Double wall vs single wall stove pipe....

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Swedishchef

Minister of Fire
Jan 17, 2010
3,275
Inuvik, Northwest Territories
Hey guys

Mu question: what's the difference between a single wall and double wall stove pipe? Advatages to each? Because my double wall pipe still stinks tonight and it's getting tiresome.

Andrew
 
The difference between single wall and double wall is revealed in their names. Single wall is a single thickness of sheet metal rolled into a tube shape, and either made with a flanged seam arrangement that you squeeze together yourself to form the pipe, or a welded seam (on the heavier gauge). Double wall pipe is just that...a pipe within a pipe, with an insulating layer between. It is necessarily more expensive than single wall pipe. The big difference between the two (the one of most common interest) is the allowable clearance to combustible materials (CTC). Double wall stovepipe allows some installations to be placed closer to combustible walls than does single wall.

BUT...none of that probably matters, because it sounds like you already have a system installed and burning, and your complaint is that the paint curing smell hasn't gone away entirely yet. Well, single or double isn't going to make any diffrerence, because the same finishes are used on the outside of both kinds. The paints need time hot to cure completely. Either it hasn't been hot enough for long enough, or you're getting it too hot. Or maybe something else is going on.

Describe the stove, and the installation, and the way you're burning it, and maybe something will come to light. Rick
 
Hi Rick

I had created another post with several replies concerning my smell.
The smell comes from the open heat slots on the outside shell of my pipe. Only on lighting. It smells sweet. It's not smoke. When I put a bar b q lighter in front of it, it blows the flame out. Nobody seems to know what the smell is. It's not paint: my stove has been installed for over 2 months and running regularly..including some fireups around the 850 F range (probe thermometer says so).

Anyhow, this smell is only on start up. Quite strange indeed. I don't know what to say about it..nobosy can figure it out. However, the smell will propagate throughout the house.

It's a Security 2100 CHimney, outside installation. Comes out through my foundation wall, 16 feet high. My stove is an Osburn 2300 with 2 X 45 elbows going to the chimney.

Andrew
 
Well, that's a kind of pipe (open heat slots?) I know nothing about. These open slots are within your living space? Interesting. I don't know what to say. Got some photos for us? Rick
 
So your double wall has slots to let heat out?
 
Does the stove have an OAK? If yes, the flue could be drawing in cold air constantly, cooling the inner pipe allowing pollutants in the indoor air to condense on it which later burn off. I added a positive shutoff to my OAK.
 
its a vent system to keep the pipe cool, and let some heat out... We have some sweep customers who have these, and I kinda like the design: I use singlewall because I like the heat to radiate off the 4ft run of pipe to my ceiling installed metalbestos chim. On longer runs, however, you really should use dw pipe to prevent the flue gasses from cooling off too much on their way up.
 
However, I bet you have some crud, or maybe a plastic pipe label that is down inside one of those slots making the smell... Its just enought to smolder along in there. Try disconnection and blasting the slots out w/ an air compressor to get the stuff out.
 
What is an OAK??

I have emailed my installer often enough in the past 3 days, he finally got my point and said we have to look at this. He's coming to my house this week and we're gonna look at it. He also said he will call the company where he got the pipes to see what it could be. I plan on calling the pipe manufacturing company myself to see what the smell could be...

Andrew
 
Swedishchef said:
What is an OAK??
Outside Air Kit. Cold outside air cools the stove and pipe allowing moisture, tobacco smoke, cooking grease, dust, formaldehyde, etc. to condense/collect on the cold surface to be burned off later.
 
What are you spraying or using around the house? and kind of furniture wax or air freshener spray may be getting drawn to the pipe and then burned off.. We were in a stove shop a few weeks ago and saw this demonstrated with some WD40.. there was somebody with a question like this, and the tech asked them this question, and they were like "no we don't polish the stove" but it turns out she polishes everything else in the room with spray polish.. the tech took some WD40, sprayed it on a piece of paper, placed it on a shelf about 20 feet from the stove running in the showroom, and in about 30 seconds it flat out stank for about 15 minutes...
 
I have not used any air freshners or anything of the sort. However, another board member has seen the problem..see his message (it's in under another topic in this forum):

++++From Pyro68: hi folks, something to try if you have double wall pipe and a sweet smell. I had never run across that in all my time in this industry, but just approx 2 weeks ago we had a customer with that same smell, we tried everything, manufacture couldn’t help us, so i finally sent a crew to completely change out the pipe. The pipe was double wall pipe with an extendable section, when the installers removed the pipe they found that enough dust had blown up inbetween the pipes to build up and begin to char slightly. We had taken the pipe to fairly high temps thinking the problem was just burn off, but it had this sweet smell that totally confused us. Replaced the pipe and the smell went away. The customer had modified his blower & my tech felt like the fan was blowing to directly on the pipe. Hope this is helpful to someone, would love to hear back from some to see what you find.++++

I have been framing my basement and perhaps some saw dust fell in those cracks. I simply would not have thought of it but it makes sense. The installer is coming back this week and will look into it with me...to be continued!!

Andrew
 
Remove the pipe, turn it upside down and bang out the sawdust. Vacuum thoroughly and replace. That should solve the problem.
 
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