We’ve been in our new house for about six months, so we are still learning about it. It has a woodstove, so I’ve spent a fair bit of time trying to learn about that, firewood, and that whole ecosystem. It has been fun!
We’ve only been using the stove regularly over the past month, now that it is cooler. There aredefinitely some techniquesto learn to get fires started well, and burning at the right temperature, but I thought that I’d been zeroing in on a good lighting process.
Last night, however, was a complete failure. My normal approach started smoking a bit, I shut the door, and then the smoke not only continued in the fire box, but started billowing out through the sides and back of the stove. I quickly extinguish the tiny fire, not knowing what was going on.
I did a bit of reading, and a little diagnosing, and I highly suspect that the draft was all wrong and pulling smoke into the house. I’d read about draft before–and how you need to establish good airflow up into the chimney for things to work well–but for all of the writing about it, I never really had much trouble. All of the fires quickly created an obvious draft up the chimney. So when I was looking around inside the stove, It was very odd to feel an obvious draft of cold air coming into the stove from the chimney. This was even with a window open. What could be sucking in that much air?
This is where we get back to “still learning the house.” In the spring, when we moved in, I noticed that the house’s heat pump blower would often run constantly, despite the thermostat commanding it otherwise. That behavior stopped suddenly, but it was never fixed per se. I just assumed a relay was stuck after sitting for a while, and didn’t think much of it. Last night, though, it occurred to me that I’ve been hearing the fan run a lot during the day. I checked the thermostat, and lo and behold the blower should have been off, but was stuck on like before. Cycling the furnace power reset that. And after the blower was off, then suddenly that draft of cold air coming into the stove was gone too.
So my theory of last night’s very annoying, smoky episode is simply:
Running our heat pump while trying to light the fire is a bad idea.
Why haven’t we run into this before? Mostly because it isn’t that cold here, and the heat pump doesn’t run much. But I do wonder if I actually have run into it before, and the one or two times when I was initially trying the stove, to smoky failure, it was in fact due to this draft issue, and not bad technique or the wrong wood.
We shall see! The stove was a wildcard in this purchase, and we didn’t know whether we would like it or would be on a path to eventually replacing it. So far we like it, and I also like the outdoor toil with the firewood, so I’m keen to get this thing fired up again.