Chasing a smoke leak on an Ideal Steel

I like the idea you mentioned, adding a bend. The SS plate underneath the lift top, if it had a bend on the two long sides that might help with any warping in the corners

 

I am appreciative of you folks showing us these opportunities for improvement with the IS. Not all stoves warp, bend, or need parts replaced due to the intense heat of the cat which is actually more like 1500 on a regular basis. That's hot but the design must be able to withstand this heat long term as this heat is to be expected as part of normal use. I believe that Woodstock will make it right and if an IS ever landed on my hearth I sure hope to benefit from all of these improvements!

 

This is the best I can find. I think on one of these stoves we got a whole new top lid due to design changes but it could easily have been the AS, not IS.

 

Well, first I flipped the bottom plate over so it is upside- down. That made the warp go in the other direction, which the screws fix when they are tightened.... kinda', mostly. The next step would be to straighten out that S.S. plate and install a new gasket. That <should> take care of it. If not, a new one may be needed and I would contact Woodstock to see if that is a warranty part and / or how much it costs; given Woodstock's history regarding spare parts, it will not be overly expensive. So a new plate and gasket should do it for a year or two..... rinse, repeat.

A better solution would be to add more screws, probably another 4, timed so they are in- between the four there already. That should help hold the plate in place, as well as provide enough clamping force to straighten a warped plate over a new gasket.

Add a new gasket to some of the above, and if needed, a spoonful of stove cement and it should be good for at least a year.

If none of that works, then a thicker S.S. plate would be in order I think. A thicker plate with more screw holes should cure the problem. But that would take a little fabrication, probably something Woodstock would have to do.

Brian

 

This is how it goes with a new product; I believe Woodstock did their very best, in good faith, to make a trouble- free product. We know they went through a semi- public beta test and made some modifications. But sometimes it takes a while for these problems to show up.... mine has been warping for some time and obviously at some point it got bad enough to cause a substantial leak.

I published the photos of my stove only because I know there are quite a few folks with first- year Ideal Steel stoves, just like me, and we all benefit from the sharing of this kind of info. I think. No part of my purpose is to dump on Woodstock or really to address them at all (if I wanted that, I would have called them directly). But I do believe what you said in that they will do their best to 'make it right' if this turns out to be a common problem.

One underlying problem I can see is that the steel, both the radiator as well as the stove top itself, is perhaps just too close to the combustor and there is no room for any kind of 'strong back' type of brace or additional material to stiffen (Boys!) these components so they do not sag or warp from continuous high temperatures. A better solution would probably be to raise the stove top in the form of a box, so that the same amount of heat can exit the stove while not having to cause such high temperatures. That would be a significant modification though, not from a fabrication or mfg. cost point but it <may> 'tickle' the EPA status of the tested stove, and Woodstock may not be able to re-fit the stoves in the field without another EPA certification. If that happens, and push comes to shove, some kind of a package fabrication package could be done and split among us users; the cost would not be prohibitive and it should cure the problem. But no need to burn that bridge until we come to it- right at the moment, let's just assume a quick flip of the plate and a new gasket and the stove will run for at least a year and probably more without any other changes. I think most of us are still quite happy with the stove overall, I know I am, and we should be able to work through this with some kind of acceptable result I think.

Brian

 

Yep, that is the fella': the plate on the bottom is what is warping. Further, I can see that your plate has been running at substantially different temperatures as some parts are white and some are quite dark and that is the start of the warping. The outside diameter just outside where it seals has been quite a bit cooler than the center, and that is what causes the expansion.

Brian

 

I just took my top plate off and tried to shine a light through- seems to be sealing fine.

 

From a mechanics perspective, the Ideal steel is probably the most serviceable woodstove on the market. That can be good or bad depending on your skill level.
My Quadra fire 4300 only has one gasket for the door (That I know of. No ash pan). The Ideal Steel has how many gaskets?

Once again,
That's not a bad thing, but it definitely takes a little more maintenance and you really have a lot more to inspect. Doing a thorough rebuild down the road is a little more realistic with a stove like this. The good news is it's all easy access.

 

Well, I found and fixed my 'smoke in the house' problem and it was not the seals on the top of the stove. I have to 'fess up in that 1) it was entirely my fault 2) had nothing whatsoever to do with the stove and 3) was pretty stupid.

During a rebuild of my second floor, I removed the original masonry chimney down to the top of the first floor, removed the tiles (the liner) from the rest of the chimney, and put in a DuraVent insulated 6" Stainless Steel chimney. Normally, the chimney starts at the first or usually the only device that connects to the chimney through the thimble but I did mine a little differently, I put a Tee 60" above the first floor floor, but continued the chimney down into the cellar and terminated it there. So the bottom of the chimney has a twist- cap on it and extends down into the cellar far enough for me to clean the chimney from the bottom, as well as inspecting it whenever needed without getting on the roof.

So after changing the stove top gasket, straightening and re- attaching that bottom plate to the stove, I am still getting smoke in the house. Quite a lot too. Of course I am confident that the chimney is in good working order and clean so I have eliminated that. But last night I decided to take a look at the bottom of the chimney, bringing a flashlight and mirror so I can look up through it, and make absolutely sure all is well, as I already know it is really. Well, imagine my surprise when I opened the clean- out door on the chimney (the cement block chimney), looked in at the DuraVent and saw a big hole in the bottom. ??!!??!! What is up with that. Went down further in the chimney and of course found the chimney cap, lying in the bottom of the chimney. ??!!??!! Picked up the cap, pushed it into the bottom of the pipe and gave it a twist until it locked. Hmmmmmm.

Go back upstairs and find 1) the stove is not leaking anymore (duh!) and 2) it is now drafting like it has a long, new chimney pulling on it (which it does). Frankly, I am amazed the system worked as well as it did all this time!

So shame on me and I am hanging my head in object failure. The good news is that the stove if fine and working wonderfully.

Brian

 

BDF so it was just an oops.. not a big deal just caused a few of us to take a good hard stoves not a bad thing before heating season.

JA600L I guess that depends whether you have ash pan.. there's 1, door 2, cat gasket three and lid rope is 4 yeah mine got 4! I think..



this thing is so easy to check fix .. I like it.. still heats my house great for 2k on less wood so I'm still smiling.. my wife says still cost 1500 more to buy ours than a new one cause we got to get it out and go get same stove

 

So how did not having the cap on the bottom create smoke in the house? Lots of folks have masonry chimneys with leaky cleanouts and even though draft is weaker, smoke still goes upwards.

 

Wouldn't that depend on the temps of the house to outside temps that which would create different vacuums? What Im reading is that the chimney part that goes down is still inside the house? Correct me if Im wrong BDF, maybe a few pictures if you're able.

 

I think one of the best aspects of the Ideal Steel (cannot speak for other Woodstock stoves ??) is that there are almost no threaded parts inside the firebox. Even the one that is in there, holding the center of the top / back plate in the stove from buckling, is not critical. Lots of wood stoves have major parts that are bolted together, and once a stove has some years on it, they can and often do cause real trouble when they need to be removed because they are frozen and break off. Most of the parts on an I.S. are not fastened at all, just like the top plate that is the main character in this thread; it just sits on the rope gasket and is held in place by two tongue- in- groove (!!) projections in the back and gravity. And just about everyone has gravity readily available these days.

I have two doors and just change them when the glass gets dirty- two pins hold the door to the stove and it can be R&R'd in about 30 seconds. It does not even require tools although I do use a pair of pliers to hold the pins when they are hot but that is only because my hands are sensitive to objects over 300F.... which is why they call me Mary Jane Tinklepants I suppose.....

Brian

 

Well, a combination: the plate was really warped of course, and there was a visible gap where parts should have been sealed. That said, now that the chimney is giving the proper negative pressure (draft), it is not leaking.

