Looking for input from the forum. My wood furnace is not a true EPA compliant unit but does have 2 reburn tubes and secondary air for these tubes is separate from the primary air. It contains a baffle shelf that the smoke travels over before exiting the furnace. It is completely manual draft furnace with 2 spinners on the ash drawer.
On cold starts and reloads I open the ash drawer and set my phone timer so I don’t over heat the unit. Come back and if fire is going full tilt I close the ash drawer. I think I am getting secondary burn at this time (there is no glass in door to see for sure) because there is no or very little visible smoke out the top of chimney. Draft at this point is usually 0.12 to 0.15. If I partially close the MPD to get draft down to 0.06 to 0.08 I get a lot of smoke out the chimney. My though is that the restriction from the MPD is killing off the secondary burn. Furnace manual recommends 0.06
Would a Baro damper work better since it slows the draft by introducing cold air instead of blocking/restricting the way a MPD does? Would I continue to get secondary burns with the baro set at 0.06 or are the MPD and Baro doing the same thing with the exception that one is manual and the other is automatic? Thanks for any input.
On cold starts and reloads I open the ash drawer and set my phone timer so I don’t over heat the unit. Come back and if fire is going full tilt I close the ash drawer. I think I am getting secondary burn at this time (there is no glass in door to see for sure) because there is no or very little visible smoke out the top of chimney. Draft at this point is usually 0.12 to 0.15. If I partially close the MPD to get draft down to 0.06 to 0.08 I get a lot of smoke out the chimney. My though is that the restriction from the MPD is killing off the secondary burn. Furnace manual recommends 0.06
Would a Baro damper work better since it slows the draft by introducing cold air instead of blocking/restricting the way a MPD does? Would I continue to get secondary burns with the baro set at 0.06 or are the MPD and Baro doing the same thing with the exception that one is manual and the other is automatic? Thanks for any input.
