Power Outage

[AbbyCha]

Forgive me if this is a really dumb question but....

What's going to happen if my stove is running and the power goes out? It goes out pretty often where we live so I want to be prepared.

We have a generator and a wood stove so I'm not worried about staying warm or getting it going again.

Just wondering what happens initially when the power goes out? Is my house going to fill with smoke?

 

[Big papa]

What I did was turn the stove on let it heat up the house and created my own power outage unplugged the stove.found that I had enough natural draft that the fire stayed lit with no power for about 20 min and no smoke in the house.i think you might want to try this so you know what precautions to take.maybe you'll have to buy a UPS if it doesn't draft well.good luck let me know how it goes what you decide to do

 

[TimfromMA]

Do you have any vertical rise in your vent? If so, there may be enough natural draft to pull the smoke out when power goes out. If not, I suggest an APC.

APCs as stove backup power has been discussed many times. A forum search should give you gobs of info.

 

[bags]

X 2 with what Tim said if you do not have a rise going up outside. If you are direct vent or straight out horizontally and no power back up you can expect some smoke in the stove and hopper possibly that will not evacuate therefore working its way into your house.

Big Papa is also correct and you should also test yours if you are set up for natural draft. Then you will know what to expect. Ideally natural will and should work but there is a possibility it might not completely. For example: If power goes out and your wind gusts that day are pounding on your vent possibly pushing it in.

 

[heat seeker]

It also depends on if you have an OAK or not. I have one, and no vertical in my vent, and get minimal smoke in the house on power failures. I get enough to smell, but not enough to see it, and none of the smoke detectors goes off. Not having an air wash on the glass helps, too, since the stove is somewhat airtight and most of the smoke stays in the stove.

 

[Golfeur]

Hi! guys I installed my Harman p68 exactly as in the owner's manual page 11 Figure 10. This is a prefabricated chimney 6 '' and 32 'high.
This after noon there was a hydro outage 45 minutes I do not have a UPS and I have not had a smoke in the house, the fireplace has a natural draft. I do not have an outside air intake. My parameters are temperature stove automatic, advance 2.5, 1 thermostat, high fan. When hydro returned the stove is turned on. I'm glad all going well it was a good test

 

[AbbyCha]

Thank you all. Great idea to just unplug it and see what happens! I can't imagine there would be that much smoke but with the power going out as much as it does around here I want to be ready. If there isn't smoke I won't do anything since we have a generator and a woodstove. If there is smoke, I'll look into the APC option to buy time to properly shut it down. I can't get over how helpful everyone here is! Be on the lookout, my next question will be about Christmas tree placement - but I need to take a pic first.

 

[Big papa]

It also depends on if you have an OAK or not. I have one, and no vertical in my vent, and get minimal smoke in the house on power failures. I get enough to smell, but not enough to see it, and none of the smoke detectors goes off. Not having an air wash on the glass helps, too, since the stove is somewhat airtight and most of the smoke stays in the stove.

As of right now I don't have an OAK but will be getting one soon and no smoke in the house.i guess it depends on your set up so I just unplugged mine to get my results.yes I'm a simple guy let's see what happens if I do this?lol

 

[Husky]

Forgive me if this is a really dumb question but....

What's going to happen if my stove is running and the power goes out? It goes out pretty often where we live so I want to be prepared.

We have a generator and a wood stove so I'm not worried about staying warm or getting it going again.

Just wondering what happens initially when the power goes out? Is my house going to fill with smoke?

Just had this happen to me for the first time. Lost power at 4:00am. I happened to wake up so I went down to stove to check it out. Fire was burning with large flame. In my situation the flame stayed high flickering toward the top. No smoke for the 15 minutes it took me to set up generator and get power to the house. I seem to have a strong enough natural draft in my chimney. I did notice a very hot smell coming from stove when distribution fan was not running but as fire burned out it was going away. You might want to do a trial run of this scenario. I was going to but never seemed to find the time over the past month. I got lucky.

 

[Lake Girl]

I get a small wisp of smoke from the top of my stove... now that I know where the airwash inlets are, I'm thinking it was from those.

Silly question, wouldn't it be easier to hit the power switch to test what happens rather than pull the plug?

 

[Big papa]

We were trying to simulate a power failure

 

[TimfromMA]

I'd just pull the plug and cut power totally. That's what would happen during a power failure.

