I am posting this question for my dad. He runs a 2 year old Jotul 602 in a one story addition off the back of his house. He has problems with reverse draft on occasion. The main house is two stories, with the addition in the back, on the east side. A cold front passed through mid day yesterday with shifting north west winds that went over the main house. He was pretty much running the stove all day and letting it wind down for the night. The wind spilling off the main house started to cause some air to reverse down the flue. He shut the primary air down and called it a day. There have been days that he could not even get a draft going with the reverse draft happening. He has tried the blowtorch method. Using fire starters or kindling just pushes smoke out into the room. I really want to resolve this for them mostly for health and safety reasons. Secondly, so they can use their stove on windy days. I have talked to him about extending the flue a few feet, but the stove drafts fine on calm days. If anyone has personal experience with a Vacu cap or similar product, please let me know. This cap is what I am currently looking at. He has a 6" stainless flue, about 15 feet to the cap. The directional caps come to mind also.
I have the little Jotul 602 too. I haven't had any draft problems once it's going but I have to use a firestarter to get a draft from a cold start. It's a backup stove I use in the addition when the temps are really cold (like today) Pre-epa
My dad ran his pre-EPA 602 since the mid 1970's. The inner burn plates were beginning to go. There was a learning curve on his new EPA 602. It seems the old spin wheel drafts were more "free flowing".
I have this one and LOVE it. I have 2 of them, one on the oil burner and one on the stove, both work great. Do a search on here, I have written about it a few times. My oil burner had major issues for years, could never fix/solve it. Finally had an engineer test it all and said it was the chimney and/or cap. I changed to the stormshield and all my problems disappeared. I went from a reverse draft when we had North winds, to a perfect draft all the time. I highly recommend it to the point that I'm not sure why they are not used on ALL chimneys. They are pretty cheap, why not use them ? http://www.volkosupply.com/products.cfm?category_id=26&subcategory_id=43&id=26&thiscat=0
Hi! Just seeing this... Did you keep the spark arrestor on, or opt to go without? If left on, any build-up issues? Thanks
Sounds good! I'm planning on an Ideal Steel, and tend to see a lot of wind. Plus, not anticipating my cap to be above my roof peak, although not much below, so possibility of a little funky airflow due to that...
That's exactly my situation, very windy (I'm directly on the ocean) and my cap is just below my peak. Prior to this cap I had lots of issues, none since. I first replaced my oil burner chimney cap with this cap, and that solved 10 years worth of issues I was having with it. I then put this same cap on my stove chimney when I installed the PH, and it has worked really nicely. I know little about chimneys, draft and such.. but I wonder whey they are not standard on all chimneys. It's not a significant cost difference, so why not always use them? Good luck!
Glad it solved your issues! Thanks to your informative write-up, it's prob what I'll go with when its time to purchase my system. Brad
