Last night I went to bed right after softball practice. My wife filled the wood stove before she came to bed with the Envi 8's. About 12:30 I was woken with a layer of smoke in our bedroom. Now our bedroom is on the other side of the house on the same floor. If this was the heavy smoke I have seen in house fires, I'd have been seriously concerned. Though I was still nervous. I popped out of bed and headed to the family. As I got closer to the family room, the smoke was thicker. No sound of a fire though. I turned on the light in the family room to find a wood stove with black soot all over the glass and thick smoke in the room. Seeing no fire in the family room, I started to vent the room with natural cross ventilation. Once the two windows were open, I checked out the fire. It was smoldering, nothing that would produce that kind of smoke. Then I noticed that smoke was coming off the single walled pipe just before it attached to the double walled SS. At this point I am thinking poor draft or clogged chimney. I opened the door to the wood stove, and it short order I got a flame coming off the Envi 8 bricks. If the chimney was obstructed with creosote, I'd have had a ton more smoke coming back at me. Which was not the case. Yes some was still coming out of the pipe at this time, but in small amounts. As the fire started to build, I saw less and less smoke off the single walled pipe. Eventually it stopped. Now I believe that this was a poor draft situation. Since we put a wood stove in this room slightly over 15 years ago, we've never had a poor draft situation. I've not had a chance to go out and look up the double walled SS chimney, but when I looked three or four weeks ago it was clean. Most likely I am going to find some constriction in the pipe which lead to the poor draft. I don't think I'll find a completely clogged up pipe. Either way, I let the fire go out, and will be cleaning the stove pipe tonight. When I go out to look, I'll add some pics.
Scary situation, and I'm glad it was nothing major. A lot can happen in 3 weeks. I plan to get back up on the roof in a few days to check the pipe and at least clean the cap, although I don't expect to find much.
The three or 4 weeks represents mostly burning the Envi 8 bricks. I think we are restricting the air too much which is resulting in a higher than normal buildup of creosote. I'll know shortly when I get a chance to go out and take a look. My fear is that I am wrong about the creosote, and it was merely a draft problem last night with the wind and rain. Which means I might need to add another section of double wall SS on my chimney.
Yes and no. I know this is a bad answer. The one that was in the family room recently died, and I have not had a chance to go get a replacement. When I go into town this afternoon, I'll be getting a new one.
My husband has woke up several times when thick wildfire smoke seeped into the house. We had many smoke detectors that were all hardwired with battery back up. He always woke up before they went off.... Maybe you woke up too before your other detectors went off?
I'm skeptical that it was just smoke coming *out* of the single wall pipe but rather creosote burning off the outside of the pipe? In my experience if the draft is going to reverse when you open the door to the stove smoke should have poured out. Although you could have mitigated the reversal by opening the windows so now I, as I type this, be reversing myself. My other thought would be a straight up case of draft reversal caused by too cold/weak of a fire. I can reproduce this in my Daka on a cold day trying to burn with it choked down. The chimney, which is triple wall Duravent and 95% outside, will cool down enough at the end of the fire to do a full fledged reversal. Not cool if you asked me. Can/could those bricks really throw off that much creosote to plug a chimney in that short of a time frame?
Something like this happened in the 90's. Ended up being the stove needed to have an OAK. Never had trouble before that night, but it happened again two more times. It was a add-on wood furnace from menards and as soon as they opened and gave me authorization, I loaded it back up and brought it back for a full refund. Maybe you need an OAK, too? Sounds like not enough combustion air written all over this accident. Envi 8 bricks?? fabricated wood or what?
I had the major smoke thing happen with our Old Mill stove, that was here when we bought the house 3 years ago. When it happened the first time, it sounds like what you found. Lots of smoke, and a smouldering fire. What I found later, while standing right beside the stove, was a re-fire of gases in the pipe. More of a whoof that almost blew the pipe off the thimble and put lots of smoke into the basement.
Ok, I finally have pics to share with what I found when I went up on the roof. This is the before. A bit hard to tell that the cap is pretty well sooted up. This is the cap turned over. It didn't come out as I expected. The inside of the cap was pretty packed. This is looking down the pipe. Pipe after I cleaned it with my new brush. Finally a picture of my wood stove and hearth.
Here are my findings from last night and today. While the exterior stove pipe had some creosote buildup, nothing that would have caused the loss of draft. The cap as I said in the last post was pretty gummed up. However; I don't think that was the problem. Both the cap and double wall SS have been cleaned, and are back in operation. When my son went out to put the ash bucket under the double wall SS, he found the bottom cap on the ground. I know I put it back on. Must not have secured it properly. Tons of crap is in the snow around the base. Up until today I did not have a flue temp gauge or a temp gauge on the wood stove. When I went to pickup the brush this afternoon, I also bought a magnetic wood stove temp gauge. When I lit the stove tonight, I put it on the single wall 6" pipe coming off the wood stove. This read just below the optimal burn numbers. After a while of it not moving, I put it down on the stove to get a feel for what temp the stove itself was operating at. The stove reads 450. Just about in the middle of the optimal range. As I don't know enough about the temps currently, I suspect my firebox temps tonight are good. I am not sure that the single wall pipe coming off the stove is accurate or whether that is a temp range I should expect. After talking with the guy at the fire place store in town, I truly believe that my problem last night was draft. So far I believe I've been lucky when burning these Envi 8 bricks as I often find them smoldering. My wife and I went over the settings and the placement of bricks. We've been putting the bricks in differently. Which does help explain it a bit. She puts them as she would splits. The land where they land. I explained to her that they need to be packed in tight together to form more mass and heat properly. The final piece is where she sets the air. At night she completely pushes in the air. Where I like to leave it two out notches. We are going to try it my way a couple of nights. Not to make excuses, but I think we were both a bit nervous of over firing these bricks. It's common to be told burn them carefully to avoid over firing. We've learned that you can under burn them to a potentially hazardous result as well. Now it's a matter of us working together to find a more optimal setting. I must say I'll be happier next year when I have splits to burn all season.
You'll be happy to know that I put up a hallway smoke detector I bought but didn't use previously in the hallway where there was not one before. I also purchased one of those 10 year smoke/carbon monoxide detectors for the family room. I'll add some pics of those tomorrow. Didn't take them today. Thanks for the comments as always. Life is often a live and learn situation. Fortunately this turned out ok in the end. It could have been much worse had I not woken up.
If I had a cap like that I would be very concerned, that would scare the hell out of me, you are burning too low of flue temps.
