To install Or Not To Install A Flue Damper

[begreen]

No doubt I still have some learnin ahead of me , but with the help, It's going pretty well , thank U all

We all do. Every year brings new wood and new seasonal challenges.

 

[PapaDave]

Older stove, so may be a bit different.
I put in a damper and I have mixed feelings about it. My stove loves to run on just the slightest bit of air once burning well, so it works to help control that, and prolong overnight burns.
On the other hand, I think it hampers SS burning a little. Debating whether to give it a shot w/o this year.

 

[bag of hammers]

SS

Shoulder Season?

 

[begreen]

I like having a pipe damper on pre-EPA stoves. Without one I was seeing too high flue temps with the Jotul 602. I throttle down the flue and that extends the burn, raises stove top temps a bit and drops the above the damper temp by about 200F to around 400F. I did not note a major change or improvement on the F400 or the T6 so the damper is now gone on that flue.

 

[PapaDave]

Shoulder Season?

Yes.

 

[coalcracker]

I am going from Smoke Dragon to EPA stove ,New stove is installed but , it wouldn't be hard to put in a damper
It just seems like a damper would give more control if U need it
When Left wide open would it restrict draft at all ?
What say ye ?

my personal experience has shown, there are a lot more stoves that don't have enough draft, rather than too much draft. Having a strong draft is a good thing in a stove, then you can just throttle back with the draft controls on the front of the stove, that feed the fire. I would only install a flue pipe damper on a wood stove, and then only if it had an excessively strong draft that was pulling too much heat up the chimney, and not heating the house.

You don't want smoke to linger in the chimney, once the wood is burned, you want the smoke out. The longer the smoke lingers in the flue pipe, the more creosote it will create- it has more time to stick to the lining of the chimney.

again if there were 20 stoves that didn't heat too well 19 of them would be due to not enough draft or too short a chimney, etc. As a matter of fact, I haven't seen a SINGLE STOVE setup in 50 years that was inefficient because the draft was too strong- so why put a damper in there.

it's like pounding a potato up the exhaust pipe of your car.

I'd recommend to NEVER put any type of flue pipe damper on a coal stove, the slight gain in any retained heat, isn't worth the risk of your family not waking up the next day from CO poisoning. Coal gas is something you want OUT of you house asap.