotherBart]

I have been burning in the EPA stoves now for five seasons and still have to catch myself when I think the load is burning to fast. The wood is burning at the same rate it did in the old stoves but the extra action is coming from the gases burning that used to just go up the pipe as smoke.

 

[Squiner]

Could you get an overnight burn with the pine?

I would not count on an overnight burn with pine. I would get thru most of the night with hard wood, enough to be able to easily restart in the morningbut not producing a ton of heat. I think that it had to do with the short chimney.I believe it made me burn it hotter so I could sustain the draft and keep the fire from going out.I was consistently burning around 600 to 650 degrees. With a taller chimney I would bet I could burn a bit cooler and therefore longer.

Does this sound correct to the more experienced burners?