# Do you leave a window open?



## gizmos (Nov 30, 2010)

Hi all,

I just thought I would ask how many of you leave a window cracked open in your house? To deal with positive and negative pressure, circulation, and carbon monoxide. 

In my house, ranch style, I leave the window cracked in the laundry room. Its the farthest away from in the stove in the opposite end of the house. The wife wants it closed. She says the laundry room is too cold. So I told her to do some laundry, haha. 

Anyway, how many of you have a window cracked open?? I have 3 carbon monoxide detecters in the house. I haven't had an issue, but I've always had a window cracked. Thoughts? 

thanks,


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## Hogwildz (Nov 30, 2010)

I don't leave a window open at all. It gets too cold, and don't need heat escaping out or cold coming in.
If you leave it cracked for fear of carbon monoxide, you have 3 detectors. I have one and it has never gone off.
A good install with a good draft should have no issues with that problem. And you have had no issues and with the 3 detectors I'd say you have it covered.
Can never be too safe. For me though, a window open is not needed.


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## begreen (Nov 30, 2010)

Why on earth would you have the window farthest away from the stove cracked open? Nearest the stove, ok, maybe. Your wife has wisdom and patience. Listen to her.


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## soupy1957 (Nov 30, 2010)

Our "Living Room" (where the wood stove is located) has a large picture window, surrounded by two windows that are sliders, about a foot wide, and 2 feet high.

When the stove temps make that room VERY warm, I crack the two side windows open, and that does a few things.  It cools the room down some, yes, ........but it also pushes the cool air to the floor, giving an extra push to the heat in the room, to the rest of the house (I make use of my blower in my forced hot air system to move the air around anyway). The potential of Carbon monoxide is there, but I have a detector for that.  

Leaving the windows open all the time hasn't proven necessary.  If I have 30 people over, and they all are hanging around the living room......I build a SMALL fire, and leave the windows open til they leave. Then I close em!

-Soupy1957


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## Bobbin (Nov 30, 2010)

Depends.  The Classic in my workroom really had me scratching my head for some time after it was first installed.  Same hearth design, same interior masonry chimney, same pipe straight back into the thimble the Fireview in the house has, but the chimney flue in the bahn is longer.  Figured I was good to go.  Nope.  The stove was hard to light and I had to deal with the back-puff thing (very bad with fabrics around).  

Practical solution:  crack the window nearest the stove (about 6'), light the fire and give the stove plenty of time to burn the kindling and let the flue heat up.  Just because the flue of the chimney is inside the building doesn't mean it's anywhere near as warm as the one in our home.  Often, it's not because I don't keep the workroom heated to anywhere near the degree our home is unless I'm going to work out there.  I make sure the stove has plenty of fuel and I tend to let it run longer with the dampers open than I do with the Fireview in the house.  Once I engage the cat. I will close the upper door damper but frequently leave the bottom one open for a bit longer (along with the window).  Once I see the stovetop temperature rising steadily I'll close the lower damper down (and the window, too).  

If it one of those murky, low overcast, very still, raw days I will often run the stove with the window cracked, but not always.  Moral of the story? just because you think the stoves are the same and the installations are too doesn't necessarily mean all the variables are same.  To solve the equation you sometimes have to isolate different variables at different times to find the easy answer.


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## Fast4wood (Nov 30, 2010)

Always, but my window is close to the stove or at least in the same room.The thought is if you open up a window in other rooms(as your wife pointed out) it will bring in cold air from out side and cool down the other rooms in the house. It's simple when you think about it. Bring in a little fresh to balance out the air pressure in the house, and to give the stove positive pressure. Try it i think you will find it works.


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## CarbonNeutral (Nov 30, 2010)

If your stove is running, it's bringing in fresh air from outside regardless - if you need to cool the room, improve draft, or your house is extremely tight (sealed), then a window in the room would help. If your house is that tight, maybe an OAK would also be an option.


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## precaud (Nov 30, 2010)

CarbonNeutral said:
			
		

> ...or your house is extremely tight (sealed)...



