This is good, not that it fixed the problem, but good that I don't think the basement is stealing your draft.coalstovelady wrote: ↑Tue. Oct. 17, 2017 4:50 pmAlso about opening a window in the basement - yesterday I even had my basement 'bilco door' opened for a short time while the kitchen stove upstairs was lit and it had no affect on increasing the draft as I kept checking on it.
"Stack effect" is a fancy name for pressure differences inside the house. It's similar to how a chimney behaves, hence the term "stack". During cold weather, stack effect occurs in the house. Since the warm air in the house is less dense than the cold air outside, it is pushed out at the upper levels by cold air infiltration coming in at the lower levels of the home. This creates an uneven pressure in the house with higher pressure upstairs and lower pressure downstairs. Kind of like trapping air inside an inverted cup in the bathtub. Put a pin hole at the top and the water pushes the air out and it's replaced with water.
Stack effect of the house can have adverse effects on chimney draft. For example, if you open a window upstairs during the winter it will move the neural pressure plane up there creating severe negative pressure downstairs which could even cause a chimney draft reversal. That's why it's recommended to open a window at the stove level, which brings the neural pressure plane down lower, so the chimney then doesn't have any competition with the home's stack effect.
So going along with all that I suggested opening a window to the basement, but that didn't fix the problem. So it stands to reason that stack effect can be eliminated.