RE: Flue damper question

[firefighterjake]

Dumb question of the day . . . I have ICC Excel double wall pipe running from my stove to the pass through and then to the outside Class A.

Do I need to buy the special ICC flue damper (runs around $74) -- it is the short junk of flue pipe with the stamped ICC in the damper? Or can I just drill a couple of holes and use a regular damper from a hardware store?

Just exploring some options at this point . . . who knows . . . in the end I may just stick with using my piece of aluminum foil on the incoming air for those few times I need or want to slow down the burn.

 

[begreen]

I ran into the same thing with a DuraVent DVL install. The damper assembly was in a piece of 6" double wall and nicely done. Not sure if you could do this with a regular damper because the shaft would need to accommodate the additional wall thickness of the double-wall pipe, but maybe. That would be something to look out for. The damper would need 3/8" extra on the each side for the thicker wall pipe.

 

[edyit]

how often do you use the aluminum foil?

 

[bcrtops]

Somewhere on the forum I ran into a couple guys that had installed their own by using two of those "cheap" dampers. A 6" for the cast iron damper part & a "7" for the stem/shaft part. Not that I'd recommend it, but might possibly be doable.

 

[firefighterjake]

how often do you use the aluminum foil?

I would guess maybe 4-7 times during the heating season . . . a lot depends on what I am loading for fuel.

 

[edyit]

i had a flue damper when i first installed our stove, never used it but it was there just in case, replaced the stove pipe this year without a flue damper and have noticed an immediate difference in draft, had decent draft before but now have outstanding draft. even with it in there open it was restricting draft somewhat. but if you're getting instances where you need to restrict then it can't hurt to try it. it does make cleaning a little bit more of a pita though since you'll have to remove it to clean that section of pipe