Oct 22, 2011

First Early Morning fun with the stove!

Well, we had an exciting morning today!

 

Around 1:30, I woke up and smelled smoke in the house.  It took me about 30 seconds to realize this is "not a good thing" and got downstairs to take a look.  The Glass of the stove was covered on the inside with black soot.  The fire was still burning ok, but there was a haze in the house.  I shut down the stove, opened the windows and let the house air a bit.  Around 6:30, I cleaned out the stove and tried to piece together what happened.

Here's my current hypothesis:

  1. When I cleaned out the ash pot yesterday, I didn't push the latch all the way down, allowing the ash to flow into the burn chamber more than it should have

  2. There was quite a bit of wind last night.  This, combined with the excess ash, caused a backdraft scenario that allowed some smoke to come back into the house.


I checked the exhaust piping for any leaks taht might have caused the smoke, but could not find any.  There is a spot around the door gasket that looks a bit singed, but it is still an airtight seal.  The flame does not appear to be lazy, and three hours into today's burn, and the window is still almost as clear as the cleaning this morning.

I'm definitely going to keep an eye on it, but I think we are ok.  Hickory smoked, but ok :).

3 comments:

pants said...

you guys moved your bedroom upstairs?

Mark said...

Nope. Robyn was Fighting off a cold, and to ensure we could both sleep, I went upstairs for a couple of nights.

pants said...

i see--so she kicked you out, eh? ;P

glad that you were all ok, though. i'm sure it's a bit scary to be having a live fire in the house while sleeping, especially when you wake up to a smoke-filled house!