First year questions - smells, chimneys, thoughts

[Jebb]

Learned a lot from this community over the past year. If anybody has some thoughts I'd appreciate it!
Got a jotul f45 V2 installed last December. Its been mostly all love with a couple questions/concerns. House is 2,000 sq ft 2 story with stove on one end in main floor living room. Hooked to double wall DVL stove pipe to a wall thimble and exterior stainless duratech chimney. Total height from top of the stove to cap is about 18 feet. Chimney was 3 feet shorter (15 feet total height) until last week when I had 3 feet of pipe added. I'm hoping this will improve draft as I found the fires would often smoulder and smell up the house if I closed the air control past about 1/4 closed even with the firebox pretty loaded up.

Does it make sense that it could be a draft problem? Adding 3 feet to the chimney for this year should help right? If I'm still having smells, should I look at replacing the stove pipe connector gasket on the back of the stove?

 

[stoveliker]

Yes, that should help.
Your height was likely on the short side; more than 15' but for each 90 (you have two turns) you have to add 2 ft to the minimum required length and for each ft of horizontal run too in order to keep the required draft for which the minimum length was set.

 

[bigealta]

3 feet could help. At 15 feet with 2 90 Degree turns you are really at below min. chimney height.
1/4 open draft certainly can be to far closed with your sub par draft. (assuming you meant 1/4 open)
If you did mean 3/4 open then you have very sub par draft.
You should just try adjusting the draft by watching the fire not any particular position of the draft level.

Of course check your wood. It will not burn well unless under 20% moisture content tested on fresh split with the meter pins sunk deeply into the parallel grain.

 

[Jebb]

Yes, I did mean 1/4 open (3/4 closed).
Thanks for the input! Reaffirms most of my thoughts.
Definitely will be burning better quality wood this year which I'm sure will help too
Happy burning

 

[Jebb]

Anybody out there with the f45 and DVL double wall stove pipe? How do you connect the pipe to your stove?

I had a nice fire today with temps outside being in the low 50s. Started the fire top down with firebox about 3/4 full. There was no overt smoke spillage into the house on startup. Now 7 hours later I have STT about 325 falling gradually with nice red coals in the back still.

Anyway, I can still smell a faint smoky smell at the back of the stove through the entire burn cycle. Right around the connection to the stove flue outlet. The installer put the DVL adapter with damper there, but I'm wondering if the DVL appliance adapter is too small in its inside dimension, creating some turbulence that causes a small bit of smoke to leak out. @begreen has mentioned the adapter being loose in some other posts but not this stove specifically. Can I just swap this out for a 6 inch piece of DVL double wall?

 

[stoveliker]

Could it be smell from paint curing from the adapter?
When the stove is hot it should suck gases in through any leak, so if you smelled smoke while burning, it's unlikely to be smoke?

 

[Jebb]

I wish that were the case but I think unlikely. I kept the stove going pretty much 24/7 from late Dec - April this past year. All the paint that's going to cure should be cured at this point. I was hoping that adding 3ft to my chimney would help, and i think it may be helped some based on my burn today, but the smell was still there. I removed all the stickers from my stove pipe long ago thinking that was the source.

The reason I think it's smoke/flue gas and not paint is that the quality of the smell actually changes through the burn cycle (smoky on start up, then more of a gaseous smell once the secondaries start going)

I should add that the smell is relatively mild and has never set off my soke detector which is on the ceiling on the other side of the same room.

 

[bigealta]

Could it be smell from paint curing from the adapter?
When the stove is hot it should suck gases in through any leak, so if you smelled smoke while burning, it's unlikely to be smoke?

That would be my 1st guess. The paint burn curing.
It has a different smell than wood smoke.

Edit: just missed your response. Hmm yeah sounds like poor draft with the warm outside temps not helping. Did the added the 3 ft pipe seem to make a difference?

 

[bigealta]

You can always just use a torch lighter or smoke stick around where u think u are getting smoke from. It should pull a flame or smoke into any gap and up the stove pipe with a decent force.

 

[Jebb]

Thanks @bigealta for that suggestion . I'm going to call a sweep to look at it next week too. Hoping to be able to burn smell free this year

 

[stoveliker]

I wish that were the case but I think unlikely. I kept the stove going pretty much 24/7 from late Dec - April this past year. All the paint that's going to cure should be cured at this point. I was hoping that adding 3ft to my chimney would help, and i think it may be helped some based on my burn today, but the smell was still there. I removed all the stickers from my stove pipe long ago thinking that was the source.

The reason I think it's smoke/flue gas and not paint is that the quality of the smell actually changes through the burn cycle (smoky on start up, then more of a gaseous smell once the secondaries start going)

I should add that the smell is relatively mild and has never set off my soke detector which is on the ceiling on the other side of the same room.