 

[Lake Girl]

Not sure about your stoves but, on my stove, the power block where the stove plugs in has an on/off switch. It kills power to the unit the same as pulling the plug ... might be tougher to reach on inserts. Seems to me a more stable way of shutting off the stove...

 

[Big papa]

Yeah no on off switch here but great Idea

 

[gfreek]

When I lose power I get smoke in the house. Happened yesterday., I wasn't home...I have Selkirk Direct Temp pipe, go up 6ft and out..I'm thinking the cold air around the pipe prevents the natural draft.. Not sure yet what to do, get a sine wave UPS to give me time to get out the small genny, and until I get a whole house generator

 

[TimfromMA]

I have my APC configured to get 8 hours of run time for a few of the following reasong

If the power goes out while I'm not home.
If the power goes out in the middle of the night or during a raging storm, I don't have to rush out to start the generator
During extended power failures, I can shut the noisy generator down at night so we can sleep in peace.

 

[bogieb]

Not sure about your stoves but, on my stove, the power block where the stove plugs in has an on/off switch. It kills power to the unit the same as pulling the plug ... might be tougher to reach on inserts. Seems to me a more stable way of shutting off the stove...

the on/off switch turns off the auger but leaves the fan going on both my stoves until everything is cool. Didn't know there were stoves that had switches that cut all power - learn something new everday (not hard for a newbie!)

 

[bbfarm]

It also depends on if you have an OAK or not. I have one, and no vertical in my vent, and get minimal smoke in the house on power failures. I get enough to smell, but not enough to see it, and none of the smoke detectors goes off. Not having an air wash on the glass helps, too, since the stove is somewhat airtight and most of the smoke stays in the stove.

Same here

 

[gfreek]

I have my APC configured to get 8 hours of run time for a few of the following reasong

Have you posted which APC you have ?? How do you get 8 hours out of it ??

 

[Pellet-King]

I have my APC configured to get 8 hours of run time for a few of the following reasong

If the power goes out while I'm not home.
If the power goes out in the middle of the night or during a raging storm, I don't have to rush out to start the generator
During extended power failures, I can shut the noisy generator down at night so we can sleep in peace.

Tim, which APC do you have?
I'm thinking of this one......pure sinewave....
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0..._m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1VVQWB5QZ6RZHHKT4Y3W

 

[TimfromMA]

Ive got an APC XS1500 with a pair of 90aH marine batteries wired in.

 

[F4jock]

What I did was turn the stove on let it heat up the house and created my own power outage unplugged the stove.found that I had enough natural draft that the fire stayed lit with no power for about 20 min and no smoke in the house.i think you might want to try this so you know what precautions to take.maybe you'll have to buy a UPS if it doesn't draft well.good luck let me know how it goes what you decide to do

Failing an auto-start genny get a UPS sized to give you ten hours if you can. That'll get you thru the night and give you time to start the genny.

 

[Wilbur Feral]

Failing an auto-start genny get a UPS sized to give you ten hours if you can. That'll get you thru the night and give you time to start the genny.

You might want to do the math on that... I can run well over 10 hours, but have a large, modified UPS and external batteries, similar to Tim's setup. But I think one may find it difficult to find a standard UPS with battery that will go anything close to ten hours for most stoves. If you assume even 100 watts of consumption, almost none will make it. Even 50 is a challenge. I have Quad MVAE that uses only 27 watts, but that's until the ignitor is used, and considered super efficient. My older Whitfield uses 119 watts continuously, and some stoves will be as much as 200. Here's a link to APC's runtime chart: http://www.apc.com/products/runtime_for_extendedruntime.cfm

 

[F4jock]

You might want to do the math on that... I can run well over 10 hours, but have a large, modified UPS and external batteries, similar to Tim's setup. But I think one may find it difficult to find a standard UPS with battery that will go anything close to ten hours for most stoves. If you assume even 100 watts of consumption, almost none will make it. Even 50 is a challenge. I have Quad MVAE that uses only 27 watts, but that's until the ignitor is used, and considered super efficient. My older Whitfield uses 119 watts continuously, and some stoves will be as much as 200. Here's a link to APC's runtime chart: http://www.apc.com/products/runtime_for_extendedruntime.cfm

To me, math or not, it'd be worth it no matter. I wouldn't want to be yanked out of bed by a smoke alarm in the middle of the night.

 

[TimfromMA]

To me, math or not, it'd be worth it no matter. I wouldn't want to be yanked out of bed by a smoke alarm in the middle of the night.

Or being able to sleep without having to listen to a noisy generator running outside.