OK Boys and girls, honesty time here - most of us learned how to do stuff by doing it wrong first. I once read a magazine called I learned about Flying From That, where pilots shared the dumb mistakes that they did, and walked away from, having learned a lesson in flying.
Take the time to tell us your story. Here is mine, from another post today:
Is your basement stove vented thru an external flue? If so, let me tell you a story:
My basement installed stove with outside flue created lots of heat, so I decided to blow some of the hot air out of the room. One night, I reloaded the stove after the coals had started to die off, switched on the fan that blew up the stairs and went upstairs to bed. 30 Mins later, I woke up to my smoke alarm going off, ran downstairs and was met with a room full of smoke.
So what happened? - the basement of my bungalow, any bungalow for that matter, is below the neutral pressure plan of the house. Any warm air leaving the basement needs to be replaced. As the coals had started to die down, my flue had cooled, and did not provide much draft to start the fire. My fan added to the air leaving the room, and the laws of physics required something to give, so the flue reversed it’s flow, and the smoke came out into the room.
So what did I do wrong? - First, I left the room before the fire was going strong. I assumed that it would start, and had damped it down. Second, I aggrevated the below neutral pressure plane condition with the fan, which increased the tendancy of the flue to reverse it’s flow, and become an air intake versus exhaust.
So what did I change the next time? - Always made sure fire was fully develeoped before damping down and leaving room, stopped trying to move hot air out of my basement.
Instead of moving hot air out, I set up a fan and duct to blow cold air from the cold area upstairs to the basement rec room where the stove was (small inline fan I bought at Princess Auto, simple and cheap, and not a high flow rate). This helped the pressure plane issue (marginally, but at least it did not aggrevate it), and allowed the bouyant hot air to make it’s way all through my house, even the farthest bedrooms. It also noticably decreased the cold draft that came down the stairs into the rec room.
What would I do if I was still living there? - Insulate the unfortunate outside flue. Mine was a steel Selkirk, so I would need to build an insulated chase around it. If it had been a lined masonry flue, I would have insulated the liner.
I learned about fire from that.
Take the time to tell us your story. Here is mine, from another post today:
Is your basement stove vented thru an external flue? If so, let me tell you a story:
My basement installed stove with outside flue created lots of heat, so I decided to blow some of the hot air out of the room. One night, I reloaded the stove after the coals had started to die off, switched on the fan that blew up the stairs and went upstairs to bed. 30 Mins later, I woke up to my smoke alarm going off, ran downstairs and was met with a room full of smoke.
So what happened? - the basement of my bungalow, any bungalow for that matter, is below the neutral pressure plan of the house. Any warm air leaving the basement needs to be replaced. As the coals had started to die down, my flue had cooled, and did not provide much draft to start the fire. My fan added to the air leaving the room, and the laws of physics required something to give, so the flue reversed it’s flow, and the smoke came out into the room.
So what did I do wrong? - First, I left the room before the fire was going strong. I assumed that it would start, and had damped it down. Second, I aggrevated the below neutral pressure plane condition with the fan, which increased the tendancy of the flue to reverse it’s flow, and become an air intake versus exhaust.
So what did I change the next time? - Always made sure fire was fully develeoped before damping down and leaving room, stopped trying to move hot air out of my basement.
Instead of moving hot air out, I set up a fan and duct to blow cold air from the cold area upstairs to the basement rec room where the stove was (small inline fan I bought at Princess Auto, simple and cheap, and not a high flow rate). This helped the pressure plane issue (marginally, but at least it did not aggrevate it), and allowed the bouyant hot air to make it’s way all through my house, even the farthest bedrooms. It also noticably decreased the cold draft that came down the stairs into the rec room.
What would I do if I was still living there? - Insulate the unfortunate outside flue. Mine was a steel Selkirk, so I would need to build an insulated chase around it. If it had been a lined masonry flue, I would have insulated the liner.
I learned about fire from that.
