Smoking Hearthstone

[alms]

I have two Hearthstone stoves. One which operate beautifully, clean glass, good burn, holds long burn. The other has dirty glass, smokes when door is opened, and is leaking smoke between the upper stone and cast Iron edge.

Help!

 

[dgisme]

welcome to the forum. Give the guys and girls here some info. What model,how old,flue size,flue height, location of stoves,outside air kit on one both or none. Someone here will be able to help. The more info. the better.

 

[edthedawg]

Yeah assuming same wood and burning practices on both, you have to look into the entire exhaust path of the affected stove - baffle is clean and intact? No blockage above it? Pipe out the back / top is free of obstructions? Good lined chimney it feeds into? Cap / screen is clear at the top?

Number Five... need data!

 

[alms]

Stoves are both about 3 years old. The one that works well is on a tall flue through center of house and in the lower level. Triple wall stainless chimney. The one that smokes and is sooty is the upper floor, flue also triple wall stainless about 10 feet shorter than the other. Both flues have chimney caps. Both stoves are burning dried hardwood. Both stoves if properly damped will have enough hot coals in the AM to refire with out relite. The stove in the lower level has clean door glass, and I can open the door without smoke back. The stove in the upper level has black door glass, and always will smoke back if ths door is opened no matter how long I wait. The inside of the ash door on this unit is also black and tarry. It will smoke out the upper left hand corner between the soap stone and the cast iron rim. It does not do this constantly, but does it without any consintent circumstances.

 

[Highbeam]

For any crack in the stove to let smoke out you have to have a lack of sucking power from the chimney. When things are right, any crack will actually suck fresh air into the system. That said, cracks are not OK.

What model Hearthstone? Is it a heritage, homestead, mansfield, etc?

 

[edthedawg]

Alms - is this some sudden change in performance? or did you recently install these and the upstairs one has always been the bad monkey?

I seriously think you have a flue blockage - not a bad stove. Inspect & clean the flue and cap, see what changes.

 

[alms]

Local Hearthstone store sent an inspector this AM. Chimney dirty~chimney cap very dirty~ area above baffles dirty~no cracks in rocks of stove. Small air leak in between two fire bricks. Will fire up and see what the story is now. The other stove on the same but longer chimney was clean throughout. The only differences are the length of the chimney, and the chimney caps. Recommended changing to the other cap.

 

[Highbeam]

Good news. Of course, you know, there are no fire bricks in any of the hearthstone soapstone stoves. The stoves are single wall block.

It sounds like you fell prey to the very typical plugged up spark arrestor. All of your smoke runs through a mesh filter at the chimney cap and several times per year this cap can clog up and ruin the draft of your chimney.

Now you know what to do next time it plugs up.

 

[karri0n]

This doesn't explain why this happened in the first place. You must have an air leak somewhere. If that air leak that smoke was coming out of has been there, chances are that was a leak previously going inward and cooling the firebox, messing up secondary combustion, leading to the deposits that eventually clogged the chimney cap. What is the total pipe length on the upstairs stove? If it's quite short, you might not be getting enough draft.


You may need to seal that crack with some furnace cement.

Let us know your results!

 

[Highbeam]

Plugging of the chimney cap's spark arrestor is normal and not necessarily caused by an error in burning. No more abnormal than a typical accumulation of creosote in the chimney, there will always be creosote in everyone's chimney after a season of burning.

That said, you can do some things to gunk up your chimney and spark arrestor in a hurry if you want to.

 

[Highbeam]

Plugging of the chimney cap's spark arrestor is normal and not necessarily caused by an error in burning. No more abnormal than a typical accumulation of creosote in the chimney, there will always be creosote in everyone's chimney after a season of burning.

That said, you can do some things to gunk up your chimney and spark arrestor in a hurry if you want to.

 

[karri0n]

Plugging of the chimney cap's spark arrestor is normal and not necessarily caused by an error in burning. No more abnormal than a typical accumulation of creosote in the chimney, there will always be creosote in everyone's chimney after a season of burning.

That said, you can do some things to gunk up your chimney and spark arrestor in a hurry if you want to.

Agreed. My thing is, if he's using the same stove and same burning habits, with two different chimney configurations, it's worth looking in to, especially if he notices this happening again now that it's been cleaned.

 

[Highbeam]

We'll hear from Alms but you notice that he/she states that the caps are different and that the sweep told them to change out the plugged one. I wonder if the cap was some sort of ridiculous fine mesh.

 

[alms]

The flue on the stove that was dirty is about 10 to 12 feet through the house(vaulted ceiling) and about six feet above the roof.
The cap actually seems to have more open draft area than the other one. It does have mesh on it but I would say the mesh was larger than hardware cloth. I did not go up to look at the other cap, the chimney inspector assured me that all was clean there as I expected from the cleanliness of the stove. I can see the leak in the stove coming from the inside corner joint of four stones. Will be easy to seal I think. Rep from the store was not concerned about it. Both stoves connect to the chimney through the top and both flues are straight. The cap on the flue that stays clean has a mushroom top that comes down farther than the other one,other than that I don't see much difference. These are Mansfield stoves.

Thanks to all for the help!

 

[Rob From Wisconsin]

The flue on the stove that was dirty is about 10 to 12 feet through the house(vaulted ceiling) and about six feet above the roof.
The cap actually seems to have more open draft area than the other one. It does have mesh on it but I would say the mesh was larger than hardware cloth. I did not go up to look at the other cap, the chimney inspector assured me that all was clean there as I expected from the cleanliness of the stove. I can see the leak in the stove coming from the inside corner joint of four stones. Will be easy to seal I think. Rep from the store was not concerned about it. Both stoves connect to the chimney through the top and both flues are straight. The cap on the flue that stays clean has a mushroom top that comes down farther than the other one,other than that I don't see much difference. These are Mansfield stoves.

Thanks to all for the help!

It sounds like you have a lot of stovepipe, and not nearly as much triple wall than the other flue???

 

[alms]

Actually the stove in the lower level has more stove pipe than the upper one. The upper stove sits on a hearth with a rock surround.

 

[Doctuh]

Good news. Of course, you know, there are no fire bricks in any of the hearthstone soapstone stoves. The stoves are single wall block.

Are you sure about that? The rear of my stove sure looks like four fire bricks. Its a Homestead, manufactured this past Autumn. I'll post pics later when the wood burns down more.

Edit : pic of mine

 

[Highbeam]

Yes, Hearthstone makes a couple of stoves that aren't soapstone and in those cases they use firebrick. The rear of that Homestead is cast iron and has some old fashioned firebricksbricks. The rear of my heritage and the posters Mansfields are actual soapstone and have no firebricks. The partslists for these stoves from the Hearthstone site is pretty specific.