Wood buring stove, chimney conversion

Yes, but after a very cold night that still caused smoke sometimes. Opening the door for a while seems to get rid of the problem.

? Warm up the chimney with an electric hot air heat gun for a few minutes before lighting the fire.

Correct. The last thing you want is a cold downward draft that you can/will get if the fire has been out for a few days during a cold spell.

The trick is to get newspaper alight and the thinnest of kindling and leave the door of a stove open. Once you get enough open flame going to the bottom of the chimney you will start getting an upward draw and then you can start the fire properly. In my experience you don't have to do this unless the inside of the chimney has got too cold over a period of a few days without a fire.

No it won't - Chris Green is right. The air inside the flu/chimney will /always/ be warmer than that outside. It will be warmer because the house is warmer. If it works at all it's much more likely that opening the stove door allows the "plug" of cold air to be pushed upwards slightly by the warmer air in the stove and its flu in the room. As noted above, a few sheets of paper burning fiercely will push the cold air up the flu much more quickly.

I've now run out of logs and am using Phurnacite left by the previous owner. I don't like it at all; I can see why it was left...

Chris Green here. Our solution is an electric fan on the top of the flue. When our stove was installed we knew that the height of the flue was marginal in relation to how close it was to the roof ridge etc. It was OK 90% of the time but there were certain North winds that made it extremely difficult to light the stove even though once going ans hot it was OK.

So we bought a 'top of the flue' electric fan and it is **magic**, not only does ti solve the north wind problem, it makes lighting the stove an absolute doddle.

(North, north, a random selection seemed reasonable!)

But try taxing THAT.

I mean Vegans produce ten times more methane than meat eaters. WE should therefore shoot them.

Can't in fact be done I have an air purifier by my bed. Cooking bacon in the downstairs kitchen always triggers it. And often triggers the smoke alarms

Worrying about pollution kills more people

Yes.

An insulated chimney helps enormously as well

In summary the shallow cone of a cap must be just for annoying neighbours. The most recent conversion was to a sort of local landmark. A spinning mirror ball of a sphere of stainless steel a top a chimney, with anngled flutes so acted like a kids windmill. I assume this was to stop rain entry, except for the rain falling at just the right time and angle to pass one of the slits, all other rain would be spun off. Very rarely would it be seen stationary. Adding a spin ,vortex, to vertically emerging smoke would, if anything , help clearing the roof surface wind. Now its replaced with one of these annoying caps

The primary purpose of spinning cowls is to increase draught rather than stop rain entry though that is another benefit.

GH

Which begs the question why replace the spinning cowl with a shallow cone dome cap? As the spinner must spin due to setting up a pressure difference at each "blade" like multiple wing aerofoils, perhaps it creats too much updraught in high wind. Surely then with a mainly enclosed "approved" log burner you just restrict air intake at the input air regulator. Even if the rain was vertical , with no gutter to these stupid caps and no prevailing wind leeside "gargoyle", rain would fall into the chimneypot as the liner is smaller than the pot. For the usual angled rain it would just enter the 4 inch or so gap between cap and pot rim.

Because being a moving part they wear out ?

With 10’s of thousands of simple caps out there in use that seem to do the job for most I think you are exaggerating the problem, occasionally due to local conditions something more elaborate is required such as a spinning one , or one where the whole shebang rotates to point away from the wind with the windward side shielded . H cowls are good for keeping rain out if that is a problem but they don’t seem as popular as they once were, though there is some crossover some cowls are better at creating an up draught while other designs are better at stopping downdraught caused by wind conditions. The cover over the hole design with side vents for the smoke has been around for centuries in the form of a slate laid flat on corner supports

GH

Good idea, but there is plenty more up there to replace what's in the chimney - and haven't you thus established a steady downdraught within the chimney?

Newspaper?? I think I can remember that stuff. (Didn't it have writing on it?)

Yep, and for some more difficult to find to light a wood burner :)

Since Newspapers started to print in colour from the mid 1980’s they haven’t burnt as well, I think they have china clay or similar impregnated in the paper so the inks print neatly. Burn a lot of newspaper you get an amount of unburnt material left behind.

GH

I cobbled together my own cowl but I either didn't make the top plate wide enough or I made the gap between the flue & the top plate too large as sometimes I find the ashes are damp when I go to empty them. A lot depends on the wind direction & its strength. As the wood burner is only used occasionally to allow me to work in my shed when it's really cold, it doesn't matter too much.

The victorians were excellent at inventing this sort of stuff, but the majority of the country's chimney pots had no gizmos on top. Perhaps they had more respect for the neighbours and let the hot smoke rise vertically and contribute to general anonymous smog rather than local smog.

All those tall chimneys in the black country towns did little for local pollution.