- Oct 3, 2007
- 1,539
The consensus on my chimney design seems to be that it's not ideal (outside chimney, furnace is located in the basement), but it's all I have for the moment because I definitely don't have the $$$ to enclose it-maybe next year. So now my thoughts have turned to ensuring that I start with a good draft. I definitely won't be burning 24/7 this winter because my wife is barely comfortable with the idea of having a wood burning appliance in the house right now, so it will take a while for her to get used to the idea of tending the stove when I'm not home. She works fewer hours than I do and commutes only a few miles so she gets home four hours before I do, so ideally one day she'll get the stove going again when she gets home, but for now I'll be tending the fire on my own-oftentimes starting with a cold firebox. I did a little searching and found various techniques for chimney preheating and draft induction via everything from leaf blowers to hair dryers to propane torches. I have a small electric leaf blower that would probably fit perfectly into the outlet of my firebox, but I'm wondering if using heat, rather than a high velocity stream of air, is more effective, so I also looked at the torch method. Using heat sounds good, but the flame seems relatively small compared to the volume of the chimney. I looked into larger torches-McMaster-Carr sells this this heavy duty torch (bottom of page) that will produce a 24" flame and puts out 300,000 BTUs/hr, but it would need to be connected to a bulk tank which pretty much removes the convenience aspect. So what method do you use and why?