Yo bro
So I’ve been thinking about illegally installing my old Vermont Castings wood/coal stove in my NEW 30 x 30 shop. nine + ft ceilings.
As you know my roof is all wood shingled as well as the rest of this house.
I’m concerned about sparks and this ol’ crib burning down…..specially cause I’d be installing it with no permit like most people (probably including you) do.
I have a new friend (my building inspector) that I feel is trustworthy enough to speak to about this issue….taxes..hassle etc etc…
Yet my question to you is……how safe or degtrimetal do you think wood stoves are towards the roof (not the shop….I already know about that).
Sorta weird in the sense that wood stoves were all they had back then yet I’m a bit worried about the concept.
I know how high the pipe needs to be above the ridge and how far away but do you think its worth it?
PS….Soapstone countertops really wear well according to Shglaw and my daughters new inlaws….lol <W>
Be well brother
andy
The secret of Zen in two words is, “Not always so”!
Replies
Not sure what you mean by illegally. They are not illegal in my town.
do you mean not according to codes or simply not getting a permit and still doing an installation to standards?
As far as the roof sparks thing, i installed half of them over wood roofs without concern. You want a rain cap with a spark arrestor to start with and an extra foot of heioght over the minimum will help too, 'cause thsoe sparks cool quickly while flaoting through the air. The biggest concern with burning wood is chimney fires. Keep it clean, and sparks will seldom be flying out the top end. But get some creosote flaming away and you will see a volcano of sparks up there.
The other big concern is that you keep it the distance from conbustables inside that is recommended by the manufacturer. i think for yours it is 18" unless you also shield the wall, in which case, it drops to9" - but - the chimney pipe still needs a minimum of 18" to combustables.
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Hey Piff..while your thinking about it..I am using single wall (black pipe) till I get up to my chase. Is that 18"? I didn't think it was that far. once I pass into the chase I am going to insulated, and I thought that was 2" but I will read what the manufactureer says I have not got it yet.
I agree with the cap and cleaning schedule..I have been cooking logs for most of my life, had one chim. fire in a mas. flue..what a trip. Never again, and man, a steel pipe would be scary.
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The insulated calss A "Zero-clearance" pipe does need a cleaarance of 2" is right. The single wall needs 18" according to the standards I am familiar with, and I can think of a couple of times that I wasn't too sure if that was enough when that hummer was glowing red!
Andy, put a damper in the pipe too. It can help to temper down a fast burn.
And I think you said in the shop? Be careful about the possibuility of dust fire/explosions. Try to not when there is a lot of fine dust in the air, and always remember when openning to reload with wood, to crack it open a bit first to let the air get to accelerating up the chimney. The reason is that with a choked down slow combustor, you have a lot of commbustable gasses evaporated from the wood that haven't burned off yet. Suddenly openning the door to a lot of oxygen in the presence of heat and those gasses can result in an explosion. More than one person haas had a broken wrist from a stover door flinging open too quick for them, along with a burnt face.
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Sorta weird in the sense that wood stoves were all they had back...
don't wanna burst your bubble, but your house predates wood stoves - - all they had back then were fireplaces...
on a practical note, install a insulated, stainless steel chimney system - heats up quickly, so it draws well, there is seldom (never) any creosote buildup, and clearances drop to 2" - -
Yeah but, I am lookin at prices of 25.oo a ft. for SS isul pipe. I gotta go 30' all in all, 9 of it HAS to be insul, the interior can be single wall.
And yep..the never had a woodstove back then..I think franklin started the thing, no?
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I always heard Franklin - and google seems to agree...
They were originally called "Pennsylvania Fire-Places," and Franklin himself wrote the first advertisement to publicize the stove, in which he claimed: "If you sit near the Fire, you have not that cold Draught of uncomfortable Air nipping your Back and Heels, as when before common Fires. . .being scorcht before, and, as it were, froze behind."
http://www.goodtimestove.com/heating_stoves/franklin_card.html"there's enough for everyone"
Right. Before franklin, the height of efficiency in this country was Rumsford fireplaces. In Scandinavia, and across asia, thru Rus and to china, they had warming benches and masonry heaters where the fire/smoke circulated through a sleeping bench before heading out up the chimney. it wasn't that different in principle from the old Roman baths or suspended swimming pools where a fire was kindled in the cellar below the baths.
