Chimney Draft

[DrivenByDemons]

So I took out the baffle of my PE Spectrum to do a little housekeeping last night and tried a little experiment. I can take a little pinch of leftover ash and blow it by the flue opening and it easily sucks about 1/2 the ash right up the pipe. Can this be an example of too much draft? It was about 50 outside when I did this and had no fire going so draft should have been pretty low right? I've been fighting what I *THINK* is too much draft but am trying to be sure... I'm gonna try and get a manometer to measure with but was kinda shocked that pipe was sucking hard enough to pull that ash when I didn't even have a fire going.

 

[Hogwildz]

You have a chimney with stove door open, theres your draft. The warmer air inside the house is going up & out the chimney, pulling the ash with it, thats normal.

 

[DrivenByDemons]

Alright so I snagged a manometer and took a reading tonight. Got a medium fire going with 3 smaller splits and let it heat up for an hour or so. It was 50F outside and I was pulling a little over .01" WC. Based on what I'm reading thats high - especially in this warmer weather. I'm at about 28' from stove to cap using doublewall & 103 pipe. What is really p*ssing me off is my temps. The stovetop was around 400 but the flue gas 18" above the stove using a condor probe was 600-650. Everyone else on here that reports their temps almost ALWAYS have a higher stovetop than flue gas. WTF??? I'm sick of seeing all this heat go up the stack. Should I just do a damper? I saw a 6" piece of doublewall that already has a damper online somewhere. It goes right on the stove first then doublewall the rest of the way to the 103. Is that a good location for the damper??? Seems closer to the stove is better I guess.

 

[webbie]

I think a turn damper would be a good idea....also, flue temps will vary greatly depending on wood species and the particular part of the burn you are in.
A lot of people also don't use probes, so they are reporting a lower flue temp because of outside stovepipe surface temps....usually 35% lower than inside.

 

[crazy_dan]

with double wall pipe I would also wager to guess closer to the stove the better, with single wall they were always installed higher so more stove pipe would radiate more heat.