Smoke coming out of door

[OnFire]

Hello,

I just had a Pacific Energy Summit Insert installed in Oct 2008 and really like it. However, I have a problem:

When I open the door, smoke comes into the room. I called the installer about it and they said to do these steps (which I follow)
1. Turn off the fan
2. Open the draft to High
3. Open the door very slowly in stages (starting with just a crack) and let the draft adjust.

I have done all 3 steps (waiting for minutes at a time for the draft to adjust), but smoke still enters the room when I put another piece of wood in.

Any suggestions on how to improve this? It is driving me crazy to think that it will be like this forever.

Thanks for any assistance.

One point of clarification: There is not a ton of smoke coming out of the door, just wisps. But it is enough that it the room smells noticeably smoky every time the door is opened.

 

[myzamboni]

check your chimney cap screen to see if there is any clogging/partial clogging. This seems to be a common problem this time of year with new burners.

 

[OnFire]

Will do - thanks.

Some additional info:
- We had a 6" liner installed with the stove in Oct 2008
- The liner is about 40 feet long as it goes through 2 storeys and the roof.

 

[bsimon]

I have done all 3 steps ... smoke still enters the room when I put another piece of wood in.

How frequently are you feeding the stove?

When my stove was new, I was treating it like a fireplace & adding wood before the prior load was consumed. When I followed this practice, I had a lot more smoke problems like you describe. Now I've learned to let each load burn down more before adding wood, and my smoke in the room problems are largely gone.

 

[snowtime]

I vote for the chimney cap being plugged. 40' of pipe should pull all the smoke up unless you have a lot of elbows. I only have 21' and I can open the door anytime except right during start up and not get any smoke.

 

[LLigetfa]

- The liner is about 40 feet long as it goes through 2 storeys and the roof.

Here is your clue. Not the liner but the 2 storeys. What you most likely are suffering from is what's known as stack effect. A multi-storey house acts much like your chimney stack and is competing with the chimney. Warm air is rising and leaking out of the house upstairs. You probaly sealed up all the cold drafts you could find downstairs which left the downstaris with negative pressure compared to the cold heavy outside air. I'm guessing if you cracked a window open near the stove you would get quite an inrush of cold air from outside.

If my hunch is right, you need to seal up the leaks upstairs where you are losing warm air, and provide a bit of make-up air downstairs. If your stove doesn't use outside air, consider adding it. If it does use outside air, you need to do the opposite of what the dealer told you, that is to close down the air supply to the stove while the door is open. The outside air will push the smoke into the room if you have a negative pressure. Open a window near the stove while you have the door open and don't doddle while filling the stove. Stage all the wood you will need on the hearth, have tools at the ready and get r done quick.

 

[Chettt]

If you are burning small loads, put your splits at the rear of the stove away from the door and maybe just kindling or soft wood nearer. If you are packing it full, I wouldn't reload till you are down to a bed of coals and maybe crack a window as you open the stove door.

 

[LLigetfa]

If you rake the coals forward and place the first split at the back, it won't be sitting on coals and so won't start smoking while you reach for the another split.

 

[Ivy Frank]

This is a very simple problem.

Assuming that your PE was installed correctly, you have a draft problem.

There is no way that a 40' stack on a PE will let smoke back into your room unless you have a draft problem.

So check these:

Knock outs. If you are burning room air, you have to have at least one of the 4" knockouts knocked out, and the front facade must not be blocked. Air gets drawn in through the facade to the space between the stove and shroud, out the 4" knockout, around the back, and into the rectangular opening at the back of the stove.

Is your house too tight? Open a window 6 or 10 inches within 20 feet of the stove for 2 or 3 minutes and then open the door. Same result? If so, it's not a too-tight issue. If no puffing, then your house is too tight. PE summits have a 4" knock out hole on the side of the shroud that should be knocked out to draw air from the room. If you have an ash clean out that isn't directly under the insert, you can feed air in that way if your house is too tight - cover the knock-out hole with non-combustible .

