This is frustrating-smoking split

[eclecticcottage]

Loaded (hot reload) up for an overnight burn about 45 minutes ago. Shut it down and now have a nice flame show on one side with good secondaries and a top temp of 600. Perfect for an all nighter! And...one split furthest from the active part of the fire (and on the bottom) is smoking, I can see it moving across the front of the splits between them and the glass...I must have missed a coal when I moved them to the front/side and set it in there on it. Looks like the smoke is getting sucked into the flame/secondaries but I can't tell for sure. This is where I imagine a cat stove would be handy.

 

[BrotherBart]

What I hate is getting a full N/S load in and burning and notice that one big split must not be as dry as I thought. I watch the sucker knowing that just about the time I am ready for bed it is gonna finally dry out and all hell is gonna break loose.

 

[pen]

If the stove is at 600, being a modern unit, it should be consuming what you are seeing up in the secondary burn area. So long as you aren't getting a crumbed up chimney, or smoking out the neighborhood (which I can't believe would be possible at 600) then don't sweat it.

I find the easiest way to overwhelm a secondary burn stove is to load it up if the stove top is much over 300 degrees.

Even if I need the heat, after a number of "holy cow" fires, I won't put wood in unless things have burned down to that mark. Sometimes to help things along, I've been known to open the air up fully at 425 or even 450 later in the burn.

pen

 

[lopiliberty]

What I hate is getting a full N/S load in and burning and notice that one big split must not be as dry as I thought. I watch the sucker knowing that just about the time I am ready for bed it is gonna finally dry out and all hell is gonna break loose.

Been there done that too many times. Now I've finally wised up and load the night load 2 hours before I plan on going to bed and always go back down after I get out of the shower to check on things

 

[pen]

knowing that just about the time I am ready for bed it is gonna finally dry out and all hell is gonna break loose.

Yep. Although tonight's issue is not a single split that I'm worried about, but the wind that I just heard pick up outside that is now riling up the stove when I thought I had it in cruise mode..... 5 minutes before bed.

Serves me right, got distracted and the night load came about 40 minutes later than normal.

 

[BobUrban]

No big deal. Sometimes even under perfect conditions there will be a little smoke but as long as you get it going HOT you are not gumming up anything in a dangerous way. Just check the pipe every month or so until you know what is going on in there and all will be good. Start ups are going to make a little smoke no matter what. part of the process.

 

[Adios Pantalones]

Smoking a spliff? Oh, never mind.

One split in one fire won't kill you

 

[eclecticcottage]

I wasn't too worried...it's just frustrating, because you just KNOW at some point that smoking split is gonna catch...but when? By 2am there were just some big chucks of glowing coals, so sometime between 10:30 and 1ish, it probably did, because even though it was pine it should still have been less burnt through, I would think.

We have had smoke with a top temp reading 650 before. I still wonder if something isn't exactly right with the stove anyway, since we seem to be the only ones that constantly have black glass by the handle no matter how dry the fuel or how hot the stove gets. We even had the dealer replace the door gasket last year, and the handle is at the right tightness. We wanted to try again this year when we knew we had good dry wood, and still, yucky glass. We should have a break in the weather coming, we might let it go cold and replace the gasket AGAIN, ourselves, to see what that does. The dealer did a half horses rear end job on it anyway, just like the install. I'll tell ya, I am not looking forward to when this thing needs parts (since Lopi makes you go to a local dealer...and I really would rather not deal with them EVER again).

 

[Adios Pantalones]

Black glass: chimney needs cleaning, wood is wet, shutting the air down before a proper heat up, leaky gasket on door or sealing the glass, clogged air intake (including too much ash in the stove).

I don't see what the problem is with one split catching later. Sure, you don't want smoke, but as long as the air is turned down for this one fire- it won't over fire.

 

[eclecticcottage]

Black glass: chimney needs cleaning, wood is wet, shutting the air down before a proper heat up, leaky gasket on door or sealing the glass, clogged air intake (including too much ash in the stove).

We just cleaned the chimney. Wood is reading 9-14% MC. I don't think so, everything else runs well (top temps, secondaries)-and it doesn't burn off no matter what, even with top temps between 500-700 for a few hours. This is what we think is the problem, can't say if it's the door gasket or glass. We're going to try the door gasket, maybe this weekend. It's done this from day one though, although this is the first season we can say we've got only seasoned wood (previously it wasn't ideal although we mixed with ecobricks). It has done this no matter the temps outside, top temps, whether we just cleaned the ash out or not, no matter what wood/ecobricks we burned, on a freshly cleaned stack or mid season...it just does it. And it's not a haze, it's black. I kinda think the "replacement" gasket done by the dealer (at no charge as their "fix" for this problem after some tense words with them) is worse than the original, but we had to get a chance to burn it for a bit to be sure. Originally, it would burn off with a good hot fire, but not anymore.

Anyway...I just hate seeing smoke in the firebox. Just one of those "really? you're gonna do this now?" kind of things.

 

[PLAYS WITH FIRE]

I sometimes have this problem when load on a hot bed too. So what I do is take a piece of tablet paper and toss in in and it light off everything pretty quickly like gasoline. It's not an explosion but you get the picture.