Okay. I misunderstood that the adapter was new.

Still, when you have a "good" fire, it should suck air, not expell smoke. (Sucking air is bad too; it cools down the flue, increasing creosote risks etc.)

Then I'm out of ideas ...

 

[Jebb]

I can't make sense of it either!

 

[begreen]

I've found the DVL adapter to be a sloppy fit on most new stoves. It leaves about a 1/8"+ gap. If you want to use it then wrap the crimp with flat stove tape. On my stove I took the damper out of the adapter and fitted it to a standard 6" section of DVL. That fit the stove collar perfectly.

 

[Jebb]

Thanks begreen. Since my draft doesn't seem to require the damper anyway, I think my next step is to swap it out for a 6" section of DVL to see if that fixes the problem. Appreciate the advice!

 

[begreen]

Thanks begreen. Since my draft doesn't seem to require the damper anyway, I think my next step is to swap it out for a 6" section of DVL to see if that fixes the problem. Appreciate the advice!

Is the section of stovepipe above the adapter telescoping? If so, does it have enough length to extend another 6" down to the stove?

 

[Jebb]

Unfortunately on top of the adapter it looks like a solid 24" section of pipe up to the elbow

 

[Eman85]

Is your pipe all facing with the female end down or is it just that adapter?

 

[Jebb]

Is your pipe all facing with the female end down or is it just that adapter?

I didn't do the initial install so I am not positive on this, but I believe that the inner wall of the double wall pipe is male end down. The installer left all the stickers on the pipe orienting flu gas direction and it was all correct.

 

[begreen]

I didn't do the initial install so I am not positive on this, but I believe that the inner wall of the double wall pipe is male end down. The installer left all the stickers on the pipe orienting flu gas direction and it was all correct.

That's correct.

 

[Crab]

I own a F45 (not V2) . I switched to DVL double wall a couple years ago. I also found the adapter to have a very sloppy fit, it went back to the store. As you can see on the pics I have a very short vertical run to my thimble. I used the bottom end of the telescoping pipe(male) into the flue collar. It is a very snug fit into the flue collar. I secured it carefully with 3 screws into the flue collar after pre drilling. There is a gap on the backside between the outer wall of the DVL and the flue collar but I didn't use a spacer I do not believe I had to trim anything off the outer wall to get it fit snugly. As to drafting with this stove: I have 20' of heavy flex insulated liner above the thimble in addition to the almost 2' from flue collar to thimble. as you can see there is one 90 plus the tee 90. I burn very dry wood, perhaps too dry... I have never had any draft issues and have burned with outside temps in the 60's . No need to crack open a door for starts or reloads with this stove and chimney height. It is a good stove and should serve you well.

 

[Jebb]

I own a F45 (not V2) . I switched to DVL double wall a couple years ago. I also found the adapter to have a very sloppy fit, it went back to the store. As you can see on the pics I have a very short vertical run to my thimble. I used the bottom end of the telescoping pipe(male) into the flue collar. It is a very snug fit into the flue collar. I secured it carefully with 3 screws into the flue collar after pre drilling. There is a gap on the backside between the outer wall of the DVL and the flue collar but I didn't use a spacer I do not believe I had to trim anything off the outer wall to get it fit snugly. As to drafting with this stove: I have 20' of heavy flex insulated liner above the thimble in addition to the almost 2' from flue collar to thimble. as you can see there is one 90 plus the tee 90. I burn very dry wood, perhaps too dry... I have never had any draft issues and have burned with outside temps in the 60's . No need to crack open a door for starts or reloads with this stove and chimney height. It is a good stove and should serve you well.
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This has been most helpful! So many helpful folks on this forum. I ordered some 1/8" thick flat gasket tape that should be coming this week. My plan is to try to run that around the crimp rim area to get a tighter fit as suggested by begreen above. If that fails, I'll get rid of this adapter as you have done and add in a 6" section of DVL since my main section of vertical DVL is not telescoping. I'll plan to do this on friday. Unfortunately it's going to be very warm this weekend so i may not be able to do a test for for a couple weeks. On the bright side it it will be good firewood drying weather! Thanks again all.

 

[Jebb]

Update - I was able to wrap two layers of 1/8" thick flat gasket tape over the crimp end of the adapter pipe which felt like it gave a nice snug fit into the flu collar. I couldn't believe how big of a gap the DVL adapter had in its inner dimension. Now if temps would cool down from 80, I'd be able to test it. But I am thinking this was likely both the source of the smell and negatively impacting my draft pretty significantly.

 

[begreen]

Contact DuraTech support and let them know. The more people that point out the DVL adapter's ill fit, the better. Include your stove info.

 

[Jebb]

Contact DuraTech support and let them know. The more people that point out the DVL adapter's ill fit, the better. Include your stove info.

Done 👍