Are there other sources of draft in the house? Kitchen fans? Bathroom fans? Other venting appliances? The window crack test should reveal this issue as well.

Does the chimney protrude properly relative to peak?

Obstruction. This one's easy - if you have a spark arrestor and you've had paper go up your chimney, it could be clogged. Check that first.

Obstruction, bad installation. Who installed the unit? Did you watch? You should have a 6" liner all the way to the top. Did some Yahoo crush it down to get it pass through a narrowing? There's an off chance that they restricted it too much.

Are you burning hot? That is, is it hot enough for the blower fan to auto come on when you're adding wood?

And finally, i hate to throw this out, because it would be unfortunate - is your liner insulated? I'm guessing not.

40 feet is getting close to too tall, but that usually causes overdrafting. If you have a 40' uninsulated liner in your chimney, however, then you may be fighting to keep flue temps up enough to create a good draft. By the time your air gets to the top, it may have cooled off enough to cause decreased flow, although this is unlikely, and particularly if your chimney is an inside chimney.

Let us know.

 

[OnFire]

Wow - thank you for the excellent insights. I will try out the suggestions and diagnostics and let you know what I observe.

 

[Hogwildz]

Once you get to know the stove better. You will learn that you should not be reloading until there is glowing coals left in the stove first off.
When you get this puffing, is it prior to adding new wood? If so, your reloading too soon, which will also end up giving you too deep a coal bed by the end of the day.
If its only coals, it should not be smoking at all. It still should not puff unless some days when there are strong winds you may bet some small puffs but again your reloading too soon.
You can experience small amounts of smoke exiting stove also if the stove & more so stack are cooled off as it will not be drafting as well as it does when the stack is warmer/hotter.
Frank makes some very valid points.
How long have you had the stove & how long have you been burning. The cap and screen if one is on there are the 1st things to check.

 

[Burl]

Good info above, also open the draft to heat up the stack a few minutes before opening the door. Experience will help you avoid smoke in the house but re-loading too early is nearly always smokey.

 

[Dustin]

If this is a new problem, I think it might be time to clean the chimney. When I first installed my insert I had no smoke coming out during a reload, even reloading right in the middle of the burn cycle.


I'm burning in an older, 1980's Osburn insert, so it's pretty much a smoke dragon. I find that i'm cleaning the chimney about once every two months, just to be safe.

When the smoke starts to roll out the door, it's usually time for me to go up and do a cleaning. Right after I clean, the smoke stops coming out.

 

[Ivy Frank]

Once you get to know the stove better. You will learn that you should not be reloading until there is glowing coals left in the stove first off.
When you get this puffing, is it prior to adding new wood? If so, your reloading too soon, which will also end up giving you too deep a coal bed by the end of the day.
If its only coals, it should not be smoking at all. It still should not puff unless some days when there are strong winds you may bet some small puffs but again your reloading too soon.
You can experience small amounts of smoke exiting stove also if the stove & more so stack are cooled off as it will not be drafting as well as it does when the stack is warmer/hotter.
Frank makes some very valid points.
How long have you had the stove & how long have you been burning. The cap and screen if one is on there are the 1st things to check.

Point taken HW - but I'll say, after having owned 2 summits and having added a lot of quercus over the years in the middle of wood cycles just to get the temp up, it's unlikely to be the issue. (Quercus is awesome for adding mid-cycle because it burns slow and even and in fine flakes and doesn't coal quickly, so it tends to allow the underlying coals to burn off before they get too deep - I use 1 season oak rather than older, as older burns more quickly).

The only time I ever got smoke in the house with a PE-S was when I was smoldering wet wood AND I opened the door quickly.

Anyway - OP - I absolutely want to hear back on what the issue is.

And one thing I missed, that another poster added - if you have easy and safe access to the roof, it would be worth going and taking a look straight down the stack with a big lantern.

At 40', the installer may have spliced two sections, and, g-d forbid, it may be a bad splice.

Let us know!