How To: Create an artificial draft

here's a very easy method for creating a draft in your chimney if you have a barometric damper. use a hair dryer on the high setting and within 10 mins. it's venting.

tom

Thanks for the tip Tom. I moved it here to the "How To" forum. Congratulations you're the first, hopefully there will be many more tips like that to come.

Great illustration. Any chance you could illustrate the individual steps for starting a coal fire. I have read with interest the various methods that everyone uses, and realize the learning curve applies no matter what stove you use. But if a few members could show how they start their fires, and illustrate each step, maybe you could help the rest of us newbies through that learning curve a little better.

Wondering also if this site can handle MPEG video. It would be great if a mini movie were available to watch. That being the case, is there any way that you could allow the computer to give off some of the heat as well?

I split off some unrelated discussion about uploading video, topic can be found here: http://nepacrossroads.com/viewtopic.php?t=1063

a method i use to create a draft when starting mine for the first time and to keep smoke from ooozing out of the vented widow is to place a fan in the window and blow the air in the house thus pressurizing the house and forcing it up the chimney until a draft is established. no smoke and it helps in lighting the stove up quickly.

After reading the thread on using the hair dryer to heat up the pipe, I got thinking. This year I put the old style milk house electric heater in the bottom of my stove for 15/20 min. warmed upped the stove nicely. Removed the heater, then put my charcoal chimney stack, (for starting barbeque fires) paper in the bottom, charcoal on top of that, and buckwheat coal on top of that, in the stove. Lit the paper, all the smoke went out the chimney pipe, and then I plugged in the stove blower. Three min later...I pulled the stack out of the stove and we were up and running strong.
Gary

I have a book that describes a way to establish a draft in a cold chimney (or chimley as they say up here in the north). You place some crumpled up newspapers in you smoke pipe and light it. It'll warm the flue up enough to draw the fire. I haven't done it myself but it makes sense to me as long as the paper burns completely and there's nothing left to stifle the flue.

I use same method to create draft only I use heat gun on high setting and I aim it in to stove Mark III which has opening for smoke right near and above front door.Works well to preheat chimney.
if you put some newspaper and lite it ,smoke will came into room .In this case aim heat gan (just air) on front door openings between glass and door frame and wait till flame will heat chimney up.

I tried many things to heat up the pipe including a propane torch and road flares. It didn't work for me. I think my chimney and flue are just too cold sometimes. The only thing that works consistantly is opening up a window elsewhere in the house. It sounds funny to do that in winter, but it changes the pressure. Got this from the chimney sweep!

I realize this is old, but I don't need to create an artificial draft.
My chimney goes way beyond the roof line, and I have a barometric damper, which does probably let some heat escape up there regardless.
What I feel REALLY benefits me is a special cap on the chimney I bought online, it's called a vacu-stack. It creates an effect
which when the wind blows across it, what happens is instead of creating a backdraft, I get excellent draw!
I bought this a while back before we had some trees removed from next to the house, and when our chimney wasn't as tall.
Nearby trees will create a downdraft making some chimneys backup smoke into the house.

If you don't have good draft, check out the height of your chimney and possibly in relation to any nearby trees or other structures.

Before I added the vacu-stack and height, I was constantly going outside, taking off the clean-out cap, running an
extension cord outside, and running my hairdryer straight up, and also doing the paper lighting out there (also
did not have the barometric damper installed yet - I installed that too).

- Kirk

boilermaker wrote:I have a book that describes a way to establish a draft in a cold chimney (or chimley as they say up here in the north). You place some crumpled up newspapers in you smoke pipe and light it. It'll warm the flue up enough to draw the fire. I haven't done it myself but it makes sense to me as long as the paper burns completely and there's nothing left to stifle the flue.

That's the method I always use when starting a cold stove. (I can reach the opening to the exhaust stovepipe from the inside top of my Harman. I just put a couple of pieces of newspaper in there & light them, then I add more paper to keep the fire going for a good couple of minutes. Sometimes, when it is real cold out & I have a downdraft, I'll shove the burning paper as far up the pipe as I can reach. Always works!
(never thought of trying a hair dryer but the newspaper is fast & easy)

Bonehead wrote:I tried many things to heat up the pipe including a propane torch and road flares. It didn't work for me. I think my chimney and flue are just too cold sometimes. The only thing that works consistantly is opening up a window elsewhere in the house. It sounds funny to do that in winter, but it changes the pressure. Got this from the chimney sweep!

I'm lucky to have a 30" masonary chimney that runs up through the center of the house and above the roofline, I have never experienced a downdraft. However, I tried your trick of opening the window while I was waiting for a fresh load of coal to catch. As I opened the window I heard the barometric damper open and hit the stops! 5 minutes of that and things were really cooking.

Thanks for the tip.

Balled up newspaper, a few handfuls of saved dryer lint, & 8-10 pieces of kindling always work well for me............

In my woodstove of old, created a plywood piece sized a bit bigger than the door opening, bolted a squirrel cage blower to it (looks similar to the Harman blower) so the air would come out a hole in the plywood. Next, put your kindling /newspaper in, put the ply against the opening, start the blower for a minute or so, take off the ply, start your kindling. This method reversed some pretty viscious down drafts on rainy days. Planning to do similar to the mark II if needed. Starting the blower after the ply is against the door opening is to lower the potential for ash to fly around. Hope this helps.

Any stove instalation that has draft issues and benefits from opening a door or window will greatly benefit from a dedicated outside air source duct.. a 3" duct will provide plenty of air to a stove,, just cover the outside end with screen to keep rodents out, and have the pipe end near the base of the stove, or next to the inlet of the combustion blower if you have one..

The negative pressure on the whole house will be reduced, pulling in a lot less cold air through door and window gaps, and the sill plates on the foundation.. this makes for a much more comfortable house and less coal burnt for a warmer house.

Greg L