Black Soot/Newbie Stove Owner

[ScruggsFarm]

Hi everyone! My family & I just purchased a 7yr vacant home in Colorado Rockies. We tested our wood burning stove 1st day and have used it every day since (almost 2 weeks) However 4 days in, my husband was called out for work and has been gone since. That's where you guys come in! Everything's been going smooth, I've had to replace a few fire bricks, figured out we need a wind cap etc. My dilemma: last night I threw on a log that looked slightly different than the rest we had been burning. A bit denser. This morning the entire interior is covered in black soot-walls, door, new bricks, baffle and ledges. Even the mesh cap on the exterior at the top is blackened! (It was still silver yesterday!) I'm not sure what's going on. Did my fire get too hot?

 

[begreen]

Welcome. It could be the log was not seasoned. Did it feel heavier than the other logs? It's unlikely you had an overfire. More likely is the opposite, the log smoldered and sooted up everything. Go ahead with normal wood burning and avoid putting heavy damp logs on the fire.

 

[ScruggsFarm]

Welcome. It could be the log was not seasoned. Did it feel heavier than the other logs? It's unlikely you had an overfire. More likely is the opposite, the log smoldered and sooted up everything. Go ahead with normal wood burning and avoid putting heavy damp logs on the fire.

It did seem heavier. We have an impending storm so i made sure to stock only the regular pine we had been using. And i do recall an odd smell when I burned that particular log.

 

[Jan Pijpelink]

Could it have been a pre-treated piece of wood?

 

[jetsam]

Could it have been a pre-treated piece of wood?

Ooh, ugly but possible. I didn't think of that.

Was it perfectly square or rectangular, and/or green in color?

 

[ScruggsFarm]

Ooh, ugly but possible. I didn't think of that.

Was it perfectly square or rectangular, and/or green in color?

It was rounded. Seemed to be splitting but now that i think about it, it was probably too round. Does that make sense? And it had no bark, unlike the rest of the pine.

 

[Jan Pijpelink]

It was rounded. Seemed to be splitting but now that i think about it, it was probably too round. Does that make sense? And it had no bark, unlike the rest of the pine.

Could have been a piece of a garden post, probably pre-treated. Hence the soot .

 

[jetsam]

It was rounded. Seemed to be splitting but now that i think about it, it was probably too round. Does that make sense? And it had no bark, unlike the rest of the pine.

Did it look like this?

Don't ever burn those (or any treated wood, even on an open fire outside)! The smoke is poisonous. If the timber's old enough, it has arsenic in it; if it's new, it has micronized copper in it. It can also kill your cat if you have a cat stove. (Your stove isn't ruined if the cat dies, but it can be a $200 expense.)

Same warnings apply to all pressure treated wood.

 

[Highbeam]

Treated wood burns just fine with none of this soot or black junk. You may have had a chunk of something even fouler, a cut off chunk of telephone pole soaked in creosote?

 

[ScruggsFarm]

Treated wood burns just fine with none of this soot or black junk. You may have had a chunk of something even fouler, a cut off chunk of telephone pole soaked in creosote?

Im thinking it may have been a piece of an old telephone pole. It wasn't as small as a landscape timber but bigger round. Thank you all for your help. I'm 100% certain the soot was from that log and I will avoid any unfamiliar pieces on the pile from here on out!

 

[jetsam]

Old fashioned phone pole/railroad tie tar is probably better for your cat than PT/ACQ. No harm done, I'd guess. Check your cap and flue to see if they need cleaning, maybe.

As a side note, that old fashioned wood preservative that I'm calling tar is still used to treat phone poles in some places (it's illegal in others). It is our old friend creosote (though oil tar creosote, not wood tar creosote).