In all thiose, the principle used was to capture the heat in masonry before it left the building and let the masonry radiate it back in to the rooms. With wood stoves, the principle used is to control the rate of combustion by controling the amt of O2 that gets to the burning material.
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I gotta go 30' all in all, 9 of it HAS to be insul, the interior can be single wall.
And you want that 21' of single wall to radiate as much heat as it can. That's what I do in my shop. Black works great except the elbows don't seem to last more than a couple of years.
No chance of used stainless insulated pipe there? I've been lucky a couple of times here. Get a whole run for 100 bucks. Reason for removal? They never used it.PAHS Designer/Builder- Bury it!
David
Thanks for the bees wax again.I just got it in the mail///
I have something from NY that I wanna send you........your return address was kinda smudged but when I opened the newspaper you packed it in I saw in that Farmers Newspaper yer afdress...really not 100% sure .......please E me yer address my brother cause I have sumpin to send ya
Yer brother in arms
andyThe secret of Zen in two words is, "Not always so"!
http://CLIFFORDRENOVATIONS.COM
David.
I did install the SS insulated chim a few months after I moved in here bro...
But the only fireplace I know of that will actually heat a house rather than sucking out the heat is a ..........ohhh shid.whats it called?
I'm too tired to go through the alphabet....
Did ya get my Email fer yer address?
####The secret of Zen in two words is, "Not always so"!
http://CLIFFORDRENOVATIONS.COM
ya - piffen nailed it - Rumsford - used to have a good book on building them - couldn't find it last time I wanted it - by Vrest Orton, IIRC...
check your email for the address - "there's enough for everyone"
The idea of using single wall pipe to get extra heat (and I followed it for years) has a major drawback. The more heat lost from flue gasses after the exit the stove itself, the more creosote forms in the flue.
Simpson, IIRC, manufactures a double wall interior stove pipe which allows for as little as 8" of clearance, if that is a concern. I think they call it DVL pipe. Check their website.
Use of the double wall pipe from stove to ceiling or wall keeps down the chance of a creosote flue fire.
Out of curiousity, did you use fire retardant treated wood shingles/shakes? Are they required in your locale?
You're unique! Just like everyone else! Scott Adams
The idea of using single wall pipe to get extra heat (and I followed it for years) has a major drawback. The more heat lost from flue gasses after the exit the stove itself, the more creosote forms in the flue.
That's certainly true, but only important if you run your stove so cool as to get appreciable creosote formation. I clean my pipe yearly but wonder why I bother, maybe half a coffee can of creosote/soot for its 30'. Not an issue for here.PAHS Designer/Builder- Bury it!
Agreed.
The temp of the flue gasses is most important to those who live in very cold climates, which lets out you, me, and Andy.You're unique! Just like everyone else! Scott Adams
nope....I used untreated shingles but have been thinking of finding a fire retardent I can spray on the roof.
Thanks Has and
Be well bro
andyThe secret of Zen in two words is, "Not always so"!
http://CLIFFORDRENOVATIONS.COM
Our code here is something like 3 feet above the highest peak , but 4 works even better. A hood cover with spark arrestor has worked well, over my cedar shake roof and is a little over five feet above peak and its worked for over 25 years.
Tim Mooney
What is your opinion on double wall pipe eliminating creosote? Reducing I can believe, but eliminating seems optimistic.
As I understand it there are two choices. Use single walled pipe and run the wood stove hot so that the gases stay hot enough in the pipe to prevent creosote condensing out. The pipe serves the prime heat transfer. That's the design where the stove is in the front room, the stove pipe runs through the house and the chimney is at the back.
This uses alot of wood and results in a very hot wood stove. The trick is to balance the heat of the exhaust so that you don't waste too much heat up the chimney and yet don't generate creosote. The old Quebec heaters (cracker barrel) and Franklin stoves were set up with lots of air being let into the stove, the exhaust gase flow is controlled with the damper which provides the heating control.
While putting a double lined stove pipe on this type of stove is safer, it defeats the purpose of heat transfer through the pipe.
