Strange thing happened this morning,well strange to me anyway, I reloaded this morning at 175 stovetop, just put 3 to 4 smaller splits in, mix of oak and maple to get things going again, though not to much because supposed to warm up a bit today, and got a pretty fast flame going again, slowly worked the damper down as the stove top rose to 250. As normal hit 250 in approx 35min, set damper to 1 and engaged cat. Thought I would get in the recliner and catch a little more sleep before the wife got up and I was just drifting off when the faint smell of smoke awakened me, I got up and looked at the stove and couldn't see any smoke escaping anywhere so for a second or two I was scratching my head until all of a sudden "WOOF" sound came from the stove and a puff of smoke came from underneath the top on all sides, also at this same instant a large flame filled the firebox and then was gone. It was doing this about every 15 secs. I wasn't sure what was going on, this has never happened before, the only think I could think of I had done differently was I usually set the damper to around .75 when cat is engaged and this morning I set it to 1. So I just inched the damper down to about .50 and I that seemed to fix it. After about 10 min I adjusted back to .75 and now all seems well. I just would like some explanation of this phenomena. I have heard about this condition but just have never seen it myself, really strange. Oh, house temp 71 and outside temp 44, thanks. :gulp: