Moving forward slowly with Drolet Myriad III upgrade, slowly

[mcmars]

This would be a follow up to my first post a few weeks back wondering about upgrading my old Hurricane burner with a modern stove. I bought an old 1910 Victorian church the prior owner fixed up and turned the empty huge attic into 3 bedrooms and a bath, but most of the work was not built to any code. The Drolet Myriad III is arriving tomorrow after a long slow freight from Indiana. I have been taking in the advice I got here regarding whether to use my old 8" Class A chimney with the new stove which has a 6" flu outlet and Drolet is recommending a 6" chimney with max of 7". I think Begreen might be right that my old 8" metalbestos class A is likely 30+ years old and has a lower UL rating of 1700 than current standard of 2100.

Here is picture of my label for verification and maybe someone here recognizes this old pipe.

The chimney goes through a hidden closet exposed with no chase that had carpeting right up to and touching the base of the class A pipe on top of the ceiling support box. After I pulled up the carpet, I saw it was full of densely packed yellow fiberglass insulation. I cleaned out all the insulation that was stuffed into the ceiling support box in direct contact with the class A chimney, some of it was charred black. The chimney goes straight up through the drywalled ceiling that had some direct contact with the chimney at one point and and had more stuffed insulation in contact with the chimney. I pulled it all out and also cut out the drywall out so there is a 2" clearance from drywall to the chimney. There was no sign of an attic insulation shield, so I pulled back more insulation that was in the 6" joist space under the roof sheathing. It looked like the roof hole and flashing was OK with a very tiny gap of light looking up. We have no County building codes here, except for state of Colorado plumbing and electrical, so people do what they want seems to be how things go.

At this point, I am pretty sure I am going to be changing out my whole chimney system for a new 6" class A chimney and a double wall stove pipe. It is very hard to find any kind of help here, but I did locate a chimney sweep and installer who is CSIA certified from an hour away and have arranged to have an inspection and estimate done on next Monday. I am betting I cannot afford their price for them to do all the work and supply materials, but I will try and get good advice on my situation and how to proceed. One of my concerns is if the current stove location is good or maybe I should move the new stove to another location and run the chimney through a chase in the interior of the 2nd floor and closer to the very tall roof peak that is even a steeper pitch than where the chimney is now.

I will likely just keep getting by for now with my current old stove and chimney and do this in summer when things are warm and dry. I am hoping I can reuse the current hole in my roof as it is, but that will be one of my questions for the inspection as maybe I need to fill in the hole to go from a 8" class A pipe to 6" class A? I am thinking the large flashing might fill the hole good enough and then maybe I need to recut some new shingles to fit tight around the roof flashing? The roof is a 12/12 pitch with traditional asphalt shingles and the chimney is near a corner gable of the hip roof maybe 16 ft from the ground. I will need some protection due to roof pitch and have some ideas to make a 2X6 large frame to temporarily screw onto roof to be able to work from and also use a safety harness/belay. I would have a carpenter help me as well. Just glad the old place has not burned down yet in spite of everything I have described. Thanks for any help!

Here is what the back of home looks like where the chimney is located:

And the front just for fun:

 

[marty319]

Sweet looking place you have there

 

[EbS-P]

I agree new 6” class a is the way to go. As for location is there a better spot to heat from? Install might be a pain but it’s a one time issue. Any draft issues with the current stove? I was thinking wind swirling down from peak. If not I don’t think I would want it closer to the peak more chimney, more chase work but if it heats better from that spot it might be worth it. Get a decent cap that your rotary cleaner can easily clean from the bottom. Search the forum for sealing seams on the class A. You really don’t want to go back up there if you don’t have too.

 

[mcmars]

I agree new 6” class a is the way to go. As for location is there a better spot to heat from? Install might be a pain but it’s a one time issue. Any draft issues with the current stove? I was thinking wind swirling down from peak. If not I don’t think I would want it closer to the peak more chimney, more chase work but if it heats better from that spot it might be worth it. Get a decent cap that your rotary cleaner can easily clean from the bottom. Search the forum for sealing seams on the class A. You really don’t want to go back up there if you don’t have too.

Thank you! The current old monster sized Hurricane has good draft, except for a few times a season when there might be 30+ MPH winds from the north and I can experience a tiny bit of back blow of smoke. I am not sure exacts measurements regarding the 2,3,10 ft rule, but I can tell from the ground the chimney is likely about 3 ft short now to meet the rule to the code regarding height above nearest roof structure.

