Using a Stove Pipe Damper

There may be a lag but surface temp is relative to the internal temp so I know how much heat is going up the flue.
Most important thing is to monitor them one way or another, I had some well informed wood stove operators telling me there was no point in keeping track of flue temps.
Tell that to the people who burnt their houses down due to low flue temps and creosote.

 

Im also curious how the numbers differ from single to double wall. Planning to switch to double wall next fall when the safe lifespan of my single wall is up.

 

You can't use a surface thermo on double wall pip as the temp reading is meaningless. You will need to buy a probe which will give you your internal temps. On the probe you will see even small fluctuations. The probe made me realize I could start shutting my stove down a lot sooner than I was previously doing.

 

i always had one in the pipe as long as you open it for a while each day to help burn the chimney clean i never had a problem but it kept house warmer

 

See guys, this is where my theories come from!

 

What do think is the safe life span, I have stove pipe that is over 30 years old and looks like new.
No need for double wall pipe in many cases, waste of money IMHO.

 

After having my previous stove and all it's runaway fires I am thinking that it's life is coming to an end. Better safe than sorry.

 

I would think an inspection would tell you all you need to know?

 

What type of stove?

 

If I shut my stove down too quickly the fire struggles, but I see your point, after running a stove for a while you get a feel what works with a certain stove.

 

From wood heat .org
"It is incorrect to think that only a damper downstream of the combustion chamber can 'keep the heat in'. By controlling the amount of air allowed into the fire with the air control, you have only one control to manage and you don't suffer any of the downsides to key dampers."

 

So far my results says different, but my data pool is still very shallow.

 

I wonder if you are running the stove lower with the damper and making the fire last longer.

 

I dont think so, because I damper it down to the same point visually, not by a mark on the damper or any such thing. But it is possible.

 

did it with a cook stove did it with an ashley and a blaze king and an early morning and a round oak

 

true you also get a lot of heat off the pipe with single wall just as well use it

 

Just wanted to add a little experience with measuring flue temps. I've found that the "double the temp measured on the surface for the inside temp" rule of thumb is actually pretty dang close. It's surprising, but it seems to be fairly accurate in my experience.

 

Now that is some interesting news! How did you go about verifying that?

 

Oh boy...

 

Well, I have always had a magnetic surface thermometer on there, and in the last year I've had a Testo flue gas analyzer that I've gotten a lot of use out of. It has a probe that goes in the flue and measures temperature, CO, O2, and extrapolates the gas make up of the exhaust and efficiency of the stove. Using that, I'm constantly able to correlate the internal temps vs. the external flue temp. In my experience, double is a pretty good guideline. It's not exact, but it's close enough in my opinion. I'm measuring much lower temps than you guys, so it may drift a bit at the high end, but I've experimented a bit with higher flue temps like you guys run and it seems to hold true.