wood stove installation, stovepipe inside or out?

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noelmichele

Member
Hearth Supporter
May 6, 2008
5
boston
I have a question regarding the installation of my Jotul 3CB. I know that its better to keep as
much of the stovepipe inside the house -- in terms of the draft, but aesthetically it would be nicer
if I could use a rear vent through the exterior wall.

My question is how much will having the chimmney outside hurt me? i..e, will the stove burn ok? I should explain a bit
about the setting: I live on the third (top) floor of a wood building in Cambridge, MA. Thus, I think I am safely above the neutral
plane for "stack" effect. I will have to run about 16' of chimmney up to get above the roof line. How can I know if this will work ok and is there anything I could do to make it work better (but still use a rear vent through the wall and the tall chimney outside).

I guess my other question is -- if I do keep the pipe inside (and vent out the top of the stove using double wall) -- can I use regular paint on the double wall pipe? I am worried that the black stove pipe will not look so great in this setting. Someone told me that they thought you could use regular, interior paint on double wall pipe. any one tried that?

thanks for any help.

Michele
 
Aesthetically to whom? To me pipe tacked to the side of the house is not the most attractive thing I've seen. But that's my personal aesthetic. If you have a choice, consider keeping it neat and inside. If you want to paint it, use a high temp paint and be sure it is compatible with the pipe. For example, Stove Brite paint is not compatible with Simpson DVL pipe, but Krylon Barbeque paints are. For your Jotul there are also some VC enameled interior pipes that might work. They're pricey, but you might like them.

(broken link removed to http://www.discountstove.com/enamelstovepipe.html)
 
I burn the next smaller sized jotul from the 3CB, and when I first installed I vented from the rear of the stove and straight out the wall. Having that chimney outside was only beneficial for cleaning. At lower burns the draft was terrible and I built up creosote quickly - your outside and third story install sounds like a challenge to clean. When I allowed the fire to burn out and the stove to cool the draft always reversed carrying the stink of creosote in to the house. I then had to run out to my "t" cleanout with a piece of burning newspaper to get the draft going in the right direction before starting a fire. I re-installed exiting from the top of the stove
and straight up and out, and no more reverse draft, the draft is excellent and at lower burns the fire burns down to ash nicely. When I sweep the chimney there is negligible buildup. As far as the paint goes, unless it has a high temp rating - high temp for extended periods- I'd leave it as is.
 
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