I think this is fantasy material. Unless your building was specifically built to be that tight, it isn't.


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## CarbonNeutral (Nov 30, 2010)

precaud said:
			
		

> CarbonNeutral said:
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Agreed, some (very few) modern ones are


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## Backwoods Savage (Nov 30, 2010)

We quite often leave a window or two open.....in the summer months. During the colder months we much prefer to keep the heat inside the house.


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## shawneyboy (Nov 30, 2010)

I personally use my stove to heat my house, I would think that opening the window would do a few things, cool the room, and heat the outside, neither of which I want to do.  I do not have any issues with presure so..... open windows will wait until spring.


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## billb3 (Nov 30, 2010)

If the state of California finds your body in the chimney a few people online will know why.


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## jharkin (Nov 30, 2010)

CarbonNeutral said:
			
		

> precaud said:
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Bingo. And you will know if you live in one of these modern super tight homes since it will have one of those active heat recovery ventilator (HRV) systems - and warnings to open windows when the electric goes out.

 In such a tight house I guess an OAK for the stove is the proper solution.


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## NothingLikeWood (Nov 30, 2010)

Tight House case in point...

Highly efficient 20 year ranch style house up in Canada....(6" insulated walls, fully insulated basement including foam under the poured floor and R65 in the attic).  Baseboard electric heat, kitchen fan does not exhaust outside while bathroom fans exhaust throught the HRV (ran on high).  

Our house came with a chimney and an OAK but we installed the first stove (basement install).  I didn't understand the need for an OAK until we recently had our house tested for air leakage.  Now I know why the window crack whistles when we close the front door of the house!

Even though our house has an HRV, using our central vacuum and dryer puts our house into negative pressure...even worse effects when they are both on.  You should hear the whistling window then!

I compensate the "tightness" by cracking the window very near the stove whenever we are on a cold start or rekindling some new splits. It gets closed once the stove is dampered down (OAK provides enough).  I will open the window again (a much bigger crack - like an inch or so) if fire is on its way out and I am planning on using an appliance that sucks air out of the house.  I learned the hard way once, the CO detector got as high as 32 when I used the vacuum and there were some coals left in the stove.  

Now, if I could figure out why our hydro bill is still high in the summer I would be all set (something is an energy hog and I don't know what).


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## billb3 (Nov 30, 2010)

How tight does a house need to be if you've also got  furnaces, driers, kitchen  stove  exhausts  and  bathroom fans competing for outside air ?


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## Wood Duck (Nov 30, 2010)

gizmos said:
			
		

> ...The wife wants it closed. She says the laundry room is too cold. So I told her to do some laundry, haha...



I am no expert in stoves or marriage, but this seems like the wrong approach to the laundry problem. I have nothing to add to the open window debate.


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## Kenster (Nov 30, 2010)

Our house is pretty tight. Really good Anderson windows help with that.   But with really good wood, and a top down burn that I started doing this year, I do not need to open a window to get a good fire going quickly.  Our VC Vigilant is on an interior wall so I don't think an OAK would work even if it was needed.

Our bedroom is pretty far away from the stove.  We like it cool when we sleep and may have both a ceiling fan and a pedestal fan turned on at night.  I also enjoy the fresh air of having the window slightly cracked even when it's pretty cold outside.   A few nights ago, with no winds - absolutely dead calm - I noticed that the curtain on the window (opened about an inch or so) was standing out away from the window.  I could feel a soft, cold draft coming in.   The only possible thing that could have been pulling that draft in was the wood stove down the hall, around a corner and across a big room from that open window.
The stove was burning nicely in horizontal burn with the air intakes  almost, but not totally, shut down.   I'm not really sure what all this means.   I guess that if the house wasn't so tight there wouldn't have been such a strong draft coming out of the slightly opened window.    But what does that tell me about the stove?  Is it a good thing that the fire was burning in such a way as to create that sort of draft?


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## firefighterjake (Nov 30, 2010)

No. I'm attempting to heat my house . . . not keep the squirrels warm.

