Will dry wood........

[Gator eye]

make cresote if you choke the air down to much and run a cold fire?? By dry I mean wood in the 20% range.

 

[meathead]

All wood will make some creasote - but if you're at 20% in the middle of your splits and have an EPA stove, shut 'er down as low as you want and just make sure you don't run it with dark smoke billowing out of the chimney

 

[Gator eye]

I'm using a wood furnace.

I've been closing the air down a little more than I did last year trying to get a long slow burn in this 30 to 40 degree weather so the house doesn't get so hot. But I've been getting cresote around the baro draft and in the pipe.

Trying to decide if I'm getting cresote because the wood is smoltering or is it because the baro draft is letting in to much cool air in and cooling the flue and pipe down causing cresote?

 

[Jags]

basically, if you are seeing smoke from your stack, that smoke is carrying the gunk you are trying to avoid. No smoke - very little gunk. "Gunk" being a technical term don't ya know. %-P

 

[ControlFreak]

make cresote if you choke the air down to much and run a cold fire?? By dry I mean wood in the 20% range.

Yes, it will make creosote. If you have the air choked down too much, your temps will drop to the point where smoke isn't burned in the stove. It condenses into creosote when it reaches a surface that's cool enough. If you don't have a flame in your firebox, then you're producing creosote unless the fire is burned down to nothing but coals.

 

[Badfish740]

I'm running into sort of the same issue. It's my first week burning my 28-3500 and the very first night the house way too warm as it's only in the mid 40s out. I've been trying smaller fires, but I'm concerned about the creosote buildup-I'm going to pull off my chimney cap this weekend and see how it looks inside after a week of burning mostly at night. TSC has cheap firebrick so I might try pook's (fratfart or whatever...) idea of making a smaller firebox.

 

[mike1234]

I think it's hard not to smolder wood during this season. One thing I am trying is I made a cover from sheet metal for my baro, which I am using just on 40 degree or so nights. I figure I might burn a little more wood, but make a little less creosote. When the temps go down, I will just pop the baro cover it off.

 

[quads]

make cresote if you choke the air down to much and run a cold fire?? By dry I mean wood in the 20% range.

Yes. Not sure if you can choke down one of these newer stoves too much, but my old smoke dragon can squeeze the creosote out of anything when I choke it down. Which, by the way, is about the only way I can run it most days other than in the middle of Winter. Any of the "proper" burning habits applied to my old stove and it will drive us right out of the house, to live in the yard where it's cooler. I clean my chimney often.

 

[Lumber-Jack]

There are those that would like to make rules that "if you don't see secondary flames you aren't really burning". However for those of us that live in the real world (lol) it is simply a fact of life that we are destine to send a little creosote up our chimneys, especially if we try to achieve longer, cooler burn cycles, even if we have modern EPA stoves and our wood is good and dry.
Where does that leave us?
Well if you have bands of smoke police roaming your neighborhood like nazi storm troopers, ready to knock your door down and confiscate your wood and stove if they see any thick smoke coming from your chimney, then you better keep the draft open wider and burn a little hotter.
Or more seriously, if for some reason you can't check or clean your own chimney, and must rely on an expensive professional sweep to come inspect and clean and in the meantime you have trouble sleeping at night worrying about a chimney fire, then again you'll want to burn hotter and make sure your wood is really good and dry.

 

[Gator eye]

I think it's hard not to smolder wood during this season. One thing I am trying is I made a cover from sheet metal for my baro, which I am using just on 40 degree or so nights. I figure I might burn a little more wood, but make a little less creosote. When the temps go down, I will just pop the baro cover it off.

Hi Mike, I see were burning the same furnace. How is that plate working?

I was thinking about removing the baro draft totally but I like your idea better. Mind if I borrow it?

it's easy to burn when it's 10 below.

 

[lexybird]

this why its so nice to have the Duravent triple wall stainless all the way up to the cap ,even when your making a dirty lower temperature fire the creosote wont stick to the walls and falls down into the tee as a dry powder thats easily removable in 2 minutes

 

[mike1234]

I went home for lunch today, 40 out, just heat waves coming out of stove pipe, and wife is bad about overloading!
The cover for the baro works great on these kind of days. I just took a piece of sheet metal, cut it round about 1.5" larger than baro outside diameter, then made a bunch of cuts every 1 " or so all the way around the circle, then bent those tabs all 90 degrees. Then I used furnace tape to tape over all the edges so I wouldn't cut myself. Tried to draw a diagram and attach. With this set up I can put it on and take it off easily, tabs bend a little to help hold it on.

I think it's hard not to smolder wood during this season. One thing I am trying is I made a cover from sheet metal for my baro, which I am using just on 40 degree or so nights. I figure I might burn a little more wood, but make a little less creosote. When the temps go down, I will just pop the baro cover it off.

Hi Mike, I see were burning the same furnace. How is that plate working?

I was thinking about removing the baro draft totally but I like your idea better. Mind if I borrow it?

it's easy to burn when it's 10 below.