Smoking stove... what happened?

[jtcedinburgh]

Two days back, I went to light my stove (top down approach) and instead of the initial smoke from the paper exiting up the chimney, it seeped out of the air vents. What did I do wrong?

Chimney is a kind of 'half-way house' between external and internal, being built into the external wall but not protruding - i.e. our walls are 3' thick and the flue runs between outer and inner surfaces. It's lined with 316 liner inside of the existing clay liner, though there was no room for insulation in doing this.

Any thoughts?

john

 

[wg_bent]

Two days back, I went to light my stove (top down approach) and instead of the initial smoke from the paper exiting up the chimney, it seeped out of the air vents. What did I do wrong?

Chimney is a kind of 'half-way house' between external and internal, being built into the external wall but not protruding - i.e. our walls are 3' thick and the flue runs between outer and inner surfaces. It's lined with 316 liner inside of the existing clay liner, though there was no room for insulation in doing this.

Any thoughts?

john

Just no draft, and your chimney needs a little heat to get going. This time of year I get that sometimes since the chimney temp diff is not as great as if it's colder out. I also have a theory that I'm getting a stack effect in my house through my attic fan, and I need to shut that down. The reason thats significant is that the wood stove is an open hole for air infiltration.

The solution I use is to use a small chunk of a fireplace wax log or a peice of newspaper with a little used motor oil on it. Either will warm the chimney fast with a lot less smoke than straight news paper.

 

[webbie]

Do a search here on flow reversal and downdraft, etc. - also in the QA and read the chimney and fire articles at the info section (see links in my sig).....

Basically, you always have to make sure it's headed in the right direction BEFORE lighting load.