The other approach is to maximise heat transfer through the stove, not the pipe. These stoves use air control as the prime heat control. Double or triple lined stove pipe is used, as heat transfer from the pipe is not important for heating the space. Most of these units don't even have dampers.
The double or triple walled stove pipe insulates the pipe to keep the inside layer of the pipe hot so that condensation does not occur. The fire can then burn at a lower temperature, saving wood while reducing the chance of creosote. You need dryer wood with this approach or you will still get creosote.
The trick is to keep the interior surfaces of the stove pipe and chimney hot enough to prevent condensation of the creosote.
An ex-boat builder treading water!
I would correct that modestly.
A trple wall protects tjhe combustables nearby by cooling the pipe with air flow. The insulated solid pack protects by insdulating, so the interior walls of it stay warmer and experinece less creosote condensation.
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Good point! thanksAn ex-boat builder treading water!
Creolsote is a condensate of the gases springing from combustion of imperfect fuels.
As moisture condenses at or below a certain temperature, these vapours will ciondense into creosote tars at or below a certain temperature. The exact temp escapes me, but 275°F sticks in mind.
So the key to reducing creosote buildup is to keep a chimney stack at least that warm.
A triple wall chimney works by cooling the metal with circulated air, resulting in generally lower temps than with insulated solid pack type "Metalbestos" chimmeys.
A phenomenon I saw often in Colorado, where softwoods are commonly burned ( these contain mor tars per BTU than hardwoods do) is that when temps outside dropped to twenty below zero or more, and homes heated with wood had the triple wall puipers, the portiojn sticking bove the roof couldeasily bwecome completely blocked with creosote within three or four weeks - just in that upper three or four feet!
The solid pack insulated class A pipes did not seem to suffer as badly from this effect.
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Thanks for your earlier answer. I was looking at something Saturday which raised more questions...Pellet heaters.
Do the pellets generate any creosote at all? Are there any similar residues from burning corn?
The heaters I saw direct vent through the wall using an insulating thimble. The pipe coming out of the stove was too warm to leave your hand on for long, but not hot enough to burn you quickly. Any thoughts on venting through the glass block window of a walk out basement?
Will a pellet heater have the same dehumidifying effect that a wood stove has?
pellet burners came out after I got out of that industry. They claim to burn cleaner and safer. I don't know.
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My BIL has one and swears by it. It does provide a dry heat. The only disadvantage is that most require electricity so the are no good if there is a power failure. clearly you have to buy processed fuel, but fuel storage is neat and they seem to generate less ash than a log burner.An ex-boat builder treading water!
Pellet heaters as has been noted require an electrical source to power the blower that provides air for the combustion. As far as producing less ash, that might be possible due to the higher combustion temperatures of the 'forced draft' created by the blower. The fuel is sold in 100lb bags; usually delivered on skids as a winter's worth of fuel is several tons. I'm not personally sure whether I'd prefer hauling 60 or 80 100lb. sacks around to stacking hundreds of 15-pound cordwood logs; 'half-a-dozen-of-one, six-of-the-other' as my maternal grandma used to say. I guess it would depend on whether the forklift can roll right into your storage area....
To ALL and Andy C: Just to clear up a few 'smokey' ideas floating around earlier in the thread, if I might do so from the Northern perspective:
The reason we do not run insulated pipe inside a building--except when boxed inside a small chimney chase, where it is obligatory--is to keep the air inside the pipe warm enough so that it doesn't prevent the stove from drawing when you first light it. A 10-foot tall column of air at -5C sitting in your inside smoke pipe will require you to pre-warm the chimney by flash-firing sheets of newspaper or birch bark or some similar fuel. Even so, it will smoke into the house unless you open a door or window or two nice and wide to provide plenty of 'make-up air' until the chimney is nice and warm.
Standard pre-fabricated stainless chimney size for a modern wood-stove is 6" ID. These stoves DO NOT I REPEAT DO NOT use a damper on the pipe. This will mess up the draw and reduce the stove's efficiency. The burn rate is controlled by a combination of the INLET air control on the stove and the amount and size of fuel put into the fire box.
