once a year fire

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F

fbelec

Minister of Fire
Nov 23, 2005
3,670
Massachusetts
i seem to have this happen once a year. went to load the stove for the night, i had a few small coals left from the small fire that i put in after dinner. throw a few pieces of kindle on the coals get that going and then loaded it up. the stove was at 200 on the pipe. i knew something was up when the stove pipe went from 200 to 500 in 15 minutes. so i baby sat it. it got up to 650 on the pipe and climbing anybody that has run one of these stoves knows when the pipe is that high the stove is screaming. so to slow it down i threw the damper over and the thing sounded like a oil burner with out the electric motor and pump sound i had to keep going back and forth to calm it didn't want to cherry red the side with all that flame blowing at it with the damper closed. had to baby sit for a hour and a half before i would feel comfortable enough to go to bed. is it me or does anybody else have this happen.

frank
 
Smoke or creosote burning outside of the stove? Probably in the connector pipe if you don't have a fire in the flue. Did you check outside for glow or sparks at chimney cap?

Make sure you don't have any air leaks into pipe at a joint or stove connection. It will draw air and give the smoke oxygen for a "secondary burn" above the leak.
Pull it apart and see where it is very clean. It probably ignited and you should see a sign of ash as well. An IR thermometer would show where it lit up as well. Look for discoloration on pipe, that may show where the intense heat was.
I had the same thing on an out of round stove connector and I had to put more screws around the collar to pull the pipe tight all around the circumference. If I closed the stove down it only gave it more smoke as fuel at the air leak. It would only ignite with the right conditions of flame at the leaking connector for ignition and smoke when starting. Any coating of creosote is going to ignite at that point like a torch burning in the pipe.
 
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I'm guessing that it was creosote that had either built up or fallen down into the stove itself. I've had stoves apart andfound that kind of thing. I once had creosote catch in the pipe and the thermometer was pinned then fell off. Magnet didn't work at that temperature apparently.
 
just the week before i had the pipe off for inspection and there was nothing. clean been clean all winter. i have had that happen in the pipe and when that has there was a crackling sound coming from the pipe getting cleaned off from the burning. this time nothing coming from the pipe sound wise. and looked out the window to check the chimney, nothing there not even smoke. i did have a couple of monsters in there that were very dry. the biggest was a 6 x 6 that was 24 inches long and the other was about 4 x 4 24 inches long very dry. i didn't dare open the door. i did notice that the fire was really strong in the stove because when i flipped the damper closed it made a lot of noise in the stove.
 
fbelec said:
just the week before i had the pipe off for inspection and there was nothing. clean been clean all winter. i have had that happen in the pipe and when that has there was a crackling sound coming from the pipe getting cleaned off from the burning. this time nothing coming from the pipe sound wise. and looked out the window to check the chimney, nothing there not even smoke. i did have a couple of monsters in there that were very dry. the biggest was a 6 x 6 that was 24 inches long and the other was about 4 x 4 24 inches long very dry. i didn't dare open the door. i did notice that the fire was really strong in the stove because when i flipped the damper closed it made a lot of noise in the stove.
Click to expand...
Opening the door will actually cool things down if it just a runaway stove. If it was a chimney fire it would make things worse.
 
thanks. been there done that with the making it worse. it's a fence walk with the stove. stove is screaming open the door and the flames roar bad. flame around the stove and wrap itself up the connector pipe then that start to crackle
 
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