Renting in Spain w/stove issues - feedback for landlord please!

[TracyCoach]

Link Removed Link Removed Link Removed Hi everyone, and happy New Year to you! I spent Christmas week reading tonnes of posts on here (and linked articles) to try and get to grips with our stove, which has been huffing and puffing and filling our flat with smoke. From the wealth of info here I think I know what's causing it (multiple issues), but what I'm hoping someone might be able to help with is some viable option(s) I can present to our landlord.

TL;DR: Would extending the chimney help/be a reasonable request to a landlord?

We're renting what's essentially a granny flat, a one-story apartment (bedroom, windowless bathroom, living room/kitchenette) on the beach. We've been having problems with mould [EDIT: despite ventilation - we've discovered structural issues which are to be fixed next week, and are using dehumidifiers now to good effect]. We started using the stove (a Theca Mixta - Amazon link here for pictures) in late October as our only source of heat. The stove is a cylindrical top loader, no external inlet pipe, has a grate and has two inlet holes on the top, the left of which has a tapering pipe which I guess makes it a 'turbo charged' inlet for when you're lighting the stove. (We've no manual - I've contacted the manufacturer to try and get one emailed to me.) The chimney goes out through the wall at a right angle, and takes another right angle to go vertically up the side of the house.

Having read many threads on here and other forums/websites, I think the problems are:

• Our logs are too big - at 2' ish, they fit into the stove at an upright diagonal angle, but the kindling burns out before the logs really catch - so we have to keep adding kindling and cardboard trying to keep it going 'til the logs take. We need to buy a wee hatchet/axe and make our logs smaller. (We get a half-tonne at a time delivered from a local company, couldn't tell you what the wood is but can ask them - everyone here gets it from the same supplier and they've a good reputation, and our neighbour had asked them to deliver in smaller pieces to fit the stove, which they did. They just aren't small enough to lie flat, so E/W v N/S decisions are moot!)
• Because of our bad practice in constantly throwing cardboard/paper/candle wax/firelighters in to try and keep it going, we've now got a build-up of creosote in the chimney - I stuck my arm up earlier and it's coated in soft/slightly oily creosote. I'm not sure when to clean that? As I say, we've only been using the stove for 2 and a bit months, so maybe it's okay for now?
• As I say, I think the left-hand inlet's the 'turbo' one, and that we were switching to the other one too soon. I'll keep it open longer in future. Can't have them open at same time as smoke puffs out the second one if we do. It already leaks out of the hole in the lid that you stick a hook in to open it, and around the lid, and in the gaps around the brass caps covering the inlet holes.
  
• I did a match test today, holding it in the mouth of the chimney inside the stove, and had a 'neutral' flame - stayed upright, didn't get drawn in - so I tried blowing a hot hairdryer up the chimney for a few minutes and re-tested, no difference.
  
• According to an article I read but can't find right now, the main problem is our chimney height/position. The article said a chimney on a one-storey part of a two-storey building (our set-up) rarely worked well. The chimney's right on the corner of the building, below the roofline of the main part of the building, so no doubt there are all kinds of downdrafts complicating matters too. There is a cowl on it which I think is referred to as a directional one (spins in the wind), but the stove's noticeably puffier on a windy day (which is every other day, or up to 10 days at a time, if it's a Levante wind!). We live right on the beach on the windy SW coast of Spain.

So it's got so bad we can't use the fire at all (smoking the house out), and we're using a wee blow heater to heat the apartment. Can't just wrap up warmly because of the afore-mentioned mould issue! I think this is the first time the property's been let out year-round; the stove was new when we moved in too. The landlord's due back in a day or two and I want to be able to explain to him what the problem is and offer him some kind of valid suggestion for what he could do to improve it. For the health of the building the issue will need sorting (and we also need carbon monoxide alarms, which I hadn't thought of 'til reading these forums!) - he's generally helpful but I don't want to just go to him with a problem.

I'd really, really appreciate any wisdom you have to share! Have learned so much already - about what we've been doing wrong, mostly!.