Up until about 10-12 years ago, a lot of stoves, especially the old Franklins ('the best way to heat up the air over your house!!') used 8" ID pipe with 1" solid insulation. These pipes were rated to 1000 degrees IIRC. Since that time, the insurance companies and code agencies have pretty much insisted on a minimum of 2" solid insulated pipe, good for 2200 degrees.
ANY SOLID-FUEL STOVE WILL PRODUCE COMBUSTIBLE DEPOSITS ON THE CHIMNEY WALLS. ALL CHIMNEYS NEED TO BE CLEANED ON A REGULAR BASIS, MINIMUM ANNUALLY OR SEMI-ANNUALLY DEPENDING ON USAGE, FUEL TYPE, BURN RATE, AND PIPE CONFIGURATION.
Burning good, dry hardwood in a well-designed 'air-tight' stove such as a Jotul will produce a much smaller amount of creosote deposits than burning green soft-wood in an old Franklin equipped with an exit damper, for example. But it will still produce some, and it's wiser (and a requirement of your insurance company, who would just LOVE to find a reason not to pay you after a fire) to clean the thing before you start to worry about it, say every summer when you stop using it. (That avoids the rush season for the chimney sweep in the fall....)
Finally, and to respond to Andy C's original question: There are many shake-roofed buildings up here, including several traditional furniture-maker's shops, that are heated by wood stoves; of course, most of the time when the stove is in use, there's a 2-3' thick snow blanket on those shakes. However, Piffin's comment about the sparks cooling quickly as they fall through the air is correct. If you're using a good-design modern 'air-tight' and install a 2200-degree pre-fab chimney correctly, you should be okay.Dinosaur
'Y-a-tu de la justice dans ce maudit monde?
Thanks for the comments on the pellet burners. Your observations on wood burning reflect the way I was taught to do it, particularly about dry wood and annual cleaning.
Any thoughts on creosote in pellet burning?
It's basically wood, even if it's been ground up and then squished into little rabbit turds. Of course, what kind of wood is in those pellets is a question of faith and labeling.... The mitigating factor would be again that the fuel burns at a relatively high temperature due to the forced draft, and thus theoretically it ought to produce less creosote deposits than a less-efficient system.
After burning 10 cords of dry hardwood, my (non-catalytic) Jotul No. 3 produces about a litre of creosote deposits in an exhaust system that consists of 3' of uninsulated black smoke pipe, an insulated T, and 25' of 2200-degree 2" solid insultated pre-fab stainless chimney pipe. 60% of the deposits are in that 3' horizontal section of black smoke pipe; 30% are accumulated on the rain cap at the top of the chimney, and the remaining 10% are deposited along the length of the 25' vertical insulated section.
The stove burns continuously all winter. I stuff it full in the morning and leave it on a very low setting during the day when I am away at work. I re-load it on top of the remaining coals when I come home in the evening and kick it up to full blast to warm the house back up for the evening. When I go to bed, I load it up again and leave it on a medium low setting, then toss another log in about 3am when I get up to pi$$. So that routine probably contributes to more creosote deposits than would be the case if I were home all the time and burning the stove hotter during the day. Still, a liter per 426 cubic feet (10 cords) of fuel ain't bad....Dinosaur
'Y-a-tu de la justice dans ce maudit monde?
Some of the new woodstoves with the catalytic combusters on them are designed to burn 'clean'. So when the stove gets up to temp, it should basically burn off all the harmful crap that would cause creosote to buildup or sparks to fly up the pipe.
But adding technology to your woodstove also adds to the price. Here is a site I've mentioned before. I think all of their wood stoves use the catalytic combuster.
http://www.woodstove.com/
Can anyone tell me how I am supposed to clean my wood burning stove (old Vermont Castings) chimney? The local fire department (Vinalhaven, ME) periodically issues baleful warning about the need to do it and will even lend HO's a brush. I'm not having much luck in getting any "how to" advice nor are there any pro chimneysweeps on the island. Also the roof is 12/12. Do I climb up, install roof jacks, lower the brush, do up and down, etc.?? How do I know when I am done? The DW is getting freaked and nagful over this.
