Wood buring stove, chimney conversion

It stops rain getting into the liner.

Which is actually a bit smaller diameter/area than the chimneypot that seemingly did not worry about rain ingress, illogical as Spock would say.

And stop Jackdaws filling your chimney with twigs.

Tim

That just requires just a coarse mesh, not necessarily of thatched-roof fire prevention/ steam-train anti-smuts summer field-fire-raising sorts of holes dimension

Then change it. Why does your chimney stink though? What are you burning? I’ve never found wood smoke stinky.

Tim

A mesh doesn't stop a nest being made on top of it

Sometimes, before the fire can establish a proper updraught up the chimney, thick smoke can puther out of the vents of our stove into the room. That stinks and isn't any fun at all.

Since all smoke is carcinogenic, and they produce as much CO2 as coal, I cannot see the logic of allowing wood burners anyhow. PS. I can detect the smell of them whenever the wind is in the wrong direction.

It stops the jackdaws falling down...

You will find a lot of wood burners in rural areas that don't have mains gas.

And their owners often have a source of firewood for free or very little cost which offsets the occasions they may have to use some electric for heating ,trouble is they have also become a fashion accessory so many have been installed because they look nice in town and city houses where the smoke annoys people rather than pigeons. The OP IIRC lives in Southampton so would fall into that category,OTOH the smell of the smoke may dilute the odour from the sewage works.

GH

There is local to me a sort of citizen science project over perhaps 10 sites on house walls, to monitor traffic pollution. 8 raspberry pi particulate detectors per box, polled and transmitted data. All they seem to pick up is barbecue, bonfire and woodburner emissions.

Leave the door open for a few minutes before lighting the fire. This will allow the column of cold air to flow down.

And you will want a mesh small enough to stop a swarm of bees going down the chimeny. That can be a right pain. TW

I thought the traditional trick, starting from a cold chimney, was to light a series of single sheets of newspaper before setting the nested newspaper and kindling alight.

We use a couple of the waxed wood shavings type firefighters. Possibly a bit profligate but they seem to provide enough heat to get a good updraught going straight away. We never have smoke coming back out of our vents.

Tim

Surely it will simply be refilled with equally cold air from outside won't it?

One of the reasons I recently moved. Pretty much every house in the upper-middle class terraced street had one of the things. When they were going full tilt I had trouble breathing.

Almost ironically, I find the fumes difficult to deal with in ski resorts too.

This makes sense as most cars have catalytic exhausts and many diesels have particulate traps and recently adblue so one would expect to see some benefit.

What would interest me is how these monitors differentiate the transport combustion particulates from biomass burning.