So, I Had a Nice Saturday.

Over the past several weeks the draft on my DS has not been so good. I went from an incredible draft of .06" about a month ago to a measly .02" of draft this past Friday. I had been talking to Coalfire about it for several days and it was decided he and his wife would come over to my house, we'd drink some beer, have a barbecue (we grilled) and reconfigure the piping on my stove.

He and his wife arrived at around 1200 we fired up the grill threw on some dogs and burgers and cracked open several Sam Adams. It was a great time. It was nice to meet another member from this awesome site and my wife and I really enjoyed hanging out with Coalfire and his wife. My wife and I hope to do it again.

At around 1600 we finally decided it was time to go inside the house and begin work on the stove. The two "T" connectors were removed as well as the barometric damper and were replaced with a piece of straight pipe cut down to 15" from 24" and an elbow. The manual damper was reused.

After the stove was in place and the piping was all screwed together a Cowboy brand Charcoal fire was started. At about 150* the draft on the stove read .03" and after about an hour or so and several shovel fulls of nut anthracite the draft was again floating between .05" and .06". At one point the draft shot up to .10".

Prior to this I had to leave my stove at 350 - 400 just to see a .03" reading on the manometer with the baro capped off. As of this posting, my stove is 210* stack temp is 130* and my draft is .04.5" with an outside temp of 45*. Several days ago this would not have been possible. Of course, as the temps rise this morning and throughout the day will be the real test but, so far the newly reconfigured piping seems to be working better than the two "T"s and the capped off barometric damper.

Again, thank you to Coalfire and his wife for making the long trip to my house and for helping me with my draft issue. Cindy, Jacob and I had a great time yesterday; so did Quinn...running around the deck getting into all kinds of mischief.

I think that is realy cool that you and yours got to meet another member from this site. The fact that the two of you could fix your problem was icing on the cake.

Yeah, it was a really nice day. I had fun. Woke up officially this morning and stove temp was 240° draft was .05. I gave it a little shake filled the Hopper now I'll see how it does the rest of the day.

The happy ending is like icing on a cake!