Smokey Wood Stove

[goof008]

Hi there everyone. I finally got the wood stove in my basement installed and am noticing it tends to get a bit smoky. It is mostly only if the wood burns out and the coals are all but gone and someone (wife) just puts more wood on the fire without building it back up with kindling/smaller pieces and working up to the bigger stuff. Is there any common trick to help resolve this? Would replacing the seals help? The stove is a Findlay from the 80's. Do they just get old and no longer seal right? Any help would be great, as I am getting sick of the strong odor of smoke thru the house.

 

[PA. Woodsman]

Hi there everyone. I finally got the wood stove in my basement installed and am noticing it tends to get a bit smoky. It is mostly only if the wood burns out and the coals are all but gone and someone (wife) just puts more wood on the fire without building it back up with kindling/smaller pieces and working up to the bigger stuff. Is there any common trick to help resolve this? Would replacing the seals help? The stove is a Findlay from the 80's. Do they just get old and no longer seal right? Any help would be great, as I am getting sick of the strong odor of smoke thru the house.

Two things that come to my mind are to tell her to open the door about 2 inches and leave it like that for about 15 seconds, then slowly open it. If you just whip the door open like a house or car door it can allow a good puff of smoke into the house. The other thing that I'd suggest to her is to have her pull the coals that are left forward (flatten them out) and then lay the new piece of wood on top of the coals. My wife used to try to add wood, and she'd push EVERYTHING to the back of the stove like a snowplow! So there were hardly any coals to ignite the new wood, and she'd smoke up the house something fierce! I'm sure that someone else here can better advise you on the seals, but try these two suggestions and I think that that might help. Good luck and Happy Holidays!

 

[JeffHK454]

I've found that putting a couple pieces of kindling on a pile of coals before adding larger wood helps get things moving, wood stacked criss-cross or with large air gaps burns much faster than tightly positioned logs.

If you have an ash door that can be opened for a couple minutes and let the draft pull air thru the fire which will speed the process. If you do this be careful not to forget that the door's open or you will come back to roaring fire that can be TOO hot!

When you have smoke spilling back in when the feed door is open you have a draft problem, could be a cold or obstructed flue or a chimney that terminates too low.

Jeff

 

[mga]

Hi there everyone. I finally got the wood stove in my basement installed and am noticing it tends to get a bit smoky. It is mostly only if the wood burns out and the coals are all but gone and someone (wife) just puts more wood on the fire without building it back up with kindling/smaller pieces and working up to the bigger stuff. Is there any common trick to help resolve this? Would replacing the seals help? The stove is a Findlay from the 80's. Do they just get old and no longer seal right? Any help would be great, as I am getting sick of the strong odor of smoke thru the house.

how old is your house? reason i'm asking is i have mine "sealed" so well that if the exhaust fan in the kitchen is on it actually draws some smoke in when i open the fireplace doors. it's not much, but it happens. it took me a while to figure out why.

just something else i gotta fix.........

 

[JeffHK454]

TreeCo is correct when spelling out the possible repercussions of forgetting about the ash door being open.


I would also recommend a flue thermometer if you have an exposed flue , it can give you useful info on how your system is performing.

Jeff

 

[goof008]

Thanks for all the advice. I'm going today and look at new stoves. Mine doesn't have an ash drawer and it draws the air in from vents on the top of the doors, so I think that is where some of the smoke may be escaping, that or the small gaps that are at the top and bottom of the doors. I think they were designed to be there to let some air in if the vents are closed. My chimney is a Metalbestos that has a vertical run of about 24 feet and there is about 3 or so feet of black pipe. The chimney is 6", but the outlet on the stove is 8", but I figured with the height I was running I'd be ok reducing it. When the fire is hot, the draft is very good. I haven't used in 2 days and cannot get the smoky smell out of the basement....it doesn't help there are only small flip in windows to vent it. Do all newer stoves draw air in from the bottom? I would imagine that would allow less smoke to get out, as smoke wants to go up, not down. Merry Christmas everyone and thanks for the help so far.

 

[buckwheat]

Throw in a wad of paper to re-establish your draft, which will help with any smoke escaping as well as clear smoke from the house. Once the paper has lit up and the firebox is clear, you can add wood on top of the coals.

Keeping a basement window cracked open may also help because you are "replacing" the air that is otherwise going up your chimney. Modern stoves will actually have a pipe or hose coming in from the outside for this purpose.

Finally, check to make sure you don't have anything creating "negative pressure" such as an exhaust fan that could be pulling smoke out of the stove into the house when the draft is low. We have a whole house fan that will fill up the entire house with smoke if it's turned on for just a few seconds when the stove is burning.

Try some Fabreeze on your drapes and furniture to help clear that smokey smell.

 

[mga]

true, buckwheat. when that chimney cools down you lose alot of your draft. burning some paper will get the temp back up in the flue.

on a similar issue, i recently installed a new boiler to heat my house. the question of whether i had to sleeve the chimney to code came up. the town said if the chimney was in the center of the house, not a problem, but if it was on an outside wall, i would have to sleeve it....for the same reason: in the center it remains warm and always has a nice draft. on the outside walls they get cold and you lose your draft.

 

[GLM]

You would not believe the differance between inside chimneys and outside chimneys, I have an oil heat license and clean lots of oil burners and the efficiency of the of the boilers differs bigtime when you have a outside chimney. The inside chimneys are always warm so they have a nice(stable) draft all of the time compared to a outside chimney that cools down in between heat cycles. My chimney is inside and I am amazed at the draft my stove has even when there are only some coals left, I have yet to get smoke back in the house and another plus is that I was told by my chimney guy that creosote formation is less in inside chimneys because their temps are almost always higher, the only place I have seen creasote build up at all is the top foot of my liner(dry seasoned wood helps too) the rest of the liner has just a light coating.