Chimney Draft Test

[Hoytman]

Bill, how far does your chimney extend past the roof peak?

A few years ago there was a guy on here that was experiencing draft failures with his Hitzer. He solved it by adding a barometric damper - our theory at the time was that the baro leaked enough warm air from the room to maintain the draft.

Hi Rob,
What spurred my last post was Lee’s comments on the first page of this thread.

EDIT: Berlin made the comment and Lee commented afterwards.

It’s also something I’ve been wanting to do…do some testing in my own chimney.

Rob, I’m not sure of the thread you are talking about, maybe you can remember it and maybe link it to this thread.

I’m going to link this one…

Lost my draft

…simply because it has some good information in it on losing chimney draft, talks about manometers, as well as has other good ideas in it (A search led me to start reading at page 17…not sure if this is the thread you referred to, but I will keep reading and see what happened and if BlackBetty06 had any success, then I may edit this post).

I’m not really having any troubles. Just doing research and came across this thread. Lee had commented about on page 1 that it would be neat to add length to a chimney to see how much change was made.

I have the liners. No, no chimney blocks to surround the liners but I still think I have a way to keep th in place without too much fuss…and yes the liner(s) will need to be wrapped with insulation…but first I might see leave the insulation off…just to see if there’s a difference, which I doubt. Without insulation I’m not sure that even 2 liners would help the draft any.

What do you think Lee?
Worth the trouble to you, others, and myself, to see if we can learn anything? See if it makes a difference?

No sense in me trying if no one thinks it will make a difference (with at least some reflective bubble wrap insulation around the liners).

[Hoytman]

I would be interested to see what happens when you add two more tile sections to the top of stack and repeat the tests. just set them up there and use moretite to seal the gaps (easily removed). I think you would be surprised.

Berlin made the suggestion…not Lee. Sorry!

I wish I had a couple sections to try it.. I'm sure it would help draft go up thru the chimney while the chimney is warmer than the ambient air.

[Hoytman]

Rob, you had asked me about my chimney height since I brought this thread back to life so I will answer you.

My chimney top is somewhere between 2-3ft above my roof peak, chimney is located down from that peak only about 10”, so the chimney doesn’t actually exit the roof peak, but is higher than the peak by 2’-3’…if that makes any sense. Chimney is on the back side of the roof just near the ridge vent.


From page two of this thread…

Rob, are you saying you think I might need a barometric damper in my stove pipe?

I would not put one in unless you observe big swings in draft that make it challenging to keep the stove at the desired temperature.

I get a LOT of wind at my place and as a result, the draft changes considerably. I posted the video just to show what the wind can do.

After 4 years of burning the only times I see of lot of manometer fluctuations is when it’s cold and windy. I mean below 15F with strong winds. The stove does run a tad hotter. Remember, with this large stove in a small house too much stove temperature is critical or it gets too hot in here. I can control it easy enough just by letting the stat take care of it, but I think it could stand to be tamed some by being more controllable.