I have posted before that my PE Alderlea T6 seems to overdraft. It's not so bad that we can't control it but it can be an issue when it's cold and we want to pack it full and not wake up to refill it overnight. It's worrisome to think that it might overfire while we're sleeping.
I have a HUGE chimney (~23 feet inside + ~13 feet outside). We have tried all the recommendations here on this forum. We plugged up the ash drain pit with a bunch of ash and no air draws through it. We put a little piece of metal to fully close the hole that isn't quite closed when you slide the lever all the way to the right (see here: https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/reducing-alderlea-t5-combustion-air.102027/). We also put a blast gate on our OAK to control the amount of air that draws through the OAK. The door gasket looks fine. There appear to be no leaks or entry points for air that we can see.
The last thing seems to be to do something to the chimney.
I am having the dealer come out for a chimney cleaning and to replace the chimney cap because I've had now 2 birds and 1 squirrel in the last 3ish years that we've had the stove. We discussed my issue and they recommended 2 things:
1. Wind direction cap that should help with the draft and will certainly keep critters out of my firebox.
2. 4 extra feet of chimney.
They say we can't put a flue damper in because of the chimney design (double wall, class A).
We're thinking we'd try the wind direction cap for round 1 and see if that helps. If not, we can add the 4' section later. Our reluctance to add 4 more feet is that we don't have a visible chimney from the street and 4 more feet would stick up. Not a huge deal, but we'd prefer to avoid that if possible. I'd like to see what you experts here think.
I've done some searching and I can't find much about how either of these suggestions this might help our situation. We don't have odor, smoke or any issues starting our fires. The main problem is that we seem to have virtually no control of our flames by moving the lever on the bottom. Even fully closed with the metal bit to restrict all the air flow, it behaves not much differently than with it fully open. We can tell the difference in small fires.
Thoughts? Thanks in advance!
I have a HUGE chimney (~23 feet inside + ~13 feet outside). We have tried all the recommendations here on this forum. We plugged up the ash drain pit with a bunch of ash and no air draws through it. We put a little piece of metal to fully close the hole that isn't quite closed when you slide the lever all the way to the right (see here: https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/reducing-alderlea-t5-combustion-air.102027/). We also put a blast gate on our OAK to control the amount of air that draws through the OAK. The door gasket looks fine. There appear to be no leaks or entry points for air that we can see.
The last thing seems to be to do something to the chimney.
I am having the dealer come out for a chimney cleaning and to replace the chimney cap because I've had now 2 birds and 1 squirrel in the last 3ish years that we've had the stove. We discussed my issue and they recommended 2 things:
1. Wind direction cap that should help with the draft and will certainly keep critters out of my firebox.
2. 4 extra feet of chimney.
They say we can't put a flue damper in because of the chimney design (double wall, class A).
We're thinking we'd try the wind direction cap for round 1 and see if that helps. If not, we can add the 4' section later. Our reluctance to add 4 more feet is that we don't have a visible chimney from the street and 4 more feet would stick up. Not a huge deal, but we'd prefer to avoid that if possible. I'd like to see what you experts here think.
I've done some searching and I can't find much about how either of these suggestions this might help our situation. We don't have odor, smoke or any issues starting our fires. The main problem is that we seem to have virtually no control of our flames by moving the lever on the bottom. Even fully closed with the metal bit to restrict all the air flow, it behaves not much differently than with it fully open. We can tell the difference in small fires.
Thoughts? Thanks in advance!
