Guess y'all have been asked this a million times now ...

[missy1462]

But, would you care to answer it once more? Let me back up, and give the reason for my question so that y'all will have hopefully all your needed information. We live in a doublewide in a small valley (in Western NC), a hill behind us, and one in front of us with 1800 sq feet of living space. We have used a ponderosa wood stove in our home as our primary source of heat for the last 20 years. Everything works as it should work, until a few years back. The only thing we can figure is that is when we put new siding on our home and it became even more airtight. We were using a chimney, and hubs put in one of those stainless liners in it because he started worrying about its safety as old as it was becoming. When things started going haywire, the stove started back puffing (don't know if this is a word, but it's the only thing I can think to say...) It doesn't take much to warm up the main living area of the house, and we would shut the bottom dampers down just a fraction at a time, and then we switched and would slowly shut down the top damper instead, then we tried slowly shutting down both the top and bottom dampers - and nothing would make a difference. The stove would back puff out into the room and it would do this probably every 30 seconds or so for several "long" minutes. Of course, the smoke alarms would go crazy also. This is as unnerving as all get out. Hubs then put in one of those through the roof, double wall (or triple, I'm not sure which it was) chimneys.
So, not only were we dealing with the back puffing, but we also had to get on the roof and run the cleaning brush down the chimney every week, because creosote would still build up. We never burn unseasoned wood, what we have in the woodshed now is well dried and all hardwood.
After all we have done, after all these years of having absolutely no trouble burning wood, we have decided to buy a new wood stove and get rid of the old ponderosa and see if that makes any sort of difference at all. That leads me back to my question that I'm sure y'all have answered a million times - would y'all please give me a suggestion for a good wood stove? When we were growing up, all we ever heard of was Buck stoves and Ponderosa's. These new stoves are literally absolutely new to us and we don't want to screw this up either. Also, would you suggest a catalyst or the other kind (not sure what it is called)? Honestly, we would appreciate any advice y'all could give us toward this. Our price range is probably $1,000 - 3,000 if you need to know that also. We had started out looking at some Ashley Hearth, Drolet, and Englander wood stoves, but when we looked at the reviews, they weren't great. Yesterday we looked at some Jotul, Lopi, Hearthstone and Vermont Castings, but we are at the point of information overload and just need real, honest people to give us advice instead of a salesman trying to convince us that his products are the absolute best. Please help! Oh, and if it matters - all the wood we have in the wood shed right now is cut to 20 inches.

 

[BIGChrisNH]

Sorry to hear you're having problems. The budget is certainly healthy, and there are many good choices in that price range. Any precise recommendations would need more information about your setup. How tall is the chimney? What is the width of the flue, 6 inch? Where is the stove located? Basement or first floor? What are the clearances to combustibles? How many square feet is your house?

I myself have an Englander 30 that I use to heat my home in southern NH. My house is 2,200 sq. feet, it's a basement install with 35 feet of insulated steel liner attached running through a masonry chimney. Flue is 6" as per the stoves requirements.

Oh, and everyone thinks they have dry wood. The older pre-EPA stoves would run just fine on wetter wood. A moisture meter is a very useful tool, that will tell you exactly where your wood is at moisture-wise. Any new stove is going to run poorly on wood that has a higher moisture content than 20%. You can get one on Amazon for like $15 I think. You need to split a piece of your wood so you are testing a fresh split, not the outside or the ends. Make sure the wood is at room temperature, and that will tell you exactly where you're at.

Another issue I've personally seen is that some folks get their chimney lined, have a small cap on it that is easily obstructed by creosote build up from wetter wood, and it clogs fairly quickly. Solution to that is check your cap and get one that's more open. But this is all conjecture.

 

[missy1462]

Sorry to hear you're having problems. The budget is certainly healthy, and there are many good choices in that price range. Any precise recommendations would need more information about your setup. How tall is the chimney? What is the width of the flue, 6 inch? Where is the stove located? Basement or first floor? What are the clearances to combustibles? How many square feet is your house?

