RESOLVED !!!!

[Greenie2008]

This problem was resolved. The 6 inch stove pipe had become clogged. We put back the 8 inch stove pipe and it has worked flawlessly ever since and we love this stove!!

Original post: Please help....smoke pouring out the front of the stove when opened....
Has anyone experienced this problem with their Englander NC30? If so, what is the likely cause.
The stove has been in use now for over 2 months and now recently smoke just starts pouring out the front when you go to load in wood.
I have asthma and this is not good, plus it sets off the smoke detectors throughout the house.
This is unacceptable. Can anyone give me any suggestions as to why this could be occurring?

Thanks!

 

[Shari]

Is the mesh on your chimney cap plugged?

Shari

 

[sandie]

did you open the damper when you opened it to put in wood. Did snow totally cover your chimney top/cap? it is not drafting so that is the problem but what is the solution is the question.

 

[EKLawton]

+1 sounds like a good cleaning in order..

 

[dave11]

That happens to me on occasion, in fact it seems a little worse since the cold weather. The first reaction folks have is that the draft must be insufficient, and I suppose that might be true for you, though if the stove works properly, I would think that's probably not it.

I have a draft meter, and in fact my draft is a bit higher than Englander recommends for optimal performance. yet I still get some smoke when I reload.

I believe this problem has come up before, here and elsewhere. Try cracking the door open for 10 seconds before opening fully to reload. Also, make sure the blower is off, if you have one.

The other thing that helps is to wait longer until reloading. If I wait till the fire's down to just red coals, I don't get any smoke.

Also, on windy days, you might get more smoke than otherwise.

Also, do you know for sure your flue is clean?

 

[Greenie2008]

Is the mesh on your chimney cap plugged?

Shari

I don't know but we can check that as soon as we can get a ladder safely set up as well as safely climb onto the roof. We just had a bad snow storm today so it might be a few days until we can safely climb around the roof and set up a ladder to get to the 2nd story on the cape.

 

[Greenie2008]

+1 sounds like a good cleaning in order..

Possibly, but we used to have a Vermont Casting Defiant Encore and never had issues with creosote build up.
We could burn from October straight through until May and never need to clean out the chimney or stove pipe.
But it was 20 years old and started needed yearly rebuilding so we replaced it this year with the Englander.
It definitely seems to throw off more heat than our VCDE had been which should be very nice for those arctic temps we can get for days at a time around here in upstate NY.
Seeing it's a compact 1500 sq foot house we can passively heat the bedrooms upstairs as well if we leave the doors open to the rooms.

 

[littlesmokey]

Just curious, did your drafting issues start at the same time your temps dropped? How tall is your stack? What steps do you take when reloading? Have you changed the way you do things from your old stove to the new one? Curious minds want to know :-S

 

[BrotherBart]

In use two months and this shows up now it is definitely a venting issue. Since you had an Encore before I am going to take a leap and figure that you have a straight pipe up through the roof. If so, wait for the stove to cool down and then lift up the right baffle board and slide it over on top of the left one. Then take a flashlight and mirror and look up the pipe and see if you see daylight. If you are doing this at night, or you have elbows in that pipe and see daylight be very, very afraid. ;-) If it is in the daytime and it is a straight pipe then you know that the flue is open at least to the top. Go outside and look to see if from a distance you can see through the chimney cap.

 

[Greenie2008]

That happens to me on occasion, in fact it seems a little worse since the cold weather. The first reaction folks have is that the draft must be insufficient, and I suppose that might be true for you, though if the stove works properly, I would think that's probably not it.

I have a draft meter, and in fact my draft is a bit higher than Englander recommends for optimal performance. yet I still get some smoke when I reload.

I believe this problem has come up before, here and elsewhere. Try cracking the door open for 10 seconds before opening fully to reload. Also, make sure the blower is off, if you have one.

The other thing that helps is to wait longer until reloading. If I wait till the fire's down to just red coals, I don't get any smoke.

Also, on windy days, you might get more smoke than otherwise.

Also, do you know for sure your flue is clean?

Well, it is cold and windy here today, but it wasn't typical winter weather until last night and my husband said he had noticed it before today, although today it's been extreme and no way to overlook it (especially when it sets off the smoke detectors in the house.)

Where can one get a draft meter?

Cracking is what we were doing but the smoke will pour out from just that crack ... and set off the detectors and smells up the house, etc...

We do not have a blower, so that is not contributing to this specific case (thank goodness)

Regarding the cleanliness of the chimney flue, it was cleaned prior to using the stove. We are vigilant about cleaning it at the end of the season as well as before the season starts just in case something built anything in the chimney over the off-season. We used to have a VC Defiant Encore and after attempting to clean the flue on various occasions when we had a warm spell and let the stove cool down, we never had any significant build-up, so we tended to never need to clean it until the end of the burning season. But maybe that is not the case with the Englander. The stove pipe on the VCDE was thicker and enameled as well as larger in diameter, so possibly that is the difference. And we tend to burn the new stove on the lower end of the appropriate burn range (per the thermometer), so maybe it is building up creosote more so than the VCDE had.

