Pine smoke

[Ctwoodtick]

was reloading stove today. Stove top of insert in low 200s. Got fire going with some pieces of pine and a couple sticks of hardwood. Once fire seemed to get going, I turned the air down gradually as normal. It seemed like the secondaries were working as normal, but I could see smoke start to come out of chimney. Just little wispy stuff you see when maybe you turned Air down a little too soon. I decided to give stove bit more air, about to half way open. The smoke seemed to increase, nothing drastic, but perhaps similar to what you may see upon reload before stove is set to turn down again. Color of the smoke seemed to be the normal I get upon reload, not dark from what I could see. This last for about 20 minutes or so, and he pine had soon been reduced to coal (or the closest to coals that pine can achieve). Not sure why I got the smoke. It was windy today, not sure how relevant that is. I have thought of a few things it could have been.
1. Small chimney fire... I don't think this was likely. I did mid season sooteater about 2 months ago and my wood is tested at 20% on fresh split. Also I have heard that smoke from chimney fire is dark. What I saw today was not dark.
2. A piece or two of the wood might have been slight higher in moisture content than my usual. It was during the middle of my day and the sun was shining into stove room, making my view into firebox maybe a bit obscured. Also, with this occurring after maybe 15 minutes into the burn, perhaps the wood was not as fully involved as I thought it was.
3. The pine, with its volatile nature, offgassed quicker than my secondary mechanism could keep up with.

That all I can come up with, what do you all think?

 

[bholler]

I would guess number 3 it does not sound like a chimney fire to me

 

[xman23]

I'm guessing it's the normal cool stove reload smoke. Mine smokes for sometime until the stove gets hot enough. It is sometimes slow at getting a hot burn going.

 

[Chimney Smoke]

I say #3. Often I will put 2 or 3 pine splits in with 1 or 2 oak splits and I see a bit of smoke as well, it usually doesn't last long though.

 

[tpenny67]

How about #4: Steam from any dampness in the wood condensing into a small cloud when it hits the cold air. In direct sunlight this would be brilliant white. Another possible clue would be if there's a small gap between the chimney and the smoke where the exhaust hasn't been condensed yet.

My experience with pine is that when it's heavily outgassing you can sometimes see black wisps swirling around inside the stove itself, sort of like when a candle wick is too long and the flame trails away into a stream of soot.

 

[moresnow]

I burn lots of pine. <15%. Some of mine gets wet from snow/rain as it sits uncovered. Those pieces with the outer layer wet do smoke much more than when they are bone dry. The wet outer layer stays wet even in the house for a few days. Just moisture cooking off. Next year I hope to have my pine stash covered! Duh.....