Vermont Castings Defiant Draft Issue

Hi Everyone,

I have a somewhat new to me old school Vermont Castings Defiant stove. It is pre-epa and is from the early 80s AFAIK.

Everything was going great, burnt well over a cord in it this winter. Then coincident with some warm weather something changed. The stove started to emit a puff of smoke when I would open the door. More than anything it seemed like the chimney was partially blocked. I took the stove pipe apart and found a bit of creosote but nothing more. The chimney is a fairly large flue without any screen up top or anything like that.

I cleaned everything else, cleaned out the stove and all of that but am still getting poor drafting and it seems like the smoke is not leaving the stove all that efficiently. Any time I open the door there's really a good amount that's emitted.

IS there anything in the stove that could have gone wrong or worn out? Internal gaskets etc?

Please advise...

Mike

The stove vents immediately into some 8" single wall stove pipe, has about 3' of rise, then 1.5 ft lateral into a ceramic chimney which has been relined...shared flue with a propane furnace which heats for a small range of radiant..rise from point of stove entry to chimney top is about 15'.

The thing is that it's cooled off again and the situation hasn't got any better so I think something basically happened. The change wasn't gradual, it was a pretty marked difference between everything going good and no smoke and then all of a sudden I started getting a good bit of smoke whenever I opened the door.

These stoves also have a feature where you can burn with the front doors open as kind of like a fireplace...i tried that just to verify and had WAY more smoke than I normally would.

So i figure something went wrong either with the chimney or with the stove...

also just to clarify the primary chimney doesn't have any sort of screen in it, and when the stove is burning I can still see smoke coming out. I cant rule out some kind of blockage but it seems unlikely...roof is standing seam so going out on it isnt my idea of fun.

I have had it happen, metalbestos chimney on a Defiant II, that a thin layer of creosote flaked off in large flakes, with drastic ambient temp changes, nearly blocking flue...if the propane furnace is using the same FLUE, and not simply the same CHIMNEY, you not only need to be concerned about smoke spill from stove but also CO spill from propane appliance! Don't want to wake up dead...best check it out ASAP if that's the case. If only the stove--well, you could wait for a little nicer weather for climbing the roof.

Sorry it turns out that the flue was previously shared but is no longer...the propane now has a separate means of venting...

Bottom line:

Is there any internal gasket or anything else in the stove that can go wrong to cause this or is it definitely a chimney issue?

My .02 is a chimney/drafting issue

Did you clean out the baffles after the secondary burn? You may have a blockage in there. Just trying to think of everything.