I guess we will need to check the chimney cap and attempt to check/clean the chimney sometime soon with some luck, although for the next week we are supposed to have cold temps, so the stove will not be cooling off enough for us to check on what the levels in the pipe looks like this week - if the weather forecasters are on target.

Thanks for all the replies.

I just did not know if something inside the stove might have been defective and needed to be replaced.

Hopefully BrotherBart will comment too if there might be somthing inside the stove that could be causing the extreme smoke conditions to have started recently.

 

[Greenie2008]

Just curious, did your drafting issues start at the same time your temps dropped? How tall is your stack? What steps do you take when reloading? Have you changed the way you do things from your old stove to the new one? Curious minds want to know :-S

They apparently have gotten worse since the temps dropped last night.
Offhand I don't know the exact height, but I believe it to be high enough as we have been heating with a woodstove for more than 20 years.
The damper is always opened to ensure the gasses get burned off before cracking open the door.
The old stove was a cast iron toploader and this stove isn't cst iron and it's a front loader.

Thanks!

 

[littlesmokey]

My immediate reaction is a drafting issue. You need more air. If you don't have a creosote problem, you will burning too low. Crank her up a bit, open it wide before you open the door for a minute or two and then crack the door and wait 10-20 seconds, then open slowly. You didn't say how tall your stack is, but the change in temps may have a lot to do with the smokey conditions.

 

[BrotherBart]

Gotta be a plugged chimney cap if it has been drafting OK for two months.

 

[colbey]

I have a similar problem, but mine started that way new. I bought a Lopi Republic 1750 last winter and from the start has smoked all the time. We have talked to the dealers and have done everything they suggested, but nothing seems to work. We used it last winter while we were building just to get some heat in, but now we are moved in the house and the smell is awful. Every time my husband opens the door smoke rolls out with the damper open. My husband seems to think there maybe an issue that it is only a 6'' exhaust pipe and we have a 40' chimney. And that it isn't drawing enough. We are not sure what to do. We should be able to have the comfort of wood heat without smelling like a campfire!

We were thinking maybe we should switch to a stove that has a 8'' inch exhaust pipe. Maybe a non-catalytic stove to produce a "roaring fire." But what I have read is that the Repulblic is a non-catalytic stove, which doesn't make sense to me. I thought it would be the other way around.

Any suggestions???

 

[ROBERT F]

Could be the fact that the flue temps are lower on the englander, and as far as the wood, is known seasoned wood? have you been using the same wood for the last two years or so. There is a learning curve when it comes to new. I would say flue build-up due to lower flue temps and less than "STELLAR" wood.

 

[tutu_sue]

If you have a chimney with no liner or an exterior chimney and the liner isn't insulated, you could lose draft to the cold because the new stoves are so much more efficient there isn't as much heat going up the chimney to keep it warm and the draft strong.

 

[Creek-Chub]

Given the above replies, my next question would be: is this an exterior chimney? If so, see above. This is a different stove than the one you're used to running, and if your wood is marginal you'll need to run it hotter at the beginning of a load. If the chimney cap is plugged, this could be why. I'm no expert, just a thought.

 

[begreen]

Sounds like the stove has been putting out more heat than the previous VC and maybe it's being run too cool? If this is single wall pipe for a long run indoors, it will cool the flue gases a lot. Do you have some binoculars? If yes, use them to take a look at the cap.

 

[KeepItNatural]

The other suggestions may certainly be right, however maybe its something as simple as this:
the next time you go to load the wood in when the stove is already hot- open the damper wide open, and slowly open the front of the door to the stove. Sometimes I find when I open the door on my firebox too quickly it creates a draw for the smoke into the room, however if i open it slowly I don't have the same problem.
And yes- I on occasion do open it too quickly and smoke comes in & the room smells like it- and the smoke alarm goes off.
So while the other suggestions may very well be true- perhaps its a little simpler?

 

[dave11]

Where can one get a draft meter?

Cracking is what we were doing but the smoke will pour out from just that crack ... and set off the detectors and smells up the house, etc...

Oh. If smoke is backing up just through the door crack, then for sure there must be a restriction in the flue.

But if so, can the stove even be working properly? Are you able to close the door without smothering the fire? Are you getting secondary burn?

Mine has never pushed smoke out the door crack. That yours is doing so to me seems to prove there's a significant flue restriction.

Is there a sweep you can call?

 

[Greenie2008]

Our chimney is internal for 3 stories before it exits the house. It is double not single lined.
The problem was with the 6 inch stove pipe.
It got clogged. We put the 8 inch stove pipe we used previously with the VCDE and it has worked flawlessly ever since.
We have been burning it hotter (since it would appear that we possibly may not have been burning it as hot as necessary to ensure that the creosote doesn't start building up in the stove pipe.)
The chimney looked fine. (When we took the stove pipe apart we also checked the chimney and it was limited to just the stove pipe.)
No issues with smoke when starting up the woodstove since we resolved this in January.

 

[BrotherBart]

Glad ya got that big boy working the way you want it to.