House smoke out, where am I screwing up?

A small hot fire is important, especially if the chimney is located on an outside wall.... lot's of good ideas in this thread.

 

I couldn't read through the entire previous thread, but I didn't see there or here another possibility mentioned. A leak in the pipe between the stove and the flue? Were the connections screwed on?

 

As in a hole in the flue pipe between the stove and chimney pipe? or maybe a leaky collar or connection between flue pipes and chimney pipe. Could be worth looking into.

 

Yep, but we don't know how difficult access is to inspect for that. Hopefully 'lil John can remove the upper vent to look around in there. Also, with the connector being flexible at a 45 degree angle, if corregated, it could have piled up crud dropped down from the verticle part of the flue. Good place to use a soot-eater and shopvac to be sure.
Having a weak draft to start with, it wouldn't take much of a leak or crud/soot restriction to negate the draft almost completely.
Lil John- have you cleaned your flue (or had it cleaned) yet? If so, did this smokey trouble start happening right afterword? Sorry, I don't know why I'm so fixated on your flexible connector pipe (leaking or crud-restricted) being the problem.

 

What a great list of suggestions. Lil'John you're gonna hafta try n then decide... but definately don't ever give up. There's a solution there.

 

There is definitely a LOT of good info.

I'll start with the flue related stuff:
I haven't had it cleaned yet. I have burned maybe 1/2 to 2/3 of a cord in the fireplace. Fireplace was newly installed in Oct 2014. The pipe was newly installed at the same time.
I was guestimating on the flexible flue section. In looking at it again(see picture of fireplace on page 1), I'd say there is minimal angle from vertical.
I did not hover of the complete install but by the sound of it, all the pipe sections were screwed together.
From the fireplace seller(box store) to a neighbor(3 story), they have mentioned a weak draft issue in the valley. My neighbor mentioned adding to the flue.
The flue is 6" double wall stainless. There is for sure 12' of solid pipe plus the extension going up from the insert.

House "history" as I know it:
It was built around 1946 with a possible addition in 1954.
It has tongue and grove siding outside. It has wood paneling inside.
It is using the still original insulation(Balsam wool bags) It has collapsed in each bay so effectively only half insulating the house.
The windows are fairly new double paned.
The two doors in the house are dutch doors and do leak a bit.

Oldhippie and RockyMtnHigh,
I'm not sure where I'd find a ceramic wool blanket if one was installed. Is this part of the fireplace itself? Or is it something done during the install?

Oldhippie,
On the checking for the draft: when I heated the fireplace with the heat gun last night the initial smoke was going up/out the chimney. But it eventually stopped and smoked the house.

Freakingstang,
I'm a bit confused on the controls you've stated. I have only a single control: fireplace air(excuse if I have name wrong, my instruction manual has hidden on me). I don't have any control over the flue.

On the wood, I split it apart and measured inside. The outside color of the cord was consistent with my ~20% measurement... say 70% of the wood. There was some in the 10% measurement and some over 25%. In previous discussions, the 25% was burnable but was not great.

 

page 18 of your manual states minima flue height of 13'. My stove doesn't have a flue control, the bypass is a open/close part of the firebox for secondary burn. Looking through your manual it doesn't appear you have a bypass.

so reading through the manual, how do you start a fire, step by step? I think flue height might be your biggest issue. I'm a foot short than recommended with mine and it can be a bear to start a stone cold fire.

 

some woodstoves and inserts come with this ceramic material at the top of the stoves. Apparetnly it is an insualtor type material that keeps the heat in the stove.

Pulled from the interent, from a source of unknown qualifications but it sounds right.

" the ceramic blanket is very important. It provides insulation above the baffles inside the firebox. A tattered blanket or incorrectly placed blanket prevents the firebox from heating up to the optimal burning temp and can cause the exhaust fumes to not sweep over the front glass (and clean the glass to make free of smudge / smoke."

 

and one more thought.... did the fireplace dampener get removed? I hope... it could have shut if not and could be causing a lot of problems...

 

He has a 6" double wall liner. The damper if still there won't cause an issue

 

if it shut it would....

 

I pulled a few more pictures from my camera during the install.