Would it help to extend the chimney higher than the roof? (There's a telephone line attached on the same corner slightly above the chimney as it currently stands, which might be tricky.) I'm thinking he's going to think it's an eyesore. :/ But is chimney height the fundamental problem here?

Thanks for anyone who's read this far..!

Tracy



(Mods, I created an album here to add photos but it said 'awaiting approval' - not sure if they were public, as opposed to photos on my profile, so sorry if I did that wrong!)

 

[webfish]

Easier if you just use the upload button within the thread and put up the images directly in this thread. I added them for you.

 

[TracyCoach]

Easier if you just use the upload button within the thread and put up the images directly in this thread. I added them for you.

Thank-you! I clicked on the photo icon, now see it should've been the landscape image - whoops!

 

[maple1]

Seems to me the stove should not be the only source of heat. Not sure what a 'wee blow heater' is - but did it come with the place, or is it something you got yourself? On this continent, a wood fired heating source is supposed to be secondary to the primary, and the primary is to be able to heat with no human regular intervention aside from periodic fuel tank refills - i.e., electric, gas or oil. And a mold issue would seem to me to be more ventilation related than heat, so sounds like perhaps multiple issues. Someone should be able to safely live there year round (if it is being rented as such) without having to depend on keeping a wood stove going.

Has this smoke problem been constant since you started using the stove?

I don't think that chimney configuration is helping any (pretty sure that over here at least it would need to extend up past the main roof), and it needs to be cleaned, top to bottom - especially that doo- hickey thing at the top. Your wood might not be dry enough, and sounds like it isn't the proper size for your stove. And that stove looks like a very inefficient poor excuse for a stove.

I would be concentrating on the mold issue with your landlord - that can get to be a very bad situation, healthwise, and should be unrelated to burning or not burning the stove. Using the stove should be optional for you - there should be another adequate source of heat provided that requires no manual operation, even though it may require you to pay to run/fuel.

 

[St. Coemgen]

I am also in Europe, and I can say the following:

- Mold issue is not due to the stove or heating. The house is wet. Probably due to its (old) construction, but also maybe from any number of reasons, in fact from too many possible alternative reasons to get into here. Heating can reduce the mold issue by supplying dry air to the house in winter, but in the summer it may come back (again -- dependent on the cause of the mold issue in the house)

- The chimney is in fact in a lousy position. Raising it may not help much, and may not even be legal (you need to check the local council regulations). In fact, I am even surprised the chimney as it is is legal where you live.

- If your wood is too long, get a saw and cut it down to size. And next time, buy wood lengths that fit your stove. However, upright, long wood is not a problem if your wood is dry and the fire is burning well. So the "wood length issue" I suspect is mostly at startup.

- To light your wood, you need more dry wood kindling. Not more paper or (terrible) cardboard or (worse) wax. That is, get some nice dry wood, and split it to thin strips (yes, buy a little (wee) hatchet) and put that kindly on the bottom (break the kindling over your knee or buy a wee saw if necessary to fit the wood horizontally), using an appropriate top down burn design if possible. Then add your larger stove wood on top of that. And make sure your starting kindling and stove wood is dry (<20% moisture content -- if in doubt, just buy a cheap wood moisture meter).

- Better method to the "match test" (which I think is unreliable) is to hold a thin plastic sheet (i.e. one side of a thin plastic shopping bag should work) that would cover the flue opening size, to the flue opening (when it is cold of course). If the bag "sticks" to the flue opening, you have good draft. If not, then you do not.

 

[TracyCoach]

Seems to me the stove should not be the only source of heat. Not sure what a 'wee blow heater' is - but did it come with the place, or is it something you got yourself? On this continent, a wood fired heating source is supposed to be secondary to the primary, and the primary is to be able to heat with no human regular intervention aside from periodic fuel tank refills - i.e., electric, gas or oil. And a mold issue would seem to me to be more ventilation related than heat, so sounds like perhaps multiple issues. Someone should be able to safely live there year round (if it is being rented as such) without having to depend on keeping a wood stove going.

Has this smoke problem been constant since you started using the stove?