Pressure is not an issue . . . draft is not an issue once the temps are colder (only issue is in the early Fall and late Spring when temps outside are close to the temps inside) . . . and a proper draft generally means CO is not an issue (but I have CO detectors of course.)

Your wife is right.


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## xman23 (Nov 30, 2010)

Yes, our loft bedroom is at the other end of the house from the stove. It all open and gets very warm. As hard as we try, to regulate the heat, the loft gets cooking. A small issue with the window open is the fire smell will roll over the roof and come in the window. Most of the time it's not much, just a whiff of the sweet wood fire. 

Tom


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## Adios Pantalones (Nov 30, 2010)

Get an OAK.


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## ChillyGator (Nov 30, 2010)

gizmos said:
			
		

> Hi all,
> 
> I just thought I would ask how many of you leave a window cracked open in your house? To deal with positive and negative pressure, circulation, and carbon monoxide.
> 
> ...



By Paragraph:

1.  I might crack a window when a hurricane aproaches but close it quickly before it gets here.  CO detector does not require an open window.
2.  The object is to heat the house and not piss off the wife.  EPIC FAIL
3.  None


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## basswidow (Nov 30, 2010)

What would cause the CO threat?  Back fumes from the stove?  Clogged Flue and back spill into the house?  

I have an OAK, does that make my set up alittle safer? 

I have a CO detector.  It's never read anything more than zero.  I guess I should test it with something?  Maybe it needs replacing (every 5 years).  We had a scare a year ago when it chirped in the middle of the night and read 87.  We opened the windows and had a panic attack freezing and checking on the kids - only to realize later that we saw the digets upside down and they were LB for low battery - not 87.  It's a big fear of mine with a stove that we could all go to sleep and never wake up, like some news stories we always hear during the heating season.  

But I never crack a window either.  My house leaks in enough cold air as it is.  I prefer to keep all the heat my stove can put out, without making it work harder with a cracked window.  Draft is no issue for me.


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## jtb51b (Nov 30, 2010)

I do leave a window cracked. My stove is in the basement and if I do not leave a window (upstairs)  up just a hair the heat will NOT travel up the stairs. I have tried to make sense of it all, but there is none to make it just works.  Been that way a while.. Now, once the real winter hits and the stove is running at a more level pace it seems to not make as much difference.. Go figure..

Jason


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## iceman (Nov 30, 2010)

I have tried to tighten up my house which has worked but you find something else.  I leave a window cracked all the time now and it is working so far...    I discovered that cold air was actually coming in my kitchen from my forced air supply! It was coming in from the supply that was close to the filter...   after calling hvac to check duct it was discovered that it was just pressure issue.... everything I kept sealing  the air had to come in from somewhere... so since I leave a window cracked close to the stove no more air coming through the vent... 
And yes I closed it and sealed it .... the air just came in the next vent down..lol
I can not oak as my chimney is interior and no way to get outside air to it..
Bummer


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## djlarson77 (Nov 30, 2010)

My 1987 3-level split was remodeled in '05 (b4 I bought it) with new windows, siding, roof, etc.  I'm finding it is very tight with the exception of draft under the front door. I have fresh air connected directly to my T5.  I also did some tweaking to my HVAC system - for some reason they had outside air connected to the cold air return - so the furnace fan would be sucking in hot humid air in the summer and cold dry air in the winter.  I re-routed that fresh air intake into the laundry room and made a "J" near the floor.  That way if air is needed for combustion (water heater or furnace, which isn't being used) it can be drawn through the 3" tubing.  When not needed, cold air isn't pouring into the laundry room.  Seems to be working so far.


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## bboulier (Nov 30, 2010)

I only opened the window the first three times I started the stove (partly because of the smell of burning paint/chemicals).  After that, I decided to keep the heat inside.  We have a 1957 split level.  Windows have been replaced, but it's still not air tight.


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## WidowMaker (Nov 30, 2010)

We keep the window above the bed crack about an inch or lesss down to about 0 deg, below that we close or if there a stiff breeze blowing a cold north wind...


