The North Idaho Front Porch (Clark Fork: converter, flowers, crowded)

[M3 Mitch]

Originally Posted by Reziac

This house came with a woodstove with the same problem and then some. Having a window open does not help. Opening the front door wide does not help. There is no getting the durn thing to draw; even with a hot fire it wants to smoke into the room (in fact it backdraws when it's cold, too, so the living room always smells a tish smokey). I do wonder if the 8" stack is too big for the stove (tho it's plenty tall above the roof) Gave up trying to use it. Apparently I'm not the first; it had been used maybe twice by previous inmates.

And because it won't draw, it also won't maintain the fire hot enough to burn clean, so trying to use it also rapidly gunked up the chimney pipe, so now that needs to be either removed and burned clean or replaced entirely. Grrr.

Been meaning to look into getting a whole new monkey, but the house has natural gas and terrific insulation, so haven't been real motivated.

[Lived with woodstoves for cooking and heat for a couple decades. Never seen one behave like this.]

Depending on the size of your wood stove, yeah, an 8" pipe is probably too large.

Do you have a stovepipe into a chimney, or just stovepipe out the ceiling and roof? Is this an insulated type stove pipe or an old school simple sheet metal one? Does it go straight up from the stove or dog leg? Are you sure it's clear?

I'm assuming you are burning dry wood. If your wood is green at all, it will be smoky.

I have an old Waterford Erin stove from 1991, it's EPA rated. Unlike cars, the EPA regs for stoves only improved performance. Mine discharges into an elbow of old school stove pipe through a metal plate over the hearth of a fireplace built in the '50's probably. The Erin anyway has a "pilot" draft hole in the stove just below the wood feed door. When the door is closed this hole is concealed but it can still draw. If you let ash build up and block that hole, the stove is very smoky and hard to get to draw. I discovered this looking at the owner's manual online. You can find your stove's manual online as well. Or get a local stove company to come out and look at it.

My point in describing the exhaust for my stove is that it's far from ideal, but with a little care I can get it to work well.

[Reziac]

Originally Posted by M3 Mitch

Depending on the size of your wood stove, yeah, an 8" pipe is probably too large.

Do you have a stovepipe into a chimney, or just stovepipe out the ceiling and roof? Is this an insulated type stove pipe or an old school simple sheet metal one? Does it go straight up from the stove or dog leg? Are you sure it's clear?

Yep, completely clear, been up there and looked. Straight pipe, with the triple-wall sort through the ceiling and roof.

Had a rather complicated dogleg on my sheepherder's stove... taking it apart and dumping ash out of the elbows was a regular thing.

[Clark Fork Fantast]

We can't believe our eyes--after weeks of rain and chilly nights we're having a few precious days of sunshine and warm daytime temps, and the deciduous trees in the Clark Fork Valley have exploded in yellows, reds, maroon, orange, and all shades in-between. I've never seen anything like it. And I grew up in a place with nice fall colors. Monday the rains will return. If you're in North Idaho, get out and enjoy the colors!

[Mister Torgue]

Originally Posted by Clark Fork Fantast

We can't believe our eyes--after weeks of rain and chilly nights we're having a few precious days of sunshine and warm daytime temps, and the deciduous trees in the Clark Fork Valley have exploded in yellows, reds, maroon, orange, and all shades in-between. I've never seen anything like it. And I grew up in a place with nice fall colors. Monday the rains will return. If you're in North Idaho, get out and enjoy the colors!

Agreed! Pretty amazing up here to have some good sunshine and warm temps with such beautiful fall colors. The reds are very strong around the house.

[oregonwoodsmoke]

This is the best time of year. The air is crisp, the temperatures are comfortable and the fall foliage color is everywhere..

To top it off, my flowering plants are still producing like mad and my front porch is overflowing with bright petunias and my roses are covered in flowers. It is visually spectacular.

I'm ready for winter, but I am sure enjoying this lull in the difficult weather.

[Mister Torgue]

Originally Posted by oregonwoodsmoke

This is the best time of year. The air is crisp, the temperatures are comfortable and the fall foliage color is everywhere..

To top it off, my flowering plants are still producing like mad and my front porch is overflowing with bright petunias and my roses are covered in flowers. It is visually spectacular.

I'm ready for winter, but I am sure enjoying this lull in the difficult weather.

The previous owners of this house did nothing for landscaping so we aren't able to enjoy any of that (yet). hard to believe a house only 3 years old looks so bare and boring for close to 2 acres. We're looking forward to going nuts next year with the beautification. What's the best time to plant flowers and (evergreen/fruit) trees in the spring? I know not to do it upon first snow melt in april/may due to the high probability of refreezing and more winter precip to follow before old man winter relents.