I don't think that chimney configuration is helping any (pretty sure that over here at least it would need to extend up past the main roof), and it needs to be cleaned, top to bottom - especially that doo- hickey thing at the top. Your wood might not be dry enough, and sounds like it isn't the proper size for your stove. And that stove looks like a very inefficient poor excuse for a stove.

I would be concentrating on the mold issue with your landlord - that can get to be a very bad situation, healthwise, and should be unrelated to burning or not burning the stove. Using the stove should be optional for you - there should be another adequate source of heat provided that requires no manual operation, even though it may require you to pay to run/fuel.

Hi there, thanks for your reply!

Re. heating/mould:

We bought a small (table-top) fan heater which also works as a cool fan - I'd already been leaving windows open (in the bedroom, every day after we got up I'd open them and close the door and only close them when we went to bed) and the mould was still a problem. There were structural problems - we had a week of thunderstorms recently in which we discovered a couple of leaks in the roof that I reported to the landlord before I flew back to Ireland pre-Christmas - he's getting someone out to sort that out when he gets back next week. But it's really common for mould to be a problem in houses round here - Spanish houses were traditionally built to keep heat out in summer, and older ones are often cold and damp in winter. Many (like ours) have no cavity walls or insulation, for example. The last place we lived in (in a nearby town) was in a 17th-century building and had no heating installed either, just a couple of plug-in radiators. This time last year we rented a villa up the coast that only had plug-in heaters and one stove too. We're in rural Andalucía, and wood stove as primary heat source isn't uncommon here from what we can tell. Temperatures are currently 15/16 celsius, which is typical of winters here, and it's often warmer outside than indoors, in winter/early spring! Ironically, we came here after a couple of years in Finland, where the buildings were really well ventilated and insulated - we were warmer at home there during -24 degree snow days than we are here in 15-degree sunny days. But we're (so far) happy to put up with rustic conditions, at least for a year or two, in return for living in such an unspoilt/non-touristy region.

So, we've removed all the mould and bought a dehumidifier which we are running regularly. We're trying to raise the indoor temperature a little since mould thrives in cold/damp conditions; as I say we'd been ventilating already - the living room has two walls of windows and the other main room (bedroom) has three good-sized windows too. The landlord's going to have someone check/fix the roof if need be, so I want to pass on info to him about how to make the stove work better, if possible.

Has this smoke problem been constant since you started using the stove?

I don't think it was bad at the start, it definitely worsened which I think is largely in part to us building 'bad' fires and building up creosote - think we need to go ahead and get that cleaned as you say! Also the drop in temps from the 20s to 15/16 celsius might have been affecting it..? But prob the creosote is a bigger problem. The cowl at the top is partially blackened so there's definitely build up up there too.

I don't think that chimney configuration is helping any (pretty sure that over here at least it would need to extend up past the main roof)

Yeah, that's what many of the articles seem to say, and I'll discuss that with the landlord, thanks.

Your wood might not be dry enough, and sounds like it isn't the proper size for your stove.

We're definitely going to get an axe/hatchet this weekend (the wood's much, much cheaper than the bags of kindling we get, so want to make our own kindling too). I need to prepare and translate a load of questions for the wood supplier! This might be a stupid question, but if wood is properly seasoned for a couple of years and then is rained on for a couple of days, does that undo the seasoning? Or is the rain a kind of superficial wetting that dries out again after a couple of days?

And that stove looks like a very inefficient poor excuse for a stove.

It's my first so I've no idea what to make of it. Except that I don't love the top loading (hard to see into when preparing to light it, hard to top up/stoke when lit). The reviewers on the Amazon link I included above love it tho'!

Thanks again for taking time to reply, I appreciate it!
Tracy

 

[TracyCoach]

Thanks for taking time to comment!

