Smoke

[mrpee]

This morning when I started a fire in the Hearthstone Hearitige smoke would not stop coming out of the door . Outside temp was 45 deg and inside was 63 deg. Finally got it going. When I went I to town I saw that the smoke from everyone's stacks was on the ground. Must have been some sort of tempature inversion. My stack is around 18 ft straight up.

Ps also the smoke was coming out if the primary and secondary inlets.

 

[pen]

I have a basement installation, and often have to deal with a reverse draft in the chimney if the stove goes stone cold. So long as the stove's temp is 100 or so (just so I can feel some warmth somewhere on the top plate) I get easy startups. If it's as cold as the basement, it can be hard to switch the draft.

My best advice is to learn top-down fire building if you aren't doing it currently. I only do it on a stone cold start, as it does take longer than a bottom or middle up, approach. However, the top down is the only way I can start that stove "naturally" and not have smoke come back in the house before the down draft is reversed.

Another option to start the draft in the right direction before starting a fire could be a torch of sorts..... Anything with enough heat (safely, obviously) to cleanly get things moving in the right direction. For the right or for the wrong, I have a buddy with the same stove as mine (engander 30) that uses a "weed burner" sort of torch, that fits to a 1lb propane cylinder. He refuses to try top down fire starting, and pre-heats his stove / chimney by letting that run a few minutes in the stove, the building the fire.

Each situation is different, I've run the same stove on several different chimney systems over the years to see it for myself. That said, you just have to keep trying until you figure out what works for you to overcome the downdraft safely.

 

[mrpee]

I have never had this happen before with the three wood stoves I have had in this house with the same pipe distance. In 1977 we put in a Earth stove than the Orley . I should have mentioned the newspaper did not want to burn either like I said the smoke from peoples stoves was on the ground, I don't know what weather condition would do this

 

[Shmudda]

I have this issue when starting fires without much temperture differential between in and outside.

I have found that a small hot fire with a lot of dry kindling will work best to get the draft going. Once you see the firebox clear of smoke then open it up and add a few small limb type logs

Craig

 

[fullofbaloney]

I have had occasional issue, including yesterday, where the smoke from my Napoleon stove backs up into my basement when first lit. This happened yesterday morning and I just happened to hear the weather guy on the radio this morning talking about an unusually strong inversion for the last two mornings. From what I understand, an inversion occurs when the temperature at ground level is lower than that higher up (the reverse of what is normal) which prevents the chimney from drawing. It actually makes sense!

 

[begreen]

I have never had this happen before with the three wood stoves I have had in this house with the same pipe distance. In 1977 we put in a Earth stove than the Orley . I should have mentioned the newspaper did not want to burn either like I said the smoke from peoples stoves was on the ground, I don't know what weather condition would do this

Modern stoves often need better draft than old timers. The old stoves had a more direct shot to the flue and no secondary tube system to reburn the smoke. That's why the minimum chimney height for an EPA stove is typically 15ft..

 

[Dmriggs]

Even though I have a wood furnace, this or something similar, just happened to me. Got home from work, had about half of a 6 inch split of cherry still live and, added a couple of splits of dry ash to the mix. Opened the key damper and bottom draft to get it going. I heard the chimney draft start pulling so I backed the bottom draft down to about an 1/8th inch open and the key damper to about three quarters open. It started puffing back around the pipe joints and the reach rod for the secondary bypass. I'm surprised since the chimney seemed to be drawing strong enough to hear it.
Could I have built a too hot a fire before the the flue was hot enough?? Never had this happen before? About 25 feet of as liner inside an internal chimney. I opened the key damper full and manually turned the circulation blower on, to cool the firebox back down. Trying to avoid a potentially bad back puff of wood gasses.