Triple Wall Chimney Pipe Leak/Condensation?

[Sledulous]

Hello, all. I'm in the midst of troubleshooting a water issue with the wood stove in my garage..

I have a Defender style 1200sq ft wood stove that has a single piece of single wall, to double wall up to the ceiling support box, then DuraPlus triple wall chimney pipe from there the rest of the way up. Installed back in October and have ran it periodically since then with zero issues until recently.

I've noticed that the one trim ring screw on the bottom of the support box had some rust and notice a small, quarter size, bit of surface rust on top of my wood stove. Just enough that it came off with a paper towel.

I dropped the trim ring down a hair and put a couple pieces of paper towel around the holes for a couple days and came back bone dry. This morning, after having some rain overnight, I did this again and still dry. So, I decided to twist up the paper towel and fish it up the holes from the trim ring. 3 of the holes are bone dry, but the hole from the rusted screw will saturate the paper towel then begin to drip.

This leads me to believe that the ceramic insulation inside is saturated. I'm curious though why it is only saturating on that specific side. Could this just happen to be where the condensation is building up or is it more likely a leak? Just seems quite odd that it's only wet in that specific area. The garage is insulated and drywalled, as well as being heated periodically by a mini split, so I'm assuming that the attic space is going to be quite cold compared to the rest of the garage.

I've inspected the roof, pipe, etc a few times and it all looks like it's sealed up tight. The only thing I can maybe think is that there's a rivet on the outside wall of the chimney pipe right above where the rain ring is mounted. Could this be a culprit for water intrusion?

Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[stoveliker]

Caulk the vertical seam on the chimney pipe outside with silicone.

 

[Hap Shaughnessy]

I had a leak like that on my DuraVent pipe and high temp silicone the seams and no more leak. I think water wicks itself thru the seams somehow.

 

[moresnow]

Can anybody shed any light on this? We have been using multi-fuel stoves for 20 years without problems. We have used our stove (Dovre 250) in our house since 2004 without any problems. The flue is un-lined clay sections a little bigger than the stovepipe in an outside wall chimney.

It started last Autumn when we burned some larch our supplier gave us and began to get brown liquid dribbling out of the register plate and down the back of the fireplace. We stopped burning the larch and the dribbling stopped. Apparently larch is notorious for this. By the way the meter shows that our wood has 12-14% moisture.

Two weeks ago our sweep came and he and I dismantled the stove pipe and cleaned everything up. He power swept the flue and it looked clean with no sign of damp or dribbling. He used a heatproof silicon sealant on the register plate so we had to leave it unlit for four days but when we re-lit the stove the problems began, worse than ever. Water begain dripping down the back and front, onto the stove pipe, hissing and evoporating and making the house stink. At one point it was dripping out of the collector at the base of the flue at a drip a second; we collected half a pint of smelly brown water. We are shocked at the change and can't work out the reason. We have tried burning only smokeless nuggets (Pureheat) and getting a really blistering hot grate temperature (into "too hot" on our little indicator dial.) We have tried lighting and getting up to temperature with only hardwood. Nothing we have tried has stopped the flow. Last night on a very hot grate lit several hours earlier I added two dry logs and opened the vent to full and within ten minutes brown water was dripping out of the flue and hissing on the stove pipe.

We think the problem may be partly because the flue is so clean that there is no soot to hold the inevitable moisture and it just runs down. Our sweep has suggested drying the smokeless fuel before using it as it does come a little damp from the supplier. We are sure our wood is fully dried; as I wrote moisture meter readings are 12-14% and we even dry the logs for a week alongside the stove before burning them, so that the radial cracks are really opening up.

We moved into the front room while the lounge flue was out of use, where we have an identical stove with an identical flue and chimney and we used the same fuel. That chimney has had very little use. We had no condensation at all.

Anybody got any words of wisdom? I am going up on the roof to check the cowl and the flaunching this afternoon as it's dry but no water came down the flue while it was unused and it rained heavily.

Perhaps consider starting your own thread so that your issue can be addressed separately.

 

[moresnow]

Hello, all. I'm in the midst of troubleshooting a water issue with the wood stove in my garage..

I have a Defender style 1200sq ft wood stove that has a single piece of single wall, to double wall up to the ceiling support box, then DuraPlus triple wall chimney pipe from there the rest of the way up. Installed back in October and have ran it periodically since then with zero issues until recently.

I've noticed that the one trim ring screw on the bottom of the support box had some rust and notice a small, quarter size, bit of surface rust on top of my wood stove. Just enough that it came off with a paper towel.

I dropped the trim ring down a hair and put a couple pieces of paper towel around the holes for a couple days and came back bone dry. This morning, after having some rain overnight, I did this again and still dry. So, I decided to twist up the paper towel and fish it up the holes from the trim ring. 3 of the holes are bone dry, but the hole from the rusted screw will saturate the paper towel then begin to drip.

This leads me to believe that the ceramic insulation inside is saturated. I'm curious though why it is only saturating on that specific side. Could this just happen to be where the condensation is building up or is it more likely a leak? Just seems quite odd that it's only wet in that specific area. The garage is insulated and drywalled, as well as being heated periodically by a mini split, so I'm assuming that the attic space is going to be quite cold compared to the rest of the garage.

I've inspected the roof, pipe, etc a few times and it all looks like it's sealed up tight. The only thing I can maybe think is that there's a rivet on the outside wall of the chimney pipe right above where the rain ring is mounted. Could this be a culprit for water intrusion?

Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks.

View attachment 289418 View attachment 289419

Is there evidence of water staining the outside of the Class A in the attic? Worth a look to help determine where the leak is.