My husband and I just bought a home 6 weeks ago, which came with a pellet stove as the secondary source of heat. The poor thing was pretty ill kept and very full of brown dust/soot? The fan and blower was caked with it. The first week we ran it everything was getting covered in this brown dust. We were also smelling the soot smell when it was not in operation.
So some back story on the set up of this thing. It is hooked into an old masonry chimney with about 3 ft 3 inch of pipe with 2 elbows. The pipe is 3 inch. When we investigated it for the smell issue, it had cold air coming in from around the wall cap/reducer. Please forgive me for my not knowing the proper terms.
We used heat resistant caulk and went to town on voids which helped a lot. But we still had the smell, which was coming from the inside of the stove being filthy.
We called out a chimney sweep to do the chimney for the pellet stove as well as our boiler. Well, he told us the liner for the pellet stove was far to big for the use for a pellet stove. Either change the liner which is 2K cost or get a new direct vent stove....both of which we cannot afford at the moment, after just buying a house and having other more important renovations to attend to. But we need to supplement our heating costs.
I've been researching online that we can do a damper set up, and also had a friend from our church contact me and tell me the same thing. The sweeper did not tell me the size of the liner that is in there currently. But I did look up the parts..only problem is, we have a 8 or 9 inch pipe coming out of the old masonry chimney, the only stove dampers I'm able to find are 6 inch. So we would need a reducer for the damper and a reducer to get down to the 3 inch. Which puts us way far away from the wall...our stove would fall off the hearth at that point...What do we do? What can we do?? There is a huge down draft coming in this old chimney, we can feel it. It was blasting into the basement and causing a lot of air loss. He sealed the clean out and we noticed our humidity level has evened out and our full out humidifier isn't constantly running! But if he sealed that, the air is still coming in, but is going to come in through the pellet stove now. Because it has nowhere else to go...right? It is slightly drafty in the living room near the stove but not awful. We def need some insight.
This is stressing me. My husband is pretty lax and will leave it alone until there is a problem. I need to fix this now before it causes an issue. I thank you all for your advice beforehand. I do appreciate it.
Before I forget, we have a Heatilator Eco PS50
So some back story on the set up of this thing. It is hooked into an old masonry chimney with about 3 ft 3 inch of pipe with 2 elbows. The pipe is 3 inch. When we investigated it for the smell issue, it had cold air coming in from around the wall cap/reducer. Please forgive me for my not knowing the proper terms.
We used heat resistant caulk and went to town on voids which helped a lot. But we still had the smell, which was coming from the inside of the stove being filthy.
We called out a chimney sweep to do the chimney for the pellet stove as well as our boiler. Well, he told us the liner for the pellet stove was far to big for the use for a pellet stove. Either change the liner which is 2K cost or get a new direct vent stove....both of which we cannot afford at the moment, after just buying a house and having other more important renovations to attend to. But we need to supplement our heating costs.
I've been researching online that we can do a damper set up, and also had a friend from our church contact me and tell me the same thing. The sweeper did not tell me the size of the liner that is in there currently. But I did look up the parts..only problem is, we have a 8 or 9 inch pipe coming out of the old masonry chimney, the only stove dampers I'm able to find are 6 inch. So we would need a reducer for the damper and a reducer to get down to the 3 inch. Which puts us way far away from the wall...our stove would fall off the hearth at that point...What do we do? What can we do?? There is a huge down draft coming in this old chimney, we can feel it. It was blasting into the basement and causing a lot of air loss. He sealed the clean out and we noticed our humidity level has evened out and our full out humidifier isn't constantly running! But if he sealed that, the air is still coming in, but is going to come in through the pellet stove now. Because it has nowhere else to go...right? It is slightly drafty in the living room near the stove but not awful. We def need some insight.
This is stressing me. My husband is pretty lax and will leave it alone until there is a problem. I need to fix this now before it causes an issue. I thank you all for your advice beforehand. I do appreciate it.
Before I forget, we have a Heatilator Eco PS50
