High Wind and Coal Stove??

Hey Guys, I'm sure this is covered here already but I will ask anyway, I am wondering what those 50-75 mph gