Smoke rolling in when fire is hot

[alwaysconfused]

My husband bought his grandfather's house and this past summer he and I fixed the Heatilator firebox his grandfather had installed in 1978. We added glass doors and got the tubes to work correctly, too.

When we started our first fire it was burning very well until it started getting hot. When it was putting out decent heat smoke started rolling out of the top of it. Our first fix was to extend the chimney. The second fix was to open the damper farther. Both of these fixes together seemed to work.

The last two days we've started a fire but it seems that the heat from the fire is not coming in the house. We closed the damper a little and the smoke it coming in again. What we really don't understand is why the smoke doesn't seem to come in when the chimney is cold but only when the chimney is hot and the fire is really going.

What could we do to keep the heat in the house and the smoke out?

 

[webbie]

i think the answer may not make you too happy! These types of fireplaces are not really meant to heat - it's all relative, and when they came out them probably heated slightly better than an exterior masonry fireplace. But running something like this and trying to get the right balance of damper closing, intake air and heat is next to impossible. At best you are getting maybe 10% efficiency (heat from the wood into the home).

If you really want to get some heat out of it, look into everything from more modern "heat grates" to full inserts or stoves. Here are some examples of heat grates...
(broken link removed to http://www.stollfireplace.com/heating/HeatingSolutions)

 

[Ashful]

Former fireplace heater here. The trouble with trying to heat from any fireplace, doors or not, is the air supply requirement. You must move so much air thru it (lest you deal with smoke), that you end up pulling cold air into the house thru other rooms, in the course of trying to heat the room with the fireplace. When I would heat with a fireplace, my family room was warm, but the rest of the house was FREEZING!

Fast-forward 15 years, and I move into a house with a modern catalytic wood stove. At first, I had no interest in it, but after giving it a whirl for a few weeks (hey, it was already here), I realized what a great heater it really is. I came here, learned a bit more, and the rest is history. Now I'm heating 6000 sq.ft. of house with wood, and we've been keeping it at 72F recently.