Ideas on solving a smokey wood burner??

bruster

Member
Few years ago, my son bought an old family home that had a Clayton woodburner(never burned a log, but fully installed)in the basement
The 3 flue chimney was never lined, so my son had it lined(stainless flex, with 2 45? bends before the straight vertical run) then capped with a expanded metal critter stopper
Now the problem!
The burner worked just fine for 3 months, but within a few days, began to not clear the firebox of smoke, and every time the door is opened......smoke rolls out of the door into the cellar!
He used the same stoaking methed for the past 3 months with no problems.
The chimney runs up the middle of the house, and ends 6.5' above the ridgeline of the roof.
Had the flue cleaned, has draft pulling at an open flame at the door.....darn thing STILLsmokes!
Any ideas, or comments on something we may not be seeing?
 
May have to tight of a house so it has negative air flow try opening an out side door and see if in still smokes back.
 
To get any wood burner to draw right the chimney needs to be hot,open the drafts wide open for awhile and let it burn hard will help.Also air pressure and outside temperature will
have an effect also.If nothing else set a box fan in front of the door when you open it.
 
You didn't say how big the liner was? Or how long? But, the first thing I would do is clean the chimney. Best thing is a brush the size of the liner, drop a weighted line and pull it from top to bottom. Trying to push a brush up through two 45's will be a task. I do hope you have a cleanout door in the bottom. Hiring a Chimney Sweep will break the bank, but that is a last resort.

I have a wood furnace and burn dry hardwood, 6 foot x 6 inch stove pipe and 18 foot x 7 inch tri-wall chimney. Recommended size by stove manufacturer. Still have to clean stove pipe every 2 months and chimney every year or get smoke. Some say to let the fire really rip for 30 minutes every morning and the creosote will burn out.....doesn't work for me.

Bill
 
Hello buster,

Open a window a couple of minutes before you open the stove door. Feel and see if you feel a draft If that helps the stove smoking you got the answer,

Guido.
 
Still some questions that need answering.

How many times during those 3 months was a fire made in the stove?

How long did the fires last on average?

What kind of wood, and was it properly seasoned?

Has the house been re-sided over the years?

Has an HVAC system been installed at any point since the original stove installation? Was it EVER in use while fireplace was on?

While there's no possible way for anyone to give you a certain answer from online, providing this information may greatly help in offering some possible problems. Best thing to do would be to first call in an experienced chimney sweep and have them clean the chimney. Inform them ahead of time how much use the chimney has seen and what kind of wood you're burning, then ask if your chimney compares with other similarly lined chimneys.

One possible problem that could happen in that time is a buildup of creosote on the liner walls. If the chimney wasn't pulling a proper draft to begin with, and/or the firebox was not burning hot enough, it could result in incomplete combustion, which would send unburned gases up the chimney. Yet if there was not enough draft to get those gases out at the top, then they could stick to the liner with creosote.

I looked up Clayton wood stoves. Seems most are these upright-rectangular models. They look build fairly heavy duty, and I doubt the problem lies with the stove. At this point, JUST AS A GUESS, I would say you're not getting the ash solids and heavier gases out the top of the chimney and the liner is now well-coated, further reducing the ability to exhaust out the top.

Please, DO NOT try to build a good, hot fire in the box until it can be looked at and cleaned!! If this is as I suspect, then in the future, you may need hotter fires than what have been burned these past 3 months.

So what happens if you "do" build another fire, and make it hot? You could ignite the creosote and literally melt your new liners. NOT a good thing to mess with here!

Also keep in mind that newer stoves recirculate unburned gases whereas older stoves liked having hotter, cleaner fires.
 
Two things I can think of:

Did you check the screen on top for plugging when chimney was cleaned?

Did you try leaving a window open a bit and make sure exhaust fans are off when opening door?
 
If he has a chimney cleanout, check and make sure it is sealed tight. My neighbor had the same problem, and the hinge pin was broken on his cleanout door, and it wasn't shutting tight. Fixed the door and the smoke problem was gone.

Any kind of ventilation system in the home that draws a vacuum on the house interior will ruin your chimney draft. I've even wondered about clothes dryers.

I also wonder if he has a horizontal section of pipe from the stove to the chimney. Surely he's checked that pipe to see if it is partially obstructed.

This stainless flex liner - could you run a bore scope of some kind down it? I wonder if it has done something funny after repeating heating/cooling cycles.
 
1. The flue is 7" o.d. and has a straight fun of +/- 30'
2. Had a Chimney sweep clean and found a light coat of creosote (got half of a 5 gal bucket of crap!)
3. Wood used has been under cover 2 years, and mostly oak with some maple and cherry mixed in
4. Have tried opening windows and doors to change basement pressure
5. House is timber frame built in 1900 (new windows in cellar and house installed 7 months prior to using woodburner
6. The biggest uestion is to WHY this problem started after 3 months of burning!
After cleaning, he tried hotter fires, but just got more smoke lol!

Side note: My boy used the same methods taught by his grandfather(a woodburner of 30 odd years) from choosing, cutting, drying and feeding the burner
The answer is out there, just gotta keep lookin!
 
It has to be something simple, because it is simple physics.