So 1) the seals and mechanical parts should fit correctly and be maintained to keep the stove running as well as it can. But 2) the actual leak was a fault of an incredibly poor draft that no properly working chimney should ever have really. And I did want to pass along the fact that of the two, the chimney was very much the major problem before I started folks off on a mission to eliminate any very slight leaks that should not be a problem anyway. Again, in a perfect world there 'airtight' woodstoves would really be airtight but in practice, I doubt that happens all that often and a good, normal chimney draw will overcome a few minor leaks and force air to leak 'in' rather than smoke to leak 'out'.

Brian

 

Yep, that is true, and my chimney did still draft but the max. vacuum generated was almost zero. Meaning when the stove was shut down, when a normal chimney would exert the greatest 'pull' on a woodstove, mine was generating virtually none. So while it worked, it was a very poor draw, making the stove difficult to light and allowing a relatively minor air leak that would not normally cause any problem to allow smoke to leak into the house.

And while I absolutely agree with you about many chimneys being leaky, this was a wide- open hole at the bottom of the chimney and the full size of the flue. Add to that the fact that the bottom of the chimney is perfectly clean while any deposits at all are in the top of the chimney above the stove, and the chimney have a somewhat restrictive cap on it, and it really did make a very poor chimney. Because the chimney is pretty new to me, I allowed it to run like that not realizing how much better it should have drawn in the first place; with the cap in place on the bottom, it has a fantastic amount of draw. It is fairly tall at ~ 32' and once it gets cold, I expect it will draw even better and I will need to use the damper just above the stove regularly.

Brian

 

To some amount, yes, it does depend on the inside / outside (and cellar temps. if the bottom cap is missing!). But opening the bottom of any chimney fully, to the entire flue diameter, will drastically cut down on the draft of the chimney.

Chimneys have two basic properties that are related but different: max. draw or 'vacuum', which occurs when all the openings to the chimney and devices attached to the chimney are closed, and flow, which is a measure of how well a chimney flows a lot of gasses. The two peak at opposite times; max. flow occurs when there is a large opening somewhere in the system, usually at the woodstove of course, while max. 'draw' or vacuum occurs when every part of the chimney and everything attached to it is closed fully or as much as possible. To give a couple of examples: A 6" chimney will pull or draw as well as a larger chimney, as long as there is no airflow. But a larger chimney will flow more volume of gas given the same opening, say the door of a woodstove- an 8" flue will flow more smoke and better prevent a stove from spilling smoke into the room than the identical situation and setup with a 6" flue.

But by leaving the bottom open, I defeated both parts of the chimney though it was the second, the draft or pull, that was really hurt the most. Because when the stove was completely shut down save a very small area drafting air into the stove, the chimney still had a 6" hole in the bottom, causing a huge flow (through the hole in the bottom) while killing any chance the chimney could create any draw.

Anyone with a clean- out door on a chimney can see this instantly, just open the clean- out door while the stove is running and it is almost certain the stove will leak into the house. Even if the stove were perfectly airtight, each joint in the smoke pipe inside the house would leak a little bit. In fact, I suspect some of my 'stove leaking' was really the smoke pipe between the stove and the chimney thimble leaking, those joints are really very sloppy and not even close to sealing.

And the difference between inside and outside temperatures are what make a chimney work in the first place, the situation I had was doubly bad: the temperatures are very mild so they would not generate much draft in the first place, and with the majority of air flowing in the chimney coming from the cellar, there was absolutely no chance to heat the chimney and cause it to draw any better.

Brian

 

At 300 degrees, I think a lot of us are not likely to touch something for long.

 

Imagine sucking air through a straw with a hole in the middle. Cover the other end with your finger and compare. I would agree you had virtually no draft.

 

Ah the elusive humor..... I was making a little joke.

Brian

 

I finally had a chance to take a look, remember the right side of that plate was warped. Investigation shows the gasket is only around the center area of the plate, which is sealed fine, the warped area of the plate is not near the gasketed area, thus no smoke leak.