Odd smell from flue when heated

Hope someone has an answer! When my flue pipe temp approaches the 400* mark I get an odd smell coming from it. No smoke, just an odd tinny smell. My guess is it's either the paint burning off which seems odd because the stove is old and well seasoned...or it's all the crap inside the pipe burning off. My flue pipe rarely gets that hot. Even when I burn wood the flue pipe temps run about 200-250. I believe 400* is still within the safe operating temp zone . Man does it stink!

There ya go...
If you got that pipe tight no worries...
Smells like you are burning off the crud...

I noticed my pipe gets some odor too when it gets hotter than usual.
I think its dust cooking that settled on the pipe lol, not sure.

mildly educated guess is that your stack tem of 250 is too low for wood - you may be burning off creosote when firing harder with coal. i don't know your stove, but any stack thermometer will tell you that you need in excess of 300 to heat the flue well enough. my jotul 507b runs a much higher stack with wood. as per another post, use carbon monoxide detectors - you may find that the odor has some CO attached to it, but remember that co is odorless!!!

My first thought was that you are still burning the paint off the flue pipe, then I remembered a previous post...

flue pipe smoking...bad

Sounds like this has been on ongoing problem. Perhaps it is just the paint burning off the flue pipe, but you better make sure you don't have a problem with draft and/or flue gasses leaking out of the pipe joints.

In my previous wood burning days I used to let the stove roar in the morning to burn off the creosote from the overnight burn. I recall some funny smells from the flue pipe when the stack thermometer would get in the 800 degree range.

Thanks for the replys. I believe it may have been all the crude in the flue burning off. Like I said the stove is old and well seasoned so I think the paint has long been burned off. I made the switch to coal so no worries...low stack temps .

Rob, how do you post a link to another topic in a thread?

tcalo wrote:Rob, how do you post a link to another topic in a thread?

At the top of the page highlight the address (nepacrossroads.com/.....), right click on the highlighted area and select copy, then click in the text box of your post and right click again...select paste and you're done.

best bet is tomorrow take ur stove pipe off and clean it out. if it smeels that bad u could be close to having a chimney fire, nothing to screw around with... i clean my whole exhaust system every month weather it needs it or not.. live to far from the fire company to neglect it..my old saying feb. march is chimney fire season..i can sleep good at night with my chimney..a word to the wise is sufficent..its toooo late once the chim starts roaring...i also keep a thing thaat looks like a road flare handy they smother out flue fires..flue fires run about 2500 degrees...good luck

Two nites ago we had -11*. I got the stove pipe temp up to 310*. I got a smell that I associate with hot metal and burning dust. Lightning is probably correct about the dust. Even when I light my Kerosun space heater out in the garage I can smell the dust burn off if I hadn't lit it recently.

Bob, I try to clean my flue every few weeks as well. Shortly after that horrible odor I swept the flue, didn't get much...but got enough to warrant a cleaning!

I'm in agreement with some of the others about creosote.... I actually primarily burn wood, but the colder days/nights I'll run a coal fire.... I have had quite a few times that I get an awful smell around my flue pipe and every time I have drug out the ladder the next day (once I did it THAT night...at 2am when it was 3* outside..... sucks when you neglect your chimney and get a build-up bad enough that it blocks the flue pipe and you wake up to a house full of smoke and detectors going CRAZY.. lol), get on the roof and do a thorough cleaning of the chimney and flue pipe and every time I have knocked out creosote, usually about a spray-paint capfull, and after that, when I get my fire burning good again, the smell is gone.

Also, like someone else said, a lot of times at night I'll 'slow' the wood fire, enough to still keep the house nice and toasty, but it's nowhere near enough flue temps to keep creosote from building up... after those few times of that smell and the cleanings, I have started, in the mornings get a good HOT fire going for a few minutes (actually probably about 10-15 minutes) to burn off the creosote, then I back'er down... since doing this, when I do my monthly cleanings, the creosote is still in the chimney, but typically right at the cleanout on the bottom, and it's almost paper thin and dry, actually crumbles between your fingers...a LOT less chance of that causing a fire than when it's the nice, sticky, gooey stuff on the walls of the chimney..