Wood smell in house

I get that a lot when its warmer outside than inside. I dont know what it is but the house cools off faster than the outside and when it does that I get a smokey smell in the house.

 

I get it sometimes
Lows push the smoke down & it get sucked into the house.
I always go check the stove though, if I smell is stronger there , I
Check that the draft is good.

Got CO alarms ?

 

CO IS Carbon Monoxide (one carbon atom and one oxygen atom) produced by incomplete combustion.. No difference.. You are good with the detector that you have..

 

WS, I too get the smell once in awhile. Even to the point that I go outside and check things out! Maybe just have overly cautious sniffers?
It has always been due to weather conditions and I'm thinking that your cause of smell is the same. Now is the time to burn your favorite smelling wood!!

 

Check your gaskets and or seams around the top of the stove. I used to have this issue at times on my old Dutchwest and found that even though the chimney was drafting fine if there is a loose gasket or seam smoke/CO will still make it's way out of the stove. I used to use a handheld CO detector to find the spot and trust me when you went over the spot it would skyrocket on the readings. I never saw smoke a single time but I would definitely get a wood smell that usually alerted me to it.

 

A few times in previous years, when starting a fire in a cold stove when the outdoor temperature is similar to or warmer than the house interior, I've had enough of a downdraft through the flue to push visible smoke out into the living room right through the stove's combustion air inlet. I've learned to predict it by momentarily holding my hand at the front of the baffle just inside the top of the stove door when I'm about to light the new fire. If I can feel a draft of outside air coming down the chimney, then I need to do something to reverse that flow before lighting the fire unless I want a smoky living room. Sometimes it's as easy as cracking open a window, and sometimes I have to find some way to warm up the top of the stove a little, e.g. a heat gun, hair dryer or a crumpled piece of newspaper stuffed above the baffle and lit.

 

With my s Cat stove,
I notice the stack temps are pretty low.
When you get a "Low pressure" weather event, & have real cold outside temps
the possibility of a "down draft" flow is increased.

Tight stove pipe to the chimney &
dry wood are more important for the new stoves than with the old smoke dragons.

couple years ago I went to double wall stove pipe, for that reason,
to keep the exhaust pipe warmer & more air tight, to prevent down draft.
I also checked for leaks in the stove pipe, & wrapped tinfoil over the joints & seams that had air leaks.

I had a CO alarm a few times with the old single wall pipe.
That gets your attention !

Been good to go since, but still have a few occasion that I have to
go outside, pull the chimney plug, light some newspaper to get a draft started before I start a fire,
I've smoked the house on a new fire start up after a winter vacation a few times.
20 feet of 0° air is heavy.

 

We were getting that until I finally knocked the crap off the screen at the top of the pipe, we don't have the smell anymore.

 

As far as the high or low pressure system might be involved in creating a flow down the stack there would have to be more involved then just being in the middle of a low pressure system. As long as the pressure inside the house was stable and equal to the outside pressure there should be no flow up or down the stack caused by being in a low or high pressure system. The situation that would cause flow down the stack would low pressure in the house and higher pressure outside. The situation that could create that would be if you had been sitting in a low pressure system for a while giving the air in the house time to equalize, and then a high pressure system started moving in. As the high pressure system starts to move in it would want to equalize in the house by flowing in through every available opening in the house, including the chimney stack, thus creating a down flow. The faster the system was moving in, and the greater the pressure differential, the stronger the down draft would be.
The opposite would be true if a low pressure system moved in after being in a high pressure system, the air in the house would begin to decompress and you should notice a better draw in your chimney. So really it is the change in outside pressure systems that should effect the draft, not just being stable in one system or the other.
If there is a reason that just being stuck in a low pressure system would cause a down flow in the chimney, I would like to have it explained to me?

 

Have the smoke issue here once in a while too WS. Usually when it's not cold outside and the winds are swirling. Smoke just gets shoved down around the house where air is being drawn in through cracks and crevices due to the stove's draft. I kinda like it... long as I can see across the room...

 

Used toget that in the winter when we had fog over snow. I don't get that with the pellet stove u less I go outside.

 

Had this happen tonight. Strong smoke smell in my hallway of all places. The air conditioner return is in the hallway but I don't think that has anything to do with it. I check all around the stove with a flashlight, checked the attic and EVERYTHING else I could think of for smoke. It was warm today and rain is moving in. Started a new fire in a cold stove. Smoke was just kind of staying level with the chimney. Beats me. I did leave the stove door open just a touch to long and she got hot too, so that could be part of it.

 

I get it once in awhile. I will watch the kindling when first starting a fire and if I start to get some smoke fill up in the stove I crack a widow that is close to the stove and the smoke instantly clears up. Once the fire gets going then I can close the window and keep a good draft with no problems. Sometimes I think it is the wind here.

 

Ive been getting it once in a while too, thought I read some people had that problem with the PH's when they first came out, maybe its not the PH but other factors contributing, doesn't bother me, its a slight smell and I kinda like it.