Selfsufficientish.com

Hi
Just taken delivery of a new multifuel stove with a glass door. It's only been running for about 3 hours and already the glass is covered in soot. It's only been burning dry wood (mainly apple) so I don't think the wood is the problem. What am I doing wrong? All the stoves I've had in the past have had a damper at the back and a vent at the bottom. This one doesn't have the damper but it has two vents, one at the top of the door and one at the bottom.

Cheers
Zoe

What make is it?

With mine, once you get the fire going you shut down the vent that comes through the bottom (the up-draft???) and you control the fire thereafter just with the door vent which sends a drafts of warm air down just inside the door re-entering the bottom of the fire and creating both the 'second burn' and the 'air-wash' of the door.

Does that make sense?

It does get a bit sooty sometimes (possibly because we shut it right down quite often) but a fast hot burn for 20 mins cleans it all off.

Thanks, Annpan.

I'll give that a go tonight. The stove is a Winther Browne bought yesterday from B&Q.

Cheers
Zoe

If you burn well seasoned wood at a high enough temp the you shouldn't get this problem. This normally occurs when there is too much moisture still left in the wood.

Thanks, Goodearth.

The logs were definitely OK as they were several years old but I tend to lose track with the kindling. That might have been a bit too young. I will have to get the kindling store sorted out properly so that I only use the older, dryer stuff.

Cheers
Zoe

Also that magic ingredient vinegar is great for cleaning the glass on a wood burner.

some stovse are designed to keep the glass clear - and some not. did it say something about clear glass on the info?

we find often the glass becomes sooty at first but that 'burns off' once a good glowing ember sort of fire is established

Can't help with the fire I'm afraid as mine just has a single spin valve at the bottom of the door which sends half the air through the grate and the other half to "air wash" the glass.
But I wouldn't worry too much about the kindling, if it catches light it must be dry enough and is only there for the first few minutes anyway.

The fire I had before was a cheap affair with just a slide adjusted air valve ... it was useless as it was totally uncontrollable in windy weather.
That had no "air wash" either and the glass sooted up all the time.

I have a clear glass one but it's always sooty in each corner, even right when it was new! Still that's better than being sooty all over I guess.

Ours has three vents two at the bottom and one at the top, we were reliably informed that when we have the stove open to burn wood, that we need the top vent to be open to keep the glass clear, not sure how it works but it most certainly does. The only time that the glass smokes up is after we hve shut all the vents and the damper down for the night.

For cleaning the glass I find that one of those paint scraper blades (a stanley on its side) does the job a treat after the fire has been opened up for a few minutes and is burning well. If you try and do it first thing it is too tarry.

Not sure if that rambling is of any use to you - but there you go!

Lorna x

I never understand what a damper is as I thought it was just another word for a vent. Our Jotul stove just has one air vent at the bottom.

We've had a real problem with needing to get the chimney swept often, as it's been getting clogged up and smoking into the room after less than 2 months. The roofer/chimney sweep guy says he has the same stove but doesn't ever shut the vent off at nighttime leaving it smouldering like we were doing (that's what the instruction manual says to do!) as that gunks it up. He said he had to actually scrape the soot off with a knife at the top of our flue by the chimney top as it was so thick it wouldn't come off with the normal brushes.

We aren't burning unseasoned wood (apart from the odd dud log the sneaky wood man delivered) so I don't understand it.

Do you have a thermometer MMM?

We were given one by the guys that fitted our stove and I would recommend it to anyone - it tells you what the ideal burning temperature is and you wouldn't always realise otherwise.

I can't understand what your problem is MMM.
Our chimney has never been swept at all ... it's a regular internal chimney, not lined, just made from concrete pipes embedded in the stonework.
I replaced our old woodburner back in the summer and the bottom of the chimney that I exposed had barely a film of dry powdery soot on it and that was after 5 years of peat and wood burning.
I never shut ours down to keep in overnight, it's just left to burn out (with a pot of porridge on top)
You're not burning pine or fir wood are you ? That would account for the hard thick deposit, but you would also get tar condensing out and I'm sure you would have mentioned that.
Odd

Yes we have a thermometer and try to keep in the 'silver zone' which is the ideal temp. In fact it is too hot if it gets near the top end which is 400C I think. When we go out though we can't help it if it falls down into the cooler zone because if we don't want the fire to go out so we've got to close the air vent - but it's not that often that we're out for more than about 3 hours in winter.

We have a double skinned stainless steel all singing all dancing conforms to the laws in France blah blah flue which is 16m tall. The sweeps said the height of it wouldn't be the reason for the problem as I'd wondered (3 storey house).

We did burn some 3 year old dry spruce this year but it burnt like a dream and the problem with the smoking etc had started well before that (the previous season). 90% of what we burn is chestnut with a bit of mixed hardwood from trees we've taken out ourselves, which was all lovely and dry after having been split and stacked 2-3 years ago.

It's a mystery!

It is a mystery
Didn't you also say that you have to clean out the ashes every day? I wonder if that is connected.