2:40 am awakened to a house full of smoke

[husky455rancher]

well i loaded the shenandoah for the night at about midnight. at 2:40 i was awakened to a house full of smoke. i got in the cellar and it was the shenandoah. i also had the insert lit for the hell of it.


i had the pipe damper totally closed off like i normally do at night the only thing i did differently is i loaded it more than normal. i was thinking maybe i loaded it too much by the air intake and that with the closed pipe damper caused the smoke to come out the air intake. does this make sense?


im just looking for ideas. should i leave the pipe damper open some. im new to woodstoves as all ive had is a fireplace and the last 2 years the insert. any help would be great thanks, Mike

 

[custom8726]

I did the same thing a couple years ago, SUCKS, and the house will smell like smoke for the next week or so.

 

[Metals406]

I have a shenandoah stove... Is yours shaped like a 55 gallon barrel siting vertically?

I don't have a pipe damper, and I've never had a problem.

 

[Brian VT]

Sounds like you lost your draft. The air pressure in your chimney was greater than in the house so the smoke went the easier way. You may need an outdoor air kit or try leaving a window cracked open near the stove. Search "stack effect" at ********** for more info. Please tell me that all your burners each have their own chimney.

 

[husky455rancher]

they both are in the same chimney but they have their own flue or liner whatever you call it. its a huge chimney. is running them at the same time bad? i just did it cuse the house was pretty cold we were gone all day. the stove in the cellar has been off all week i was just using the insert.

 

[Brian VT]

Separate flues is good. Another issue is if a clothes dryer or furnace or something is also competing for air from the room.
Try cracking open a window in the basement.

 

[KsWoodsMan]

Sounds like you lost your draft. The air pressure in your chimney was greater than in the house so the smoke went the easier way. You may need an outdoor air kit or try leaving a window cracked open near the stove. Search "stack effect" at ********** for more info. Please tell me that all your burners each have their own chimney.

:agree2: Either you lot the draft from a very slow burn or it never quite got re-established from not using it for the week. Burn a good hot fire to rewarm the flue and then set the air for an all night burn.

 

[turnkey4099]

If anyone burning wood stoves in the house does not have a CO detector - put one in. Of course a smoke detector is also needed. Both are cheap insurance...reminds me. I need to change the batteries again.

We were woke up 2 years ago at about 2 a.m. by the CO detector screaming at us. Not even one whiff of smoke in the house. I dove outside in the nude (about 20 degrees) to get a look at the chimney - no fire or problems showing. Warning! Do not try to picture this naked, fat guy out in the cold - it's disgusting.

Never did figure out the problem but opening the door had silenced the detector and it didn't go off again.


Harry K

 

[pdqdl]

Wood burners are not as simple as they seem. I'm not familiar with your brand of equipment, but here are some observations I have made over the years.

There are two different approaches to controlling the heat in a stove: exhaust damper, intake damper, or sometimes both.

If you have an exhaust damper, your stove is most likely to smoke when there is more heat inside the firebox than can be contained by the stove and the restricted stovepipe.

A simple diagnostic question: Was smoke pouring out of the cracks in the stove, and did it quit when you opened up the damper? If so, you had too much restriction on the exhaust. Try restricting the air input a little bit, if you can. If you can't, then you'd better not build up so much wood in the firebox and then try to make it burn slow.

If a fire gets enough oxygen, it going to burn. If the exhaust damper is restricted (for any reason), that smoke is going to go somewhere else.

If you have only an intake damper, then your stove is one of the more modern "airtight" stoves. These units are generally more efficient than exhaust damper varieties, and they will only smoke you out if "they loose their draft", as stated above.

I've only seen that happen in a totally cold stove, and it's sure difficult to make the air go back up that cold stovepipe. I have discovered that the best way to make the draft go back up the cold stovepipe is to open the doors and windows near the stove, and restore the "hot air rises" effect to the whole system of room+stove+stovepipe. Until the stovepipe is at least as warm as the room that feeds it, cold air will persist in coming down it INTO the room, rather than going up, OUT of the room.

