Just got smoked out!

A few minutes ago the mrs yelled to me in the other room that the stove was smoking. Soon as she said that the smoke detectors went off. I quickly turned the stove off and opened the windows. Smoke was rolling from the back of the stove and I could hear stuff falling in the pipe. I ran outside and looked at the pipe on the roof and there were a few sparks coming out. The stove cooled down enough for me to pull the back panel off and it looks like the paint burned off the exhaust fan housing . Any idea what could've caused this? My chimney is clean so I don't think it was a chimney fire. The stove was burning on level 4 at the time this happened.

 

No idea what caused it but glad you were home to deal with it and no one was hurt!!!!

 

No idea. Scary stuff. Is it possible your combustion motor went into high gear, as high as it can go, and was sucking the embers through the venting system? The St Croix does turn the combustion motor full blast every once in a while to clean the pot correct? Maybe it got stuck on full blast? Hoping some of the more knowledgeable folks show up and figure out what happened.

 

Was the smoke in the house from the paint burning off or from the stove exhaust ?

 

Yowza!!!!! First thing I'd do is pull that blower but be careful not to rip the gasket....unless you have another one on hand.

 

I'd be looking hard at the over temp snap disk.

 

I agree with with what both Smoke and slvrblkk mentioned above. Also, I never heard of a creosote fire from a pellet stove, but I'd eyeball the exhaust pipe too.

PS. Last time the exhaust blower was removed & cleaned was..........?

 

Are exhaust housings generally painted? Englanders aren't and I can't really recall any that are.

 

Very scary. My pellet stove burning friends think I'm nuts, but stories like this one are why I am so apprehensive about running the pellet stove when no one is home. So glad you were there to take care of it and no damage was done to the house or family or pets! I'm sure you guys will have the cause sorted out and resolved quickly.

 

I'm not 100% certain, but I thought mine was. In any event, if it's painted w/ Hi Heat paint, shouldn't be an issue unless there was some sort of "overfire" event.....seems unlikely for a pellet stove.

 

That paint bubbling just on the housing is very suspicious....at least to me...

 

Yes, me too.

 

Well i decided to take the mrs and baby piney out to dinner and let the stink clear out of the house for a bit. We just got back and i removed the exhaust blower (since i had 2 extra gaskets) and it looked good inside. After staring at it for a few minutes it dawned on me! When i was cleaning/rebuilding this stove, there was a build up of gooey creosote in the lower part of the exhaust housing and some inside the upper housing. I scraped all that i could off and burned the stove on level 5 for a good while outside. Assuming it burned the remaining creosote off i left it alone . All i can figure is that the creosote was still inside the housing and finally lit off tonight after running on level 4 for about an hr. Im also burning some greenway pellets instead of the softwoods i've been burning. They do seem to burn a little hotter.

The stove is back together and burning on level 2 right now with no paint smell and all seems well. I'm keeping a close eye on it until we go to bed and shutting it off like i usually do. Im definately glad we were home when this happened. It could have been ALOT worse. I was just getting comfortable leaving the house with the stove running. Not anymore!

Here's a pic of the exhaust housing before i cleaned it. Trust me it looked alot better when i put it back together but i guess it wasn't cleaned enough.

 

That's the snap disc on the exhaust blower housing? If it got hot enough to melt the paint it should've shut the stove down right?

It was the cooling fan on the blower blowing the burning paint smoke up the back of the stove. Filled the whole dang room in a minute!

 

Thanks for the update Man glad all is well now

 

One would think so.

 

X2 Now I see what happened, figures. Keep tab on ash color or dark color corners inside the stove in the future. Early signs symptoms not to be overlooked if was present. Not a pretty sight to reckon with and I'm forever grateful nothing further happened. In these cold spells we have to be vigilant of our heating sources.

 

What does a change in the ash color or dark spots mean? I do my best to keep this stove running clean. Those pics of the blower housing were before i even installed the stove. That was buildup from the previous owner. I tore this stove down and cleaned the crap out of it before i installed it but that little bit of creosote that i thought burned off during my outside test burns must've still been there.