I'm hoping someone has a little insight into an issue I seem to be having. My stove only has a primary air control so I assume that the secondary burn is either just left to draw as much as it wants or it draws from the same place as the primary. In any case I don't seem to be getting the secondary light off I'd expect. I've tried warming it up real good before shutting the primary down and it didn't seem to have any effect. Tonight I shut it down a little too early and noticed a complete loss of flamage so I cracked the door open and sure enough, as soon as that smoke caught a little oxygen I had a big puff of blue/orange flames. To me that means there isn't anything being drawn through the secondaries. What do you guys think?
The model is the Answer, the Lopi Answer. This is the same stove that Grizzly's Paw has in the garage. If i recall, the secondary intakes are in the back-- I had to cover them with foil once when temps got too high. Are your air tubes clean?
Griz is correct, the model is Answer. As far as I know the air tubes are clean but I've never torn down the inside of the firebox or removed the burn tube going from side to side. To be clear mine is the pedestal style with outdoor air intake entering in the back of the base. I didn't see any other air intake openings back there but I can look again.
sorry, I thought he was looking for an answer for a lopi stove question. Here is the manual. http://www.lopistoves.com/TravisDocs/100-01166.pdf
I have the Lopi patriot basically the same stove, been burning in her for twenty years now. Had the same problem, with the no bypass damper, what I did was install a stove pipe damper right above the stove top. It seems to keep the flue gasses from just running up the pipe, keeping the stove top temps up around 600F. I set the air control to about 7/8 out (closed) Also helps me keep a long over night burn, and some nice secondary's. Once up to temp I set it about 3/4 closed as you see in the pic. My wood is quite seasoned about 3yr top covered.
Great information Chestnut, exactly the sort of stuff I was looking for. I've been contemplating the installation of a pipe damper and now I think I'll go ahead and do it. I've always had them on the other stoves I've owned but this one didn't have one when we moved here.
We had temps in the upper 40's near 50° here yesterday so I let the stove go cold to do a complete clean out. I took the firebrick baffle down and cleaned all the ash out of the entire stove so I could study the secondary air feed. As near as I can tell it is getting the secondary air from back lower portion of the stove as that's where the two rectangular tubes terminate. I looked around under there but all I could find (because the stove has a welded-on surround) is two partially cut out rectangles, like the profile was cut out but they left tabs around the perimeter to hold the center in place. Does anyone know if this is truly the secondary supply location or if it's something to do with the optional room air blower mounting? Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to pick up a damper so I didn't get that installed yet but that's next on my list. I'm guessing we'll get at least one more break in the weather before we go on a month-long cold streak, hopefully! ps, thanks for all your help thus far. Sometimes it seems like these stoves are some sort of mystery novel or something.
Have you seen this before Here is the link where I got the pic http://lopistoves.com/TravisDocs/98800729.pdf
I just realized that you actually put this in the wrong place. You might get more input if you ask one of the mods to move it to Modern EPA Stoves and Fireplaces
I believe the two nock outs are for the blower install. With my setup I just have a blower in the back of the fireplace with a dimmer control for speed and a snap disc for on and off. I have about 15 feet of chimney with a crazy draft, with out the damper it seemed like the secondary's never stayed around long enough to light off. I guess every setups different hope it works on yours.
I've got approximately the same amount of chimney as you Chestnut and a crazy strong draft as well. I'm more and more convinced that a damper is going to be the ultimate "Answer" in my situation. I'm going to try and find time to pick one up over the long weekend, but not Friday! HDRock, I hadn't seen that particular .pdf before but Lopi does have a good amount of information online as I found the manual for my stove and a youtube video that had the graphic from the .pdf on it. I learned a lot from all those sources but none explained exactly where the secondary air was drawing from and whether or not it is metered along with the primary air. My assumption is that it is not metered and that means I need to slow the smoke down just a tad so that it has time to light off rather than slip up the chimney. I just realized (actually I checked the back of my stove) that is an EPA stove as of a 1990 certification even though it is a 1992 model. I guess I assumed that since it has draft control and no cat that it was non-EPA. That was based on my experience with some of the cheaper Menards stoves that don't allow for any draft control and even restrict how much you can close the factory installed damper, just to be able to be called EPA compliant (not sure what standard, circa 2000.) Long story short TL;dr, I'll contact the mod's and request to have the thread moved . Thanks for the help!
So I installed a stove pipe damper Sunday night after letting the stove cool off all day. Today my wife was working from home so I re-kindled and closed down the stove before I left and advised her that she needed to open the damper if she were to add more wood. I get a phone call at around 1pm from said wife... "what's wrong with this stove?" I immediately got concerned that she forgot about the new damper and either didn't open it and smoked up the house or didn't remember to close it and burnt up the wood too quickly. Well it was neither...to my question of "what do you mean?" she says, "it's 80 bleeping degrees (I hear footsteps and a pause), no 81.3 degrees in here! What can I do to shut it off?" I giggled a little bit and asked how much wood she had added to which she replied "one piece!!!" I let her know it was alright to crack a couple of windows and turn the furnace fan on to circulate. It was down to 73 and the windows were closed when I got home at 530. Needless to say I think we'll be getting a bunch more heat and burn time outta the little Answer this winter! Thanks for everyone's help and encouragement!
Sounds good. I think I will be needing to add a pipe damper as well. Are you seeing the secondary's light off now ?
I'm still not seeing the "gas burner" effect from the secondaries that I see in other video's and pic's but I'm getting the lazy hoovering flame thing, a ton more heat, and it seems like less visible smoke. I think time will tell a better story since I haven't been able to really "let 'er buck" since it hasn't been getting very cold here lately and won't for the next week or more.
Glad its working out for you Sam, it sounds like its acting the same way mine does. The only difference in our stoves I think, is mine doesn't have the outer sheet metal convection shell like the answer does. The thing that lead me to put in the damper was that when I would lookup at the chimney cap the heat waves were just boiling out. Hated to see all that heat just lost out the pipe. Since I put in the damper the heat waves are noticeably less than when it is wide open, and there's still no smoke. About the only down side is when I get enough build up to need to run a brush up there, I do have to pop out the damper, it is a small pain but she burns so clean its only every other year. I can get the gas burner jets if I run her up real hot before closing her up, they don't seem to last more than a few minutes before the regular secondary's kick in and they last for a few hours.
You can let 'er Answer but you can't let 'er Buck unless you get a Buck. Good deal, sounds like you got your heat before winter hits.
