Tip for reducing smoke when firing heat commander from cold

[sleewok]

Since I have had my heat commander it has always been a struggle to get it to light without smoking out my basement. I finally found a solution.

Open the door for the ash tray and put your starter wood on top of the grate. Light it and leave the door cracked and close it once the starter is well lit. Let it heat and then add wood once the light is blinking . This has completely solved my issues with smoke while starting.

Hope this helps someone!

 

[EbS-P]

Have you tried a top down fire?

 

[sleewok]

Have you tried a top down fire?

Yes

 

[stoveliker]

And is your wood dry enough?
I don't know what your appliance needs in terms of max moisture content to work well, but have you tried a partial load of 2x4 cut offs? If that doesn't smoke upon start up, that suggests to me that at least part of the issue was "failure to thrive" due to moisture content being too high.

 

[Gearhead660]

Do you preheat the flue to get a good draft going? I have the older sibling(Tundra 2) and would get a little smoke out the secondary intakes on a stone cold start. Would just run the propane torch through the clean out door to preheat.

 

[Highbeam]

I use the propane torch to heat the flue every time before starting my standard bottom up fires. It’s so dang fast and easy. Once you get the little fingertip ignition torch you’ll throw your matches away.

 

[travis8352]

Ill be trying this for my first fire of the year! Half the time i smoke the basement out.

 

[sloeffle]

Ran into that problem sometimes with my Caddy. I would religiously light some tightly wound paper on fire and put it in the baro to warm the chimney up. Like me, I think you are getting smoked out because the chimney isn't warm and not drawing yet.

 

[travis8352]

Ran into that problem sometimes with my Caddy. I would religiously light some tightly wound paper on fire and put it in the baro to warm the chimney up. Like me, I think you are getting smoked out because the chimney isn't warm and not drawing yet.

Thats a good idea! Once time i used a hairdryer to warm my stovepipe and that worked great but then last time i lit my head commander i used a propane torch and i smoked the basement out. Not an issue to me as holding the torch in tjr firebox got the wood lit up good and it started pulling right away.

 

[Micdrew]

I had this problem when dealing with a cold chimney. Top down lite works every time however I always make sure that it’s very small wood chips with a small chunk of fire starter brick to get things going, the trick is to get a small fire going that produces very little smoke once it’s lit I keep the door cracked slightly.

 

[brenndatomu]

Since I have had my heat commander it has always been a struggle to get it to light without smoking out my basement. I finally found a solution.

Open the door for the ash tray and put your starter wood on top of the grate. Light it and leave the door cracked and close it once the starter is well lit. Let it heat and then add wood once the light is blinking . This has completely solved my issues with smoke while starting.

Hope this helps someone!

I use the ash drawer door on my Kuuma too...just crack it a bit, build a small fire of super dry wood noodles and pretty small pieces of pine kinlin built in a pyramid shape over the ash grate...drop one match on it and the fire generally takes off fast and clean...then load wood around/over it, close the loading door and wait for the computer to take over...close ash drawer up and walk away...quick and usually pretty smokeless.
Spring and fall I do quite a few of what are basically cold starts (no coals to load on) once real winter hits it basically just rake coals, load n go.

 

[yram]

My Heat Commander is easy as far as fire-starting -- I too have found that a little blast from a blow torch works wonders. But despite all preventative measures, smokes comes out into the room no matter what I do. I'll try cracking open the ash drawer cover.

 

[travis8352]

So far ash drawer method is my favorite with a blast from the torch now that ive done it twice. 2nd time i forgot to close ash drawer lol. Was bamboozled why i had a rocket ship going lol

 

[EbS-P]

The ash door is temptress that if let open can have bad consequences. My solution is not to take my hand off of it while it’s open.

 

[trx250r87]

If you use the ash drawer a ton then you might want to swap the wing nut with a larger knurled knob like the Caddy Advanced uses (part #30799 STEEL ROUND KNOB, 3/8"-16 THREADED). This will help extend the life of the threaded rod piece that the wing nut screws on to.

Eric

 

[travis8352]

If you use the ash drawer a ton then you might want to swap the wing nut with a larger knurled knob like the Caddy Advanced uses (part #30799 STEEL ROUND KNOB, 3/8"-16 THREADED). This will help extend the life of the threaded rod piece that the wing nut screws on to.

Eric

I was gonna do this! Turn my heat commander into a caddy lol

 

[Citationls]

After a few smokey starts and a few unsavory words I figured out if I open my basement door it reverses the draft in my flue and leads to smoke free starts. Cracking the ash clean out door is the icing on the cake. I've also found that if I load the HC, leaving space for air to flow out of the air intake grate, and put a small bunch of kindling directly in front of the pilot? air hole that's on the bottom front of the stove that it starts up wonderfully. Closing the loading door almost immediately also seems to help more often than not.

 

[Wood1Dennis]

I've only had a problem early in the year, warm damp day when there is no wind to help pull a draft. I can usually tell if it is not pulling. Part of the problem is that our house is pretty tight. I can usually get a draft started by cracking open a window or my wood chute door a little.

 

[sleewok]

Ran into that problem sometimes with my Caddy. I would religiously light some tightly wound paper on fire and put it in the baro to warm the chimney up. Like me, I think you are getting smoked out because the chimney isn't warm and not drawing yet.

This is brilliant. Wish I would have read it earlier. My method doesn't work if the wood kindling isn't super dry.

I smoked out my basement a couple of nights ago. I sealed my flu with high heat silicone and don't want to torch it so I'll give this method a try to heat it up. At the least I could open the baro and torch inside it.

This combined with the ash drawer should solve most of my problems (I hope).

 

[brenndatomu]

I sealed my flu with high heat silicone and don't want to torch it so I'll give this method a try to heat it up. At the least I could open the baro and torch inside it.

A torch works, hair dryer or heat gun works as well, often better/faster. Positive air pressure and heat both, that'll push even the most stubborn cold plugs out

 

[sleewok]

@brenndatomu @sloeffle I had to do a cold start last night. The flue was around maybe around 60F (probably less, but I couldn't find my IR thermometer to check) which definitely would not draw if I lit in the box. I stuck my propane torch in the baro for a couple minutes until the flue was really warm. Lit a fire with kindling stacked over the ash grate and had the ash drawer cracked. I had ZERO smoke. This is the first time I have never had a single puff. Perfect start.