Nice!! now lets get talking about the use of a baro damper on a wood stove, I have an amateur background in mechanical heating / cooling. I def understand the fundamentals behind using a baro damper with gas, oil, and coal fired stoves.
My idiot proof rational behind all of this is that those fuel sources have a fairly constant btu output, when its running, its running to spec being aided by some type of induced blower intake to get a specific air to fuel ratio, with x amount of btu's being burned for that fuel source, so its easier to dial in draft specs to the local environment such as chimney height, chimney size, whether the unit has source side air intake, or a dedicated intake ect..
Burning a wood stove is a little bit of a wild card, there are many variables to this which is unique in that day of age in the tech world, we honestly need to take a step back and understand the simplicity of it all.
Woods stoves run on a platform of using older world, time proven tech with the modern squeeze as much out of it for efficiency and environmental cleanliness, all with the best variables of different drafts, different chimney's, different types of wood and moisture content.
I don't have the same burn everyday, I have near same burns, but theres always something slightly different, to close to tell with my naked eye, but my draft is always different since high and low pressure, winds are always changing, maybe one load of wood is slightly higher in moisture, or maybe I'm burning hotter because I need more heat or lower because its warmer outside. Stove companies have had to test there units under a simple, worst case scenario, but cover a wide umbrella of different conditions, different applications.
Where does the baro damper come in? Its comes in with the fact the stoves simply are not tested with it, the reasoning is that the stove companies need to take a simple static self contained unit, make it burn hot enough to pass environmental rules under a specific draft and air intake, your always going to have a certain amount of unburnt particulates and the idea is to keep the chimney hot enough so the flue gasses don't condense and form creosote at high burn and low burn. A baro damper adds more air into the exit system, will it slow draft down? yes, but it will cool off those flue gases and create a bigger issue especially if your burning at a lower rate, its counter intuitive to develop a stove then let joe q public burn it and burn his house down because of a chimney fire, its best to have a hot flue to avoid all of this while keeping it simple enough for anyone to operate it.
@bholler naturally understands most of this, the man is in tune, and very passionate when it comes to wood burning, he will call an ace a ace, spade a spade and is rather point blank, especially when it involves safety issues, or installing, operating (and in many of my cases) giving improper information. Specs are specs, codes are codes and there is almost little if any type of discretion given when it comes to safety when talking with him, he's one of the few that really cares and has knowledge / experience when it comes to this type of stuff. Yes sometimes he comes off a little rough (I didn't like him when he first started posting here), his posts can rattle a few nerves and but he is pretty true to his word and def has core values that he sticks by and is an asset to this website and community as a whole.