I am also in Europe, and I can say the following:

- Mold issue is not due to the stove or heating. The house is wet. Probably due to its (old) construction, but also maybe from any number of reasons, in fact from too many possible alternative reasons to get into here. Heating can reduce the mold issue by supplying dry air to the house in winter, but in the summer it may come back (again -- dependent on the cause of the mold issue in the house)

We know it's not due to the stove, but are hoping a healthy stove will help in the bigger picture. We had been ventilating it by leaving windows (and sometimes the door) open, but now know there are structural issues (during a week of thunderstorms recently we had a few leaks - I've told the landlord about this and he's getting his workmen around this week). We now have two dehumidifiers running which has been visibly drying out some of the brick work, and are hoping with dry heat from the stove as well we'll keep the house a lot healthier from now on.

- The chimney is in fact in a lousy position. Raising it may not help much, and may not even be legal (you need to check the local council regulations). In fact, I am even surprised the chimney as it is is legal where you live.

We're in a conurbation that doesn't even qualify as a village or town and hasn't yet been 'claimed' by any nearby town we're told; apparently many of the houses here aren't strictly speaking, legal! We're in rural Andalucía which has had headlines galore in recent years about people's homes being demolished because they weren't legally built (including mayors being taken to court for giving planning permission for backhanders, making buyers think they were buying legal builds when they weren't). It's the wild west in many ways - we knew this, and are okay as medium-term renters to take our chances, before deciding whether or not to stay/buy in Spain ourselves.

- If your wood is too long, get a saw and cut it down to size. And next time, buy wood lengths that fit your stove. However, upright, long wood is not a problem if your wood is dry and the fire is burning well. So the "wood length issue" I suspect is mostly at startup.

- To light your wood, you need more dry wood kindling. Not more paper or (terrible) cardboard or (worse) wax. That is, get some nice dry wood, and split it to thin strips (yes, buy a little (wee) hatchet) and put that kindly on the bottom (break the kindling over your knee or buy a wee saw if necessary to fit the wood horizontally), using an appropriate top down burn design if possible. Then add your larger stove wood on top of that. And make sure your starting kindling and stove wood is dry (<20% moisture content -- if in doubt, just buy a cheap wood moisture meter).

Yes, we've ditched cardboard/wax - was including that info more to show our previous bad practice to see if you all thought creosote build-up could be a major problem already! I'm not lighting a fire again 'til we've got the draught issue sorted in any case. :/ Since our supplier did supply smaller pieces when our neighbour asked for them, I'll go back to the supplier and see if they can make us smaller pieces again. They are mainly quite slim (small branches), but not many of the pieces could sit exactly upright - they're usually wedged from one 'side' of the drum to the other, at a diagonal. It is indeed mainly a start-up stage issue tho', as I say the kindling fire isn't reaching the stove at the start, so we definitely need to just start with more kindling. With past open fires I never needed much kindling so was probably being stingy with it - kindling's 3 euro a bag and the logs are 25 euro/quarter tonne, so will make our own from some of those logs I think!

Will question the supplier too about how dry the wood is (and maybe get a meter, thanks for the link!). At home in Ireland my dad was harvesting wood from our fields, stacking it and using it pretty quickly, and it was burning fine - so this is all new to me!

- Better method to the "match test" (which I think is unreliable) is to hold a thin plastic sheet (i.e. one side of a thin plastic shopping bag should work) that would cover the flue opening size, to the flue opening (when it is cold of course). If the bag "sticks" to the flue opening, you have good draft. If not, then you do not.

Brilliant, thank-you! Just tried that and there is zero stickage/draught. Good confirmation, cheers for the tip! That being the case (and pending results of wood dryness etc), is there anything else you would suggest re. the chimney? When I was talking to the landlord about our mould battle tactics before Christmas, he asked if we wanted another wood stove in the bedroom, which is at the left-hand side of the same one-storey flat attached to the two-storey house. Initially I said yes, but now am wondering if that would just give us two problem stoves instead of one..?

Thanks again for your time and expertise!

 

[maple1]

This might be a stupid question, but if wood is properly seasoned for a couple of years and then is rained on for a couple of days, does that undo the seasoning?

No.

Or is the rain a kind of superficial wetting that dries out again after a couple of days?

Yes.

Burning in a stove when it's that warm out is even more challenging re. drafting - would be rather hard to get it burning & the smoke drawing up the pipe. All the more reason to have a good chimney setup.