First is what the back of the fireplace looks like. The flex pipe attaches directly to this and goes up the existing terra cotta flue:

Here is a picture looking up the chimney. What is shown is the cut out area of the old damper. If you cross your eyes, you can see the bottom of the terra cotta insert in the middle. The 6" stainless tube goes straight up.

Next picture is showing the insert installed in the fireplace. Here you can see the flex pipe installed. As you can see, it appears to go near vertical.

Next picture is another view of the chimney. The point of this picture is to show the hillside behind the house. I've got a similar hill across the road.

This last picture shows the terrain/location. I'm the red blob. The green car is right edge of my property. The FP is a one story neighbor with new fireplace(installed around my time). The FP 3S is three story neighbor with fireplace(new installed before mine by about 6 months) As near as I can guess, this picture was taken around October based upon the shadows.

 

Part of my problem is getting cold... but I've got wall heaters to sort of fix the issue. And lots of blankets on the bed

But my other problem is smoking out my neighbor(s) down the ravine.

 

Check out this link; http://www.woodheat.org/wind-chimney.html The whole section on All About Chimneys is worth a read, something may click.

Your roof line, the hill behind you and wind direction all will factor in. I often have a slow draft at startup. I can sometimes feel the cold air rushing down when I open the door. When that happens I've learned to not even try starting normally. Before I knew better I would smoke the house out and once even started a full fledged reverse draft, real PITA.

Now I move a baffle out of the way so I can put a piece of lighted newspaper right up into the flue. Starts slow and the flames push down at first but after a few seconds it will begin to burn "up" then as the cold slug of air is pushed out it will take off. I'll usually do that once or twice more then put the baffle back and burn more paper in the box with the door ajar to get some heat into the system. After that I'm good to go.

Add 4' of dryer vent as a test, sounds like you're on the edge length wise even for a "normal" situation. With your location you most likely need more. Do some tests with newspaper. If it helps it will be obvious pretty quick.

 

ok, another stupid question, does the flew liner psychically tie into the double wall insulated pipe or is it just "kinda" there?

 

And if they were to lazy to do it right they may have squished the pipe to make it fit through. I usually remove the damper, the angle iron piece below it, and part of the brick below that as well. I like to make it so I can drive a truck through the opening at the damper throat. That makes it so the pipe doesn't get kinked, squished, torn or bent.

I have seen this happen twice as well, the liner gets attached to the stove and the guy on top actually pulls the liner up through the top plate and tightens the top plate to cause tension and to seat the top plate down tightly . After a good amount of serious use the liner actually tore at the seam causing draft issues. This is rare and it happened with a couple cheapo liner kits we had. I would also make sure the liner is attached properly at the stove collar, and the top plate where it meets the class A chimney. To inspect the connection at the stove collar you will need to remove the surround panel. At the top they should have used an anchor plate that the flex attaches to on the bottom and converts it to the class A chimney on top. If they simply crimped the liner and stubbed it into the class A it could have fallen out. It should be screwed and secured well or you will have issues.

The ceramic blanket it placed on top of the baffle (if your stove has one, most do). If you look inside the insert with the door open you will see tubes running across the top of the firebox for your secondary burn system. On top of that you should see a baffle plate. They are usually a ceramic fiberboard of some sort. On top of that plate would be your ceramic blanket. I have seen some people have so many problems with them getting in the way of the flue that they just end up removing them. I can't say I recommend that but it's been done with no ill effects observed.

Hope this helps

 

edit:Hah, typed it all up but missed the pics above. I would check and see if the liner pinched on that metal they cut out and tore a hole in it. It can happen when you don't remove enough steel and when they push the stove back it makes contact with the steel and tears a hole or squishes it. You don't exactly feel it when you are manhandling a 400 lb stove into place lol.

 

I'll fully read some of the newer replies here shortly. But I just got back from the fireplace store and they presented an interesting theory:
The CA compliant cap has a screen that is 5/8" and newer installs can plug up quickly due to oils in flue pipe and fireplace insert. The cold can exacerbate the problem.

The fix was to take a paint brush and swipe the screen clean.

They commented that they usually do minimum flue length with no issues. They said if there was a flue issue, it would have been very apparent during the previous use rather than immediately showing up the last week.

Plausible?