The south east side of the screen plugged up on my folks wood burner one really cold night when the wind was out of the NW, ended up taking the screen off. My fireplace will puff if I do not crack a window, or if an exhaust fan is run when I open the door.
 
Some good suggestions below, but my first thought is take that stinking cap off the top and throw it as far as you are capable of throwing it, or drive over it about 50 times so you can never use it again. As soon as those things get the least bit dirty they will mess up your draft. I don't think I have seen any chimney with one of those on that it wasn't removed within a few months.
 
Our woodburner can be real fussy to get started. There are a few tricks to get it started without a backdraft.

First, I turn off our gas-fired boiler. The draft up the boiler flue will generate a backdraft in the woodburner.

Then I stick my hand in the woodburner and check for a draft coming down the chimney. If I feel one, I open a door or window on whichever side of the house faces the wind.

In addition to the regular tender and kindling, I roll a page of newspaper into a ball and stuff it up inside the chimney. I light it as I'm lighting the rest of the fire; it will burn and quickly get a draft flowing up the chimney. Once the fire is going good with no backdraft, I can restart the boiler and close the doors and windows.
 
I agree with Donald, I did not have a good experience with a chimney cap critter guard. Just did not draft as well. Only critters ever got in the chimney clear down to the furnace were two wood ducks. gobble
 
Like you, I find the most mysterious thing about this is that it was all right for three months (doing all the right things), and then it stopped being all right. That makes if seem that what you need to be searching for is a change in the situation, not a change in operating procedures. The advice that you should start by having the chimney/flexible flue liner cleaned is mostly proof that people don't read carefully.

I have a woodstove that has always had the problem that your son started having after three months. The configuration of my stove is similar to what you describe but with some very important differences. The flexible stainless steel liner is inside a masonry flue, it is a straight up run, and it is less than 25'. My stove is a highly rated Scandinavian one, and online reviews of it don't suggest that my problem occurs often. I have developed some operating procedures which have helped, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to share them since your son's procedures were good enough for three months. How about a change in the weather? Wind direction or velocity, barometric pressure, humidity, etc.

Good luck with this. If you solve the puzzle, please let us know. Aside from it being something that I might benefit from, mysteries like this are just interesting to me.

Stan
 
what is the model number of the Clayton? Does it have the heat reclamation contraption. I have has 2 and both behaved differently. A 1800 and a 1457 I always used the natural draft below the fire bed. Half a bucket of creosote is a lot for draft control in one of those. Mine would not burn well if it had much junk in the pipe. Also the comments about the pipe cap is true. May have to modify it for a good burn .
 
How much draft though? Is there a spot you can get a mirror to look up the chimney? And yes take the cap off. Three months is more then enough to build up with creosote if not burning seasoned wood!
 

You can get a draft meter that will measure the amount of vacuum, or pressure, in hundreds of inches of water column.
Don't know about wood, but an oil furnace should have - 0.04 inches of water column over fire.

Dusty
 
CHIMNEY CAP / CRITTER GUARD
This one fits over the whole 3 flue chimney
Dimentions 50" long - 24" high - 24"wide, with 3/4"?1.5" expanded metal

Draft is provided by a lake that has a constant wind coming up from the valley in the west
When the fire is burning, you can see plunty of smoke that is blown to the front or side, as there are only a number of days you can count on your hand where there is NO wind
 
Besides all of the other good comments, here's one way out there,
but maybe.........
We bought a brand new woodburner, not an expensive one but something to
have aux heat available.
Only used it a few months and then not for a few years.
Thanks to the emerald ash borer, had some ash to burn, last year.
After buncha fixes, climbing on the roof, calking the joints on the pipe etc, finally caught the thing smoking when I was looking.
It was the pipe collar joint (inside the outer jacket) where it was bolted to the firebox with a gasket, that was loose! Apparently, the gasket had shrunk, or never was tightened.
 
I have burned wood for heat for years. Weather is always a factor on how a chimney draws. Some days there is nothing you can do to stop smoke from coming out when you open the door. If you have a bit of time, you can open up all the drafts for 5 min. before you open the door. That will get the wood burning rather than smoldering. That should clear the fire box.
Loren
 
The height of your chimney above the roof can be an issue.

When first installed ours was up to code and standards for the style of building it was in.

The one in 20 fires we would light if there was even a slight east wind we would have a heck of a time getting it going without smoking out the place.

Added 3 feet more chimney and the required support rods for the height, problem solved.
 

The large smouldering air limited fire has low stack temperature . The difference between outside ambient air temp and density vs stack temperature and density is what "makes draft".
There are pusher smoke fans that go in the stack and force draft.
As previously stated , any negative pressure in the house vs outside and it smoke time.
Do the prevaling winds have a seasonal shift ? We used to have a chimmney that drew excellent south, west and north but would force a breeze down the stack if the fire was out and if the furnace door was open. During odd occassion of east winds we just let the fire burn down to coals and out .
 
Is any pipe between the fire box and chimney insulated, or single-wall?

I lived in a house that the previous owner had installed 5 feet of single wall pipe horizontally before going into triple-wall insulated. It would creosote shut in a couple weeks. Couple more pieces of triple-wall fixed it.
 

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