Coalpail.com Forum

I bought a new stove for the basement for this years season. I've just lost most of my draft in the last 2 days. My draft went from .04 average to zero measured over the fire. My baro is showing movement so I know I have flow in the chimney. I've been reading of folks closing the flap on their stoves but mine does not have a flap or any means of controlling the intake flow. I did place a piece of tape over some of the intake and got enough draft back to buy me some time. Question is, when I shut down tomorrow to give it a good cleaning and check my lower stove pipe section for excessive fines, would it benefit me to fabricate a flap for the intake air? I typically run at .5 to 1.5 on the feed so it rarely works hard.

I would focus on making sure the smoke pipe is clear. In the future, it would be good to plan on a mid-winter cleaning before things get too clogged up. Also this should serve as a reminder to have functioning CO detectors.

Mike

inside or outside chimney? Brick or metal?
you might have to run a little warmer idle, increase feed just a little bit, or cover the baro up or adjust it it so doesn't open as quick. A good cleaning can have a good effect on it if it's building up with ash/fines, etc...

I cleaned my horizontal pipe today. Made a big difference. All this idling don't help in the least.

WNY wrote: ↑

Tue. Feb. 13, 2018 8:01 pm

inside or outside chimney? Brick or metal?
you might have to run a little warmer idle, increase feed just a little bit, or cover the baro up or adjust it it so doesn't open as quick. A good cleaning can have a good effect on it if it's building up with ash/fines, etc...

It's an outside chimney 2 story brick with a liner. I never had draft issues in the past and had used a damper and baro together to tame the parlor stove I had in this spot. It seams like I have plenty of draft at the baro so the chimney is fine. It's time for a clean out and lube so that's where I'll start and see how it goes from there.

Being able to adjust the combustion air is a nice feature for sure.

Update, I figured I'd post my findings from tonight's journey. It did turn out that the bottom horizontal run of pipe was filled solid with ash. The reason is what stunned me, here every time I would slide the ash pan back into the stove, I was pushing anything that was in its path back into the stove pipe and slowly clogging things up. Now that I'm aware of this and what is happening, I'm going to ensure I take a closer look at things when I dump the ashes and may even make up a tool of somekind to give the exhaust path a quick little scrape to keep things cleared out. After relighting and the chimney is warmed up, my draft has been hanging around .04 with the baro still set a little on the heavy side. I'll take it for as warm as it got today.