Coal Smell With a Specific Wind Direction

Hey guys this is my first year with a coal stove. With warmer Temps finally in the area we are starting to get winds from south. It seems every time we have south winds I can smell the coal stove inside the house. Looking for some help. Not sure if I need a damper or the chimney has to be higher. Thanks for any kind of help.

Welcome to the Forum.

Pics of your setup will help us a lot.

Do you have a cap on your chimney? You could be getting a downdraft. I do with easterly winds, and the cap solved the problem.

Anything higher than your chimney to your south can cause this issue.

Welcome to the forum and it sounds like you definitely have a problem. What you might be experiencing is down drafts which can be from a number of reasons. We will need some more information and photo's of your chimney placement on the roof. If this didn't occur until the winds come out of the south and never before there is some characteristic of your house or trees around your house.

Photo's will help considerably. More will chime in shortly.

Thanks guys. Yeah I'll put pics up shortly. Might take me a min to figure that out. But yes I do have a cap on the chimney. And yes the smell only comes with a certain wind direction. Throughout the winter it has been fine. The chimney is on the south side of the roof. But I get some pics soon. Thanks guys. For now I have shut it down

Yep, upper roof will play havoc with short stack from a lower roof.

Need taller stack with braces/guy wires.

The rule is; 2 foot higher than anything within 10 foot measured level horizontally.

What is your stove model/type? Is there a barometric damper? What size coal you burning?
Where ya live at? Can you fill in your profile for us? Dang, did I miss anything else?

WELCOME! GLAD YOU'RE HERE!

Personally I'd start with a MPD a couple foot up from top of stove before panicking about height. Hard to tell distance in that roof pix.

MPD can fix sulpher smell from downdraft? That's different.

Indeed it can along with the cap up top.

seejay83 wrote:

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Seejay,
If you have 'soffets and ridge vent', try blocking the soffets on that side.(NOT permanent-just for a test)
Cheers

You guys are great. So I updated my profile a little bit. It's a Reading coal stove, no damper and I'm burning anthracite rice coal.
Now I question my wife's uncle about the height when we were installing it. I always thought it had to be 2 ft higher than the peak of the roof. Because of the two different peaks I should be alright to extend it above the lower peak right?

Or is a MPD a good route to take first?

More chimney height always helps with draft. An MPD helps with draft control by adding resistance to flue gas flow, ...... in either direction. So, it can help reduce, or eliminate back drafting.

Your house looks fairly new and tight. But, if the sulfur smell is not always in the room with the stove, don't rule out that wind blowing around the house may be blowing fumes from the chimney up over the roof and in through an air leak somewhere on the downwind side of the house where turbulence can sometimes cause slightly higher outside air pressures.

Granted my old house is leaky, but sometimes I get coal sulfur smell at my east facing back door, which is right next to the coal range. At first I always assumed it was the range, but the mano shows that the range is pulling enough draft to not be leaking. It only happens with a west wind coming over the west to east length of the roof and pushing the east ended chimney exhaust down to ground level around the back porch. If the back door's storm door is not tightly closed we get a whiff of sulfur.

Paul

Is this a stoker stove? If so, no MPD.