OAK advice

This post is directed to those of you with outside air kits with "before and after" experience.

I have noticed a smell in the basement (primarily) that I can only describe as sawdust from old lumber. I know, not much help...

I have an epa stove hooked up to a masonry chimney that is built through the center of the house. The house is old, poorly insulated; also, the chimney is brick but had the top portion (exiting through the roof) replaced when the house was re-roofed a couple years ago.

This is not the first wood stove that was used in the basement, just the first epa stove.

The stove exhibits no signs of sluggish flames or other examples of starving for combustion air just as all the prior stove that had burnt equally well.

Question is, have any of you noticed less of a residual "woodsy" type smell after the OAK was installed?

I have left a basement window cracked open the last two days now to see if I notice any difference at all in the smell; nothing different yet.

 

I've run mine both ways and never noticed any odors.

 

I have no oak but, epa stoves are more prone to spillage..... maybe it's reload smoke hanging around?

 

Nope. Even went so far as to inspect the chimney in the attic yesterday. Thought the repair may have been sub standard or failed. No smell up there and all looked well.

 

Is the chimney used as "support" for framing of the house/roof???

My OAK terminates into my crawl space. I'm gonna extend it out thru the rim/box joist this year. When it's really cold, it pulls in the outside air into the crawl space thru the crawl space vents and make my floors really cold. The OAK terminates a ways from them vents, and that cold air has access to a lot of floor above.....................and I don't have carpet.

 

The framing is around the chimney. The chimney supports itself from the basement floor up.

 

Prior to your OAK, you were pulling in house air......................maybe there was enough air exchange that the normal old house smells were less concentrated!!!! With your OAK, them old house smells may be more concentrated and more noticeable??!! Just thinking out loud!!!

 

I do not have an OAK now nor at any time in the past. Leaving the basement window cracked yesterday and today is nothing more than a trial to see if it helps out relieving the smell...which, BTW, she can't smell at all. Maybe just me?????

 

Those yooper sniffers.....

 

Bad pasties or pastries BWS???

 

WHAT? You guys EAT the pasties? Don't the strippers and bouncers get angry?

 

Yoop, have you changed your socks lately?

Sorry, had to...

What about the basement floor drains? They can smell sour. Sometimes if drains go dry they can let smells in.
Unused fixture drain traps can do the same thing.

 

oh , you New Yorkers

 

I have found that women more often have a better sense of smell than men. That's the only reason I dragged her into this forum....

 

Do you clean off your ash tray after you load the stove?
First year I had this stove, I was smelling slight smoky woodsy type smell , sometimes, sometimes not , finely found it was small to even tiny bits like sawdust of wood and bark, barely smoldering on the ash tray, no visible smoke, that was the reason.
There was no ash tray on my old stove .
I have a hand held vac I clean off the ash tray with , well sometimes I didn't , so now if I smell that smell, I know I didn't suck up the debris left on the tray after loading

 

I had thought and wondered about that. I suppose its possible since I can smell it (I think) and she doesn't.

Now that you mention it, there were a couple days at work that I would smell it also! I thought it was on my work clothes (I keep them in the basement) and even asked my partner if he noticed. And that was during the time with the sinus going on.

Hmmm.