 

[Junkfxr]

Another quick, old time way to establish a good draft is to ball up some newspaper and stuff it in the pipe from inside the stove before you build the fire, when the fire is lit, the paper catches, warms the pipe and create a draft. I have never ran a pipe damper on our US Stoveworks 1500 and never had it smoke back into the basement. I have a pipe damper on the old stove in the shop and welded a spot on the plate so that it can't be totally shut off, before that, it would stop the pipe dead and all the smoke would come back into the shop.

 

[Mike Van]

If the shenandoah is made like an airtite, I'd get rid of the damper. If it's made like some of the cheaper "Franklin" types, you may need it. Otherwise, chuck it!

 

[savageactor7]

We had that same Shenandoah r77 and never closed the inline pipe damper more than 45*...

...in other words it always ran partially open.

Open damper fully to load stove, load, close door and position damper 45* closed.

If you're looking to hold an overnight fire you can load up with rounds but you'll have to shake the ash grate in the morning.

If it's heat you're after plan on loading up splits every 4-5 hrs or so.

 

[Tesen]

well i loaded the shenandoah for the night at about midnight. at 2:40 i was awakened to a house full of smoke.

Stack effect for sure. The exhaust gases are like water, path of least resistance, if the pressure in your flue was higher than in the house (i.e. negative pressure) it will take the path of least resistance, i.e. out your dampers or whatever else in to your basement.

Lack of draft is a main cause, a flue with poor draft running very cold can be another. I woke to the same thing about 4 years ago, freaked the heck out of me - I was unprepared so had no way to put the fire out without water (stooooooopid!) so spent the night with basement windows open, basement door, furnace choked down and watching it puff out the door damper once in a while. I ended up installing an exhausto fan, I keep it on low 24/7 when I am burning and have a window cracked.

Outside air kit will help, cracking a window, keeping the damper open a little more than you did. What you need to do, is start researching stack effect (everyone should be an expert on this!) and read the available information, analyze what happened, post on here as needed, but work out directly what caused it (you'll hate to wake up dead one day ).

Tes

 

[KsWoodsMan]

well i loaded the shenandoah for the night at about midnight. at 2:40 i was awakened to a house full of smoke. i got in the cellar and it was the shenandoah. i also had the insert lit for the hell of it.


i had the pipe damper totally closed off like i normally do at night the only thing i did differently is i loaded it more than normal. i was thinking maybe i loaded it too much by the air intake and that with the closed pipe damper caused the smoke to come out the air intake. does this make sense?


im just looking for ideas. should i leave the pipe damper open some. im new to woodstoves as all ive had is a fireplace and the last 2 years the insert. any help would be great thanks, Mike

The insert draw was greater than the shenandoah's draw in the basement with the cooler fluepipe. This is where the insert was drawing its air from.

Open a window in the basement , just a crack , to allow cold air in when burning both. Or provide the shenandoah outside air to keep this from happening. Other wise it might be a balancing act trying to get both to draw while burning when the fire dies down on one or the other.

 

[chainsawaddict]

Im not a fan of exhaust dampers. Id rather burn more wood and be more inefficient. Too many things can go wrong. especially with CO. I dont have an airtight, but just control it with my intake damper.

Just my POV.

 

[newb]

Please tell me it was your smoke detector that woke you up!!

 

[gtu160]

Anything living in your flue?? Being that it has not been burning in a week, getting cold out.

 

[pdqdl]

The insert draw was greater than the shenandoah's draw in the basement with the cooler fluepipe. This is where the insert was drawing its air from...

Yep, that could do it too.

But I'll bet on the exhaust damper being closed too much for a fire that it building up.

 

[turnkey4099]

Please tell me it was your smoke detector that woke you up!!

The smoke detector was silent. It was the CO detector screaming.

Harry K

 

[pdqdl]

I'd get a new smoke detector. It didn't, and they don't cost that much to replace.

Mine goes off if I leave the door open too long on the fireplace insert. Get enough smoke to smell along the ceiling, and you get lots of noise real quick.