Wrong Flue Size For Wood Stove?

[Nickolai]

Hi guys, I recently bought a farm house and have installed a NewMac Wood/Oil furnace and have been running it for a few weeks with no problems, it heats good. The problem is with my wood stove. The chimney has 2 clay tile flues in it side by side sized 7" x 11", one is for the wood/oil furnace and oil hot water heater and the other is for the wood stove. I cleaned both of them extensively a couple weeks back before I started burning and even went as far to take off all the stove pipe for the stove and scrubbed it out completely but the wood stove still doesn't want to burn right. It's hard to even get a fire started and once I get one going, it will smother itself as soon as I shut the door like it's getting no air at all. I've tried it with dampers all the way open, partially, closed etc and have even opened windows to no avail. The guy that built the house told me he installed the woodstove back in 92 and always had a hard time getting it going but it ran good after he got it burning. I haven't had that kind of success even remotely. I'm pretty sure that I need to install a SS liner, can anyone confirm this? The stove is a 1990 Napoleon 1500S airtight with a blower. I've also tried searching and haven't found much, plus I'm on 56K again out here and it takes the better part of a day to do so. Any help would be great. Thanks.

Nick

 

[begreen]

If the stove has a 6" collar, the flue is too large. 6" pipe has a cross section of about 28 sq in. The flue has a cross section of 77 sq in. or 2.75 times the 6" pipe. In this case, a liner should definitely help. Question, is this an interior or exterior chimney?

 

[fossil]

Liner...Liner...Liner! Rick

 

[Nickolai]

I figured I might need a liner...dammit!

And it's an interior chimney.

Thanks

 

[begreen]

And it’s an interior chimney.

Well, at least you've got that going for you. Put in a liner and I think you will have a whole new stove.

 

[fossil]

With an interior chimney, at least you can get away with an uninsulated liner, I'd say...so it could be worse. Look on the bright side. ;-P Rick

 

[Nickolai]

So you're saying that my best bet would be to go with an insulated 6"? I've found just SS 6" liners for around 5 hundred bucks and I'd like to keep the cost around that area if at all possible or lower.

I did get the stove going pretty good last night by burning a large amount of paper in it first to get the pipe good and hot(around 250 deg) and it seemed to work a lot better, but it still seems to always burn low. Is this normal operation for a stove that's good and airtight? The only woodstove I have experience with was anything but airtight and the fires were always rolling with it.

Thanks for your help.

 

[begreen]

I think just the opposite, with an interior chimney you should be ok to put up an uninsulated liner and still get good results.