As you can see, if I located the the stove to center of home where the chimney could be enclosed in an interior chase in a 2nd floor closet and then exit upper attic, then it would extremely difficult to get to if I ever experienced a clogged roof cap mid winter. There just is nobody near me that will service anything like that and I am thinking it might be a deal breaker to locate the chimney 30+ ft up near the peak of roof on a pitch that looks like it exceeds 12/12.

Not sure if easy access is a valid consideration, but I know when the existing chimney cap clogged up last winter after a few days of strong North winds, I was able to find a welder handyman friend of friend who could climb a ladder with a harness to access and and remove the existing chimney at the level of the roof. We replaced the screen that had 1/4" holes with a new screen with 1/2" holes and after a good sweeping, I have not had any more issues with creosote blocking the screen.

After setting up a couple small fans to blow cold air back towards the stove, I am getting better convection up to the upstairs bedrooms now. Not perfect, but I am thinking the Drolet Myriad might have better extended BTU value than the old Hurricane stove. And I can always install a passive upper floor register in the upstairs hall way to allow downstairs heat up to the 2nd floor and a few room to room wall fans if I really need more heat in bedrooms. I could likely set up the Drolet in current location now with single wall stove pipe and will ask the guy coming out Monday for inspection if that would work for rest of season so I can see how new stove works in this location, but my concern is the new stove might get hotter than the old hurricane and then the old 8" chimney might be unsafe if it gets too hot?? I can install a damper to help control a runaway stove, but bit worried about that scenario and seems the new stoves are realy designed to not be damped down to work right and get a clean burn. Just rrying to understand it all, but I am worried about changing things that might cause a chimney failure with the old class A.

I will try again and see if the label on my old pipe is able to post, betting this is the pre UL2100 HT rating and worried the old 1700 pipe has lost some of it's original heat rating.

 

[begreen]

The chimney pipe looks like the predecessor to the current SureTemp line. It predates the catalog I have for Metalbestos. Contact them on this page to inquire about the temperature rating.

All-Fuel Chimney - Sure-Temp

Sure-Temp’s all stainless steel construction is the value-minded shoppers’ best choice for All-Fuel applications. Available in 5"–14" Diameters Stainless Steel inner and outer Mirror Finish Twist-Lock for secure connection Solid Pack Insulation

www.selkirkcorp.com

The chimney looks like it is ok as far as the 10-3-2 ruling goes. It looks like the cap is more than 10 ft from the nearest roof surface.

The new stove's chimney can be cleaned from the bottom up with a rotary cleaner like a SootEater. This system can be purchased through Amazon and other sources like the big box stores. You may need a key damper, try it out and see. One can be added later if necessary.

 

[mcmars]

The chimney pipe looks like the predecessor to the current SureTemp line. It predates the catalog I have for Metalbestos. Contact them on this page to inquire about the temperature rating.

All-Fuel Chimney - Sure-Temp

Sure-Temp’s all stainless steel construction is the value-minded shoppers’ best choice for All-Fuel applications. Available in 5"–14" Diameters Stainless Steel inner and outer Mirror Finish Twist-Lock for secure connection Solid Pack Insulation

www.selkirkcorp.com

The chimney looks like it is ok as far as the 10-3-2 ruling goes. It looks like the cap is more than 10 ft from the nearest roof surface.

The new stove's chimney can be cleaned from the bottom up with a rotary cleaner like a SootEater. This system can be purchased through Amazon and other sources like the big box stores. You may need a key damper, try it out and see. One can be added later if necessary.

Thanks, I will write selkirk to find out about the chimney pipe so I will have that info for the inspection on monday to make best decision. My problem I see in trying to reuse the old pipe if it somehow turns out to be good, is I am thinking I am stuck with single wall pipe as the dripless adaptor hanging down from the ceiling support box is single wall and to replace that part to fit a double wall stove pipe with an adaptor to mate with the Class A chimney above would not fit through the existing ceiling support box. To replace the support box appears to involve dismantling the chimney to take the load off and gain enough clearance to replace the support box. Maybe there is another way to temp lift and support the chimney or some kind of a "hack", but seems it would not be worth the effort to do all that just to recycle old 8"pipe that is not right size to begin with.

Unfortunately, this is not good time of year for me to pay to have a whole new chimney with 2 homes of property tax due now and the medicare 2022 deductibles starting up. So, I either keep using old stove till summer when I could replace the chimney, temporary set up new stove with single wall 6" to 8" in existing chimney are my 2 options for now really.