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## JotulOwner (Dec 1, 2010)

I open a window in the stove room to move air to other rooms on the first floor and upstairs and also to control the temps in the stove room. It works for me much better than fans and other methods. It's also nice having fresh air in the house in the Winter.


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## glassmanjpf (Dec 1, 2010)

I have no problem opening a window when the stove room gets to hot.  I have even taken it a step further by opening the front door.  I enjoy sharing the heat with the neighbors since they have had to put up with my log deliveries, chain saws and log splitters going for weekends on end in my front driveway (they all seem to enjoy watching me work and coming by asking questions).  

Also, since the wood is free, it's all part of keeping the house comfortable.  However, I do find myself sneaking around opening windows since the wife is not so willing to share the heat.


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## Fast4wood (Dec 2, 2010)

I don't think a oak is really nessary when a COW will do! (Crake Open Window) need we say anything more?It works trust me. :roll:


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## joefrompa (Dec 2, 2010)

I had my 35 year old home air-leak tested (seal the house, install a giant fan in the front door with some special computers and test how much pressure it generates in the house for a given fan speed and aperture). Very cool.

Anyway, my house was actually VERY tight....after I weather-sealed two access panels to the attic and did the other things recommended.

I chose NOT to try to seal off the bathroom fans better - those and a recessed light were massive air-sealing losses. But leaving them alone also kept my house from being too tight.

I'm simply relaying this because I think if you are really smart with weather sealing, you can make even a 1970s home too tight for a given family (i.e. family of 4).


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## EForest (Dec 3, 2010)

iceman said:
			
		

> I have tried to tighten up my house which has worked but you find something else.  I leave a window cracked all the time now and it is working so far...    I discovered that cold air was actually coming in my kitchen from my forced air supply! It was coming in from the supply that was close to the filter...   after calling hvac to check duct it was discovered that it was just pressure issue.... everything I kept sealing  the air had to come in from somewhere... so since I leave a window cracked close to the stove no more air coming through the vent...
> And yes I closed it and sealed it .... the air just came in the next vent down..lol
> I can not oak as my chimney is interior and no way to get outside air to it..
> Bummer



Go down the ash dump, knock out a couple bricks in basement, then run OAK across basement ceiling to exterior.


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## tfdchief (Dec 3, 2010)

Only open a window when both bathroom vents are going in the morning or when the wife uses the kitchen hood vent on high.  Either situation can cause a negative draft in my house, especially if it is not to cold or the fire is not real hot.


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## cptoneleg (Dec 3, 2010)

I open windows to keep from roasting in this house, I use them as a thermostat, don't know what I will do next year when I have some properly seasoned wood.


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## allhandsworking (Dec 3, 2010)

I work to hard for the precious heat!  I seal every crack and crevasse.  If the stove burns there is air coming in from some ware!  If it goes above 50 f I'll open a window to freshen up!


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## cptoneleg (Dec 3, 2010)

allhandsworking said:
			
		

> I work to hard for the precious heat!  I seal every crack and crevasse.  If the stove burns there is air coming in from some ware!  If it goes above 50 f I'll open a window to freshen up!


 

                 you talking about 50 in the house??


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## nojo (Dec 3, 2010)

ChillyGator said:
			
		

> 2.  The object is to heat the house and not piss off the wife.  EPIC FAIL



OWNED


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## Mr. Kelly (Jan 26, 2011)

Kenster said:
			
		

> I noticed that the curtain on the window (opened about an inch or so) was standing out away from the window.  I could feel a soft, cold draft coming in.   The only possible thing that could have been pulling that draft in was the wood stove down the hall, around a corner and across a big room from that open window.



With this occurrence in mind, it does show the need for a small crack in a window... but near the stove.  Knowing that a burning stove is going to suck air from somewhere, might as well be near the stove that it sucks from, otherwise, the stove will create an indoor pressure that will precipitate sucking air in from the outside from whatever available portal there is, i.e., cracks in the foundation, around windows, etc..  That means cool air coming in from who knows where.

So, I give the stove a path of least resistance, and crack the window near the stove about 1" all burning season long.


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