This seems like a good place/situation for a heat pump (ductless mini split). Both for winter heat & summer cooling - are they not prevalent there? Very strange if not - they would be quite economical to operate & easy to maintain.

 

[TracyCoach]

I am also in Europe, and I can say the following:

using an appropriate top down burn design if possible

...missed one point/question! So I've been watching videos/reading about that method and liked it - but I was wondering about whether it'll work with the design of our stove, given that the 'turbo' inlet has a tapering pipe pointing down to the grate. I.e. it's sending the air to the bottom, obviously in support of a bottom-up design. IF we can get the draught resolved, I can experiment with using the other inlet (just a circular hole on top of the drum) instead, but it seems to me the stove's just not the best for top-down. :/

 

[maple1]

You might do OK by just changing your methods. And getting an axe to make smaller pieces for kindling & getting the fire going.

After you get the chimney cleaned.

One way to try to get your chimney working, when you're getting a fire ready to start, is to put a crumple of paper (news paper is good for starting fires with - here anyway) in the stove, after you get the rest of it laid, right where the smoke exits into the pipe. Light that first, the heat from that right at the bottom of the chimney should get the air moving up the chimney - then light your main fire just before the crumple dies out.

Don't put any 'regular sized' wood in until you get a decent fire going with the kindling & smaller wood.

 

[TracyCoach]

This might be a stupid question, but if wood is properly seasoned for a couple of years and then is rained on for a couple of days, does that undo the seasoning?

No.

Or is the rain a kind of superficial wetting that dries out again after a couple of days?

Yes.

Great, thanks - I hoped so since there's no covering on our wood pile (or the neighbour's, or the landlord's!

Burning in a stove when it's that warm out is even more challenging re. drafting - would be rather hard to get it burning & the smoke drawing up the pipe. All the more reason to have a good chimney setup.

This seems like a good place/situation for a heat pump (ductless mini split). Both for winter heat & summer cooling - are they not prevalent there? Very strange if not - they would be quite economical to operate & easy to maintain.

I'll ask the landlord about this, thanks again! I'll have to ask around about those to see if anyone else is using them locally - the people we know down here on the beach have similar set-ups to ours, but we only know a few. More for me to google/research, thanks a million!

PS Regarding innovation in buildings in this particular region - we can't flush toilet paper in this area; drains/sewerage aren't up to British standards we're used to. Was/is quite the culture shock! It's really rural and cash-strapped (poorest region of Spain, I believe), so I'm not knocking it - it's just quite a learning experience to realise what you take for granted in a home.[/QUOTE]

 

[TracyCoach]

You might do OK by just changing your methods. And getting an axe to make smaller pieces for kindling & getting the fire going.

After you get the chimney cleaned.

One way to try to get your chimney working, when you're getting a fire ready to start, is to put a crumple of paper (news paper is good for starting fires with - here anyway) in the stove, after you get the rest of it laid, right where the smoke exits into the pipe. Light that first, the heat from that right at the bottom of the chimney should get the air moving up the chimney - then light your main fire just before the crumple dies out.

Don't put any 'regular sized' wood in until you get a decent fire going with the kindling & smaller wood.

Great, I feel more hopeful now! We [never] rarely have paper around the place (don't read newspapers) but I'm sure we could start asking friends and neighbours to save us some - but would a minute of blasting a hairdryer up the chimney have the same effect?

 

[maple1]

Maybe?

You mentioned in the first post about constantly feeding paper & cardboard to try to get the wood going - so thought you had paper. Shredding the cardboard might help. Or finding neighbours with newspaper subscriptions....

 

[TracyCoach]

Maybe?

You mentioned in the first post about constantly feeding paper & cardboard to try to get the wood going - so thought you had paper. Shredding the cardboard might help. Or finding neighbours with newspaper subscriptions....

Ahh yes, we just had a bit of packing paper from Amazon boxes last week, all gone tho'! Still got a lot of cardboard from boxes so will try shredded cardboard first (plus the hairdryer trick). Won't try anything 'til we find a chimney sweep of course! Thanks again for all your great input, really helpful.