I myself have an Englander 30 that I use to heat my home in southern NH. My house is 2,200 sq. feet, it's a basement install with 35 feet of insulated steel liner attached running through a masonry chimney. Flue is 6" as per the stoves requirements.

Oh, and everyone thinks they have dry wood. The older pre-EPA stoves would run just fine on wetter wood. A moisture meter is a very useful tool, that will tell you exactly where your wood is at moisture-wise. Any new stove is going to run poorly on wood that has a higher moisture content than 20%. You can get one on Amazon for like $15 I think. You need to split a piece of your wood so you are testing a fresh split, not the outside or the ends. Make sure the wood is at room temperature, and that will tell you exactly where you're at.

Another issue I've personally seen is that some folks get their chimney lined, have a small cap on it that is easily obstructed by creosote build up from wetter wood, and it clogs fairly quickly. Solution to that is check your cap and get one that's more open. But this is all conjecture.

Hello, and thank you for your reply! Information about our setup - we live in an 1800 square foot double wide mobile home. The flue is 6 inches. The chimney is a Class A through the roof, double-lined chimney system, 6 foot from the top of the ceiling inside the house to the top of the chimney on the roof. The stove will be sitting on a concrete and rock pad in a corner in the living room with a stacked rock wall from base to the ceiling, on both sides. The stove will be sitting caddy-cornered on the pad which is about a 4 x 4.
As far as the wood, it is dry as we put up wood each year in a way that we burn wood that has been cut and stacked two years prior, so what we burn this year was cut and stacked under roof two years ago and what we cut this fall will be used two years down the road or longer if we don't have a really cold winter. Hubs has a meter and does use it also. So, hopefully that answered the obvious questions for now. I still appreciate any advice on brands.

 

[Corey]

... It doesn't take much to warm up the main living area of the house, and we would shut the bottom dampers down ...

I would speculate this is a big key. You tightened up the house adding siding (and insulation?, any other weatherproofing measures? caulking?, sealing? tyvek wrap?) You increased the efficiency of the wood stove with the liner (first), then increased more with the 2x/3x wall flue next. ... but it sounds like your stove loading habits may not have adjusted accordingly if the main area gets up to temp quick and you start dampering down the stove with two dampers.

The easiest fix would likely be smaller/hotter fires with smaller sticks of wood that keep the draft going but where the wood burns to a good char / coal stage before needing to be damped down. Damping down early with the wood still pouring smoke is a key factor in back puffing.

I don't have any specific recommendation for a new stove, but it sounds like you may want to 'downsize' from your current stove and get something where you can burn small/hot fires and generate heat more in line with the (lower) requirements of your newly renovated home.

 

[begreen]

I take it that this is an old classic Ponderosa. Does it have an 8" flue collar and was this downsized to 6"? Can you post a picture of the current stove and flue connection? What is the total flue height from stove to the chimney cap?

 

[Poindexter]

All good advice so far. One question I haven't seen asked yet - if you crack open a window during a puff back event, does it stop, that is does the stove start drawing properly again?

Your budget is I think generous given your relatively mild climate, having two years already split and stacked at 20 inches will be the a bit of a bother.

if cracking a window open is enough to help your stove draft better and stop the smoking you might start splitting and stacking and 16 inch cord wood length, see if you can squeeze a couple more seasons out of the stove you have with a controlled air leak near the stove and then have many many more options for a new stove in summer 2022.

Relative mild climate, 6" diamter pipe, 1800sqft, there are a bunch of stoves out there, some of them quite pretty, all under $3k that will have the both of you naked as jaybirds inside the house for all of heating season - but they mostly only need/ take sixteen inch splits.

Also, plus one on begreen's question about total chimney height from stove collar to chimney cap. A little more pipe up top could very likely help a lot based on the information we do have and let you burn through your 20" splits without having to shorten them.

 

[SpaceBus]

I had a hassle this past winter of cutting a few cords of firewood shorter for our wood cookstove that takes a 16" split. Our primary "heat" stove takes an 18" split. Long story short, it wasn't fun cutting the firewood shorter, so I would try and find one that takes the same size split. This would put you in the shallow/wide category vs more square shaped stoves.