Help with smoking baffle stove/insert

[dmcutaia]

Hi - my husband and I just bought a house with an insert stove in the fireplace - it was made in 1982 by the Baffle Stove Company, Inc. in Salt Lake City Utah. We are having so many problems with it and we can't seem to get it to work properly. The stove is sitting inside the fireplace. We can't tell if the flue to the fireplace is open or not b/c the insert makes that impossible. When we light a fire in the stove, it smokes terribly - and when we close the door the fire goes out! We open the side knobs on each side of the door - which we think are to get it air. We don't know why the fire is going out when we close the door - except that maybe the flue is closed? Our house was built in 1860. We've done a bunch of research on the web and learned that we may have to pre-heat the flue - but we are not really sure how to do that - we need some more information or suggestions to try. Thank you for any information you can provide

 

[Jimbob]

Go on the roof and look down the flue, as there could be a bird nest or something blocking it.
Being you just bought the place and don't know the history of the chimmney/stove, doing a thorough inspection would be a good idea before firing the stove, to make sure everything is okay.
If you don't feel comfortable doing that, have a chimmney sweep come down and have a look.

 

[dmcutaia]

Thank you!

 

[Jimbob]

No prob....

 

[Gooserider]

Agreed on the need for a sweep to check out the entire installation, make sure it's safe and clean - that is a pre-EPA stove, so you will need to clean the chimney fairly often. Also ask the sweep to experiment with the controls so that you can find out what they do.

Gooserider