OK, sit down for this. In the old days, a dead goose was pulled by a rope either way worked as long as th feathers were scrubbing.
next idea was a small conifer tree, same idea...scrub.
then some one got schmart..used a chain, wallered it around and scraped the sides...bad idea..it loosened the liner (if so equipped)
then a advance in metalurgy invented the brush..and a rope..see-saw action did the job, but needed 2 bodies..
now we have fiberglass rods..so, ya go up TOP and stuff in da brush, add more rod, push it down, add more rod ..keep doin that..now ya pull it back up..leaving the rod floppin around like a whip..and reapeat the push it down part..only takes a few swipes if the flue is straight and somewhat well burnt out.
IF ya must do it from below..its a LOT nastier..cus I fergot to say that from the top, ya close off the hearth..with plastic and duct tape..ya also wanna have a flash lite to inspect the flue, and a shopvac for the crud..a LOT of crud..if it's GOOEY crud..you gotta change your habits..if it's powder..Oaky doaky//
mask, gloves, small shovel (ash type) and a vacuume..
OH, make sure the fire is OUT first.
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And when you're looking at the ash in the cleanout..or after the cleanout (chimney_ash.jpg), you really don't wanna see orange ash. As a clue of what the orange ash likely is from, look at the second pic (chimney_flue.jpg).
jt8
Salmon brick..needs a liner NOW.
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I was assuming a terracotta liner (early 1900's house), but yes, certainly needs some work. I suggested having the sweep give it a clean and then install a SS liner. Figured the sweeping would break lose any more loose bits of the old liner.
They have a fairly substantial chimney, I would WAG that they could get by with single wall SS (cheaper than double-wall) and properly installed (and maintained), it will probably outlast the ho's.
Two more pics of the same fp. "fp" shot shows the actual fireplace (ok, bad shot, but I had cropped it out of another pic). "cleanout" was an interesting shot. I stuck the digital camera through the small cleanout door and aimed upwards. So we're looking at the underside of the fp floor. That is the ash pit door towards the top of the pic. The large area below it is where you'd be standing if you were standing on the brickwork in front of the fp. Digital cameras are cool! No way you could get a better view with a mirror.
The ash pit area (guessing) is a space about 7' tall, maybe 5' wide and somewhere around 2-3' deep. You could probably wait until Spring to empty that sucker out! But in its current condition, I wouldn't recommend they use the fp.jt8
Double wall pipe, different from the silver exel chimney, has a 6" clreance from combustables. Excellent to use prior to a floor or conecting to chimney pipe. I have use sheet metal to protect combustables. the 3'x? used with and 1' copper cuppling gives you the air space needed. I highly recomend the adjustable 48" to 68" pipe to make your last connection of pipe. It eliminater cutting and cripping.
I'm curious under what standards 6" is OK? 9" is what I am familiar with for double wall to combustables.
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"Salmon brick"
When I lived in PA I worked with an old guy who had a story for everything and was very happy to tell it...
Anyways, we were demoing a chimney in a building that might have been as old at 1786 (should that be "olde"?) He kept referring to the bricks as being salmon bricks, and to date I have not heard anyone else refer to it by that name.
Is this a regional thing you picked up when you were in PA or have you heard it elsewhere? He also told us that the bricks were brought over as ballast for ships that were empty on trips from Europe to America. Like I said, lots of stories...
Jon Blakemore
It mat have been a Philly induced name, I don't really remember. I saw the brick kilns in Quakertown when I was in highschool ( one of our favorite spots to go'parking') and seem to remember from Williamsburg, any brick not fired to a glaze on the surface was called a Salmon brick.
I think it was due to the pink vs red/brown of fully 'cooked' bricks. Bricks vary a lot from region to region, around here in Ky we also have 'clinker bricks' made from coal ash and clay.
As far as ballast and ships, that sounds plausible, ANY building material was welcome, esp. nails.
I do recall in Pipeorgans from the 1800's bricks were used to weight the bellows ( a method to help regulate the air presssure) and they were wrapped in paper to help them not gain too much weight frrom moisture, thus becoming too heavy for the supply side of air to lift the bellows. Those bricks were often called salmon too. soft and pink, not what ya want for building.
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Repairs, Remodeling, Restorations.