Hello all ! Am a new member here but have learned a ton from this site over the years. I never bothered to register and post here, cause I could always find what I needed by searching the forums on my own. However.......
I have a Century Hearth non-cat wood stove. I installed it myself 4 years ago and have loved the stove, and had ZERO problems till about 3 weeks ago.
It has started smoking into the house a little bit when I open the door to add wood. This has gradually gotten worse and worse over the past few weeks. Now it's to the point that whenever I need to add wood, it smokes up the house bad. After I add the wood and shut the door, it takes a long time to catch-up so I can shut the air off... and then it doesn't burn like it should. The smoke is just not leaving like it should.
I have checked my flu, and it is clean as a pin , with zero build-up. The pipe from stove to thimble is clean. And the thimble is clean.
My wood is ALL hardwood, and has been cut , split , and stacked in the dry for at least One year.
Today, I let it burn out and cool down so I could take it apart. I pulled the pipe off the stove and looked into the top of the stove. It had some very fine ashes built-up about an inch deep across the top of the burn chamber. So I cleaned it all out and re-attached the pipe.
I built a new fire, and had to keep the house doors open for 30 mins to let the smoke out. (this is unusual for this stove even with a cold flu) It seems that the smoke just doesn't want to leave the burn chamber thru the flu. It just hangs out and takes it's sweet time leaving the stove. After the stove got up to 600* and was burning good, I opened the door a few inches to test it out, and not only smoke came into the room, but flames were shooting out the door and up over the top of the stove.
Like I said, I've had this stove for 4 winters now, and this has never happened before. What the heck is going on here ? I'm baffled.
I have a Century Hearth non-cat wood stove. I installed it myself 4 years ago and have loved the stove, and had ZERO problems till about 3 weeks ago.
It has started smoking into the house a little bit when I open the door to add wood. This has gradually gotten worse and worse over the past few weeks. Now it's to the point that whenever I need to add wood, it smokes up the house bad. After I add the wood and shut the door, it takes a long time to catch-up so I can shut the air off... and then it doesn't burn like it should. The smoke is just not leaving like it should.
I have checked my flu, and it is clean as a pin , with zero build-up. The pipe from stove to thimble is clean. And the thimble is clean.
My wood is ALL hardwood, and has been cut , split , and stacked in the dry for at least One year.
Today, I let it burn out and cool down so I could take it apart. I pulled the pipe off the stove and looked into the top of the stove. It had some very fine ashes built-up about an inch deep across the top of the burn chamber. So I cleaned it all out and re-attached the pipe.
I built a new fire, and had to keep the house doors open for 30 mins to let the smoke out. (this is unusual for this stove even with a cold flu) It seems that the smoke just doesn't want to leave the burn chamber thru the flu. It just hangs out and takes it's sweet time leaving the stove. After the stove got up to 600* and was burning good, I opened the door a few inches to test it out, and not only smoke came into the room, but flames were shooting out the door and up over the top of the stove.
Like I said, I've had this stove for 4 winters now, and this has never happened before. What the heck is going on here ? I'm baffled.