We are cooking and heating with a wood cookstove in a mobile home. Does anyone know how to keep the smoke problem to a minimum. ie. Limiting the amount that filters through the house? Extraction of smoke that escapes during filling etc.Love my stove. Hate the smoke in my clothes.

-- Dona Dees (ddschef@sunshinecable.com), February 07, 2000

Answers

I am not a woodstove expert, but it sounds like you have a drafting problem. Go to a woodstove website, or find a book at the library, pronto--all that smoke is NOT healthy. I don't think it has anything to do with being in a mobile home; that is what we have, and ours only smokes when the wind is blowing hard in a certain direction (we need a chimney cap).

-- Leann Banta (thelionandlamb@hotmail.com), February 07, 2000.

Dona, Leann's right. Your stove shouldn't be causing a problem when being loaded. Have you got a good tall chimney on it? are the joints of your chimney tight? Have you cleaned your chimney recently? Are all the gaskets on your stove good? Are any doors/lids/other openings warped or damaged? Depending on what we're burning and how hard, we'll clean our wood furnace chimney as often as every ten days. Doesn't have to be that often because at 10 days we've just got a little film of creosote, but we like to stay on top of it. If you are burning garbage, low quality or wet wood in your stove, it will creosote up much faster. It also builds up faster if you don't keep the stove firing hot and continously.

When you reload the stove are you setting the stove up properly? I don't know what kind of stove you have but typically open the damper in the chimney and open some sort of draft door or opening under the firebox before opening whatever you need to in order to add wood. This will help get a good draft going and keep the smoke going out the chimney even though the loading area is open.

Has this always been a problem with this stove? It could be the way you are using it. If this is a new problem, get that chimney cleaned. I'm not familiar with new cookstoves, but I am familiar with old ones plus various new and old heating stoves, the sad reality is that some of them, new and old, are badly designed. If your stove is new, possibly you can contact the manufacturer for additional help.

Having to clean a chimney located in a living area isn't much fun. I know that for me, it is all too easy to put off. One idea is to put some dampened news papers in the firebox. (Make sure the stove is COLD first.) The idea is that the creosote ends up in the firebox, you shovel most of it out, and at least some of the rest of it is stuck to the damp paper. While some soot does stick to the paper, it seemed to me that I still had a lot of soot running free in the kitchen. What did work for me was to allow enough time to let the soot scrubbed out of the chimney to get well settled in the firebox before trying to clean out the stove. Gerbil

-- Gerbil (ima_gerbil@hotmail.com), February 07, 2000.

Donna, Gerbil has some real good advice. I'd like to add a few other pointers. First, the chimney should extend at least two feet higher than any point within ten horizantal feet from it. If there are strong gusty winds, sometimes you may get downdrafts which can cause the stove to smoke.

Don't use single wall flue pipe outside the house. It cools off the smoke too much, causing not only poor draft, but increasing creosote buildup.

Make sure that the stovepipe is as close to vertical as possible. If it is necessarty to have bends in it, keep them to a minimum, and try to make them gentle.

Never have any part of the flue slope downwards (e.g. where the smoke has to travel downwards for part of its path)

Make sure you have a good chimney cap, so rainwwater doesn't cool off the smoke, and cause poor draft and creosote.

Start the fire with a hot fire to get the draft going. If necessary, you can crumple up a whole bunch of paper in the firebox, and light it with a fairly small amount of kindling. Make sure your kindling is split small enough, and very very dry.

All woodstoves and all flues are different, but between Gerbil's and my advice, I hope you can figure it out.

I love woodstoves too, but alas, I only have a wood heater now... Here's a real easy one: if the stove has a control on it like mine used to, (and I assume is common on wood cookstoves), which directs the smoke around the oven when you are baking, make certain that it is directing the smoke directly to the flue instead, when starting the fire, (and when adding wood to the firebox if necessary in your individual case)

-- jumpoff joe (jumpoff@echoweb.net), February 07, 2000.

It is important to use dry,well-seasoned wood.If I put damp logs in mine, it smokes. I use a Bakers Choice unit from Lehman's. Also use a Quadrafire for main heat. No smoking problem at all. Love the cookstove! (although I don't use it enough,spoiled with the propane range)

-- Jeff Schuler (jmprint.@epix.net), February 12, 2000.

Does anyone know anything about a wood stove called Colonial Acorn? It is a small cookstove, very ornate.

-- Mary Zastowny (foxpawz@gamewood.net), October 01, 2001.