Also, looking forward to winter though if I'm honest.

[M3 Mitch]

Originally Posted by Reziac

Yep, completely clear, been up there and looked. Straight pipe, with the triple-wall sort through the ceiling and roof.

Had a rather complicated dogleg on my sheepherder's stove... taking it apart and dumping ash out of the elbows was a regular thing.

After several years of use, my Waterford had some ash buildup in some interior passages, had to take it apart a bit. The top "hat" of the stove just lifts off, then the top of the actual combustion chamber can be taken off with about 4 screws. There was ash in there and in the exhaust "port" on the back of the stove. Used a shop vac to clean it out, drew much better after that.

Your stove might have some similar internal blockage.

Maybe the damn thing is defective, and the original owner didn't follow up.

It's a wood stove, it ain't rocket science.

[Reziac]

Originally Posted by M3 Mitch

After several years of use, my Waterford had some ash buildup in some interior passages, had to take it apart a bit. The top "hat" of the stove just lifts off, then the top of the actual combustion chamber can be taken off with about 4 screws. There was ash in there and in the exhaust "port" on the back of the stove. Used a shop vac to clean it out, drew much better after that.

Your stove might have some similar internal blockage.

Maybe the damn thing is defective, and the original owner didn't follow up.

It's a wood stove, it ain't rocket science.

It's a straight shot. I can stick my head in there and see stovepipe and daylight all the way up. (Had to put hardware cloth around the top to keep the little finches out.) Nothing blocked anywhere.

My sheepherder's stove had a passage around the oven that had to be taken apart and scraped out on a regular basis, plus the interesting chimney kinks. It would still draw almost clogged up, just not as well.

Had a pretty similar stove in one place that the only difference was a 6" pipe. That one the main problem was keeping the draw down to merely "blast furnace" -- had to keep the damper almost closed all the time, even when I had it banked down hard. Was a wonder it didn't fling chunks of wood out the top.

This'un doesn't draw at all, or the wrong direction. I think it's a design flaw, really. Came with the house, I didn't buy it.

[M3 Mitch]

Originally Posted by Reziac

It's a straight shot. I can stick my head in there and see stovepipe and daylight all the way up. (Had to put hardware cloth around the top to keep the little finches out.) Nothing blocked anywhere.

My sheepherder's stove had a passage around the oven that had to be taken apart and scraped out on a regular basis, plus the interesting chimney kinks. It would still draw almost clogged up, just not as well.

Had a pretty similar stove in one place that the only difference was a 6" pipe. That one the main problem was keeping the draw down to merely "blast furnace" -- had to keep the damper almost closed all the time, even when I had it banked down hard. Was a wonder it didn't fling chunks of wood out the top.

This'un doesn't draw at all, or the wrong direction. I think it's a design flaw, really. Came with the house, I didn't buy it.

Do you know if it's EPA certified? Or when it was built?

You may very well be best off with a new stove. You can probably get people from your local stove shop to come take a look or at least look at photos of the installation.

If it's an old tech stove, and while it's technically illegal to install an "old school" stove, people do it all the time, so it might be older than your house.

I can't think of a way to make a stove act like this. If it's a straight shot from the firebox to the exhaust pipe, with a door or window open on your house, if the stove pipe is not blocked, I don't understand how it can fail to develop a draft.

Can you post a picture of it?

[Reziac]

Originally Posted by M3 Mitch

Do you know if it's EPA certified? Or when it was built?

You may very well be best off with a new stove. You can probably get people from your local stove shop to come take a look or at least look at photos of the installation.

If it's an old tech stove, and while it's technically illegal to install an "old school" stove, people do it all the time, so it might be older than your house.

I can't think of a way to make a stove act like this. If it's a straight shot from the firebox to the exhaust pipe, with a door or window open on your house, if the stove pipe is not blocked, I don't understand how it can fail to develop a draft.

Can you post a picture of it?

Yeah, it's been a mystery. Opening the front door does not improve its disposition, in fact made more smoke come out.

Right now it's kinda buried behind everything from being used as a table and junk receptacle There's a maker plate on the back but right now I can't get to it. It dates to no earlier than 1980 (tho maybe as late as the early 1990s), when they renovated the house. It was evidently bought new and barely used at all. It's just a basic firebox, with absolutely nothing between firebox and stack, tho there's a valve in the back that probably does the EPA recirculation thing, but far as I could tell didn't influence its behavior at all.

Yeah, one of these years I keep meaning to get one of the local stove shops to give it a look, and probably replace it, just haven't been motivated.This house is so easy to heat that it has to be pretty attractive to beat what natural gas costs me.