Dump the liberals into Jupiter asked:


Once in a while, my wood stove (while burning wood or containing glowing wood charcoals) become congested with gas of some sort. I assume it is carbon dioxide. It is not itself combustable, but could be the product of some unusually rapid combustion. The high pressure of the gas forces its way out partly through the lower air vent and around the sides of the door to the burn chamber. The emerging smoke jets out of the stove and forms a wood-ashes smelly cloud in the house that I have to open both doors to be rid of.

It’s either something in the wood that decides to act poofy like gunpowder does when you burn a pile of it in the open air, or else something that the wood partially burned into suddenly completed its being burned and produced a lot of gas. What’s going on?
I live in the Allegheny mountains in West Virginia.
Nope. Wasn’t a downdraft. The overpressure was enough to bow out a steel box, and no downdraft is going to do that. There was some sort of quick combustion, either in the burn chamber or in the stove pipe (or both). A lot of something decided to burn at once.

My guess is that previous use of the wood stove caused creosote or small grains of charred wood to accumulate in the stove or pipe. When the conditions were right, the stuff combusted en masse.

Tankless Hot Water Heaters

3 Responses to “Why do wood stoves sometimes HUFFFFFFF?”

1. Kelly on March 15th, 2010 1:34 pm

   The fire sucking up on the fire sucking up on the oxygen.
   The fire sucking up on the fire sucking up on the fire sucking up on the oxygen.

2. saaanen on March 18th, 2010 11:25 am

   It’s called a downdraft. A gust of wind blew down the chimney and forced the smoke back into the house. Smelly, but NOT any danger.

3. Hughey on March 19th, 2010 6:38 pm

   With a name like yours its not hard to believe that you are from West Virginia.

   Go drink some Moonshine.