Slaphead wrote:Moscow_Wolf wrote:Slaphead wrote:
Also, picking up on a point that MW mad re smoke from the fire into the house. If you have that situation your installation is wrong. Sack your heating engineer and either get someone who knows what they're talking about or try doing a bit of research on Google regarding chimneys and stack effect. It's not rocket science.
That is a bit OTT. Everyone gets some smoke at some time unless they're perfect. If you let your fire die down and there is a back-draft it can smoke. Perhaps the Heating Engineer is not to blame, but me or, the man who built the chimney.
I'm sorry I picked on your heating engineer, but the only times you should get smoke into your room from the fire is when the chimney is blocked, either by having the flu damper closed or by some other blockage in the chimney, this assumes the chimney and fire are correctly installed and the fire has a ready air supply.
As I said, there's a ton of info on the web about chimneys and stack effect and it doesn't need a degree in an engineering subject to understand it.
In the close to 5 years we've been here this is the first winter where I've been satisfied with our fire's performance.
To achieve this I've improved the installation, year on year to it's current configuration. The 2 most important parts of the improvements were the installation of an insulated flu/chimney (double skinned stainless flu with 3cm of insulation between the skins) and a continuous flexi steel flu liner connecting the output of the fire directly to the external, insulated flu.
Even with no fire lit, the fire draws air from the room regardless of what the conditions are like outdoors - that's stack effect.
We will be installing double glazing later this year. When we do this, I'll ensure that we don't seal the house. i.e. there'll be adequate ventilation throughout the year. Currently, we get condensation, but only on the single glazed, draughty windows. Condensation is a subject all of it's own but it only occurs where warm moist air meets a cold surface. This can be prevented by installing a vapour barrier which is what internally installed insulation can be.
Thius is my third year with the wood burner and this is the first problem I have had, my own fault I suppose for not checking the chimney out sooner
Bought a 7 metre sweeper from bricolage the other day and swept it this morning ( go a load of crap out) , looks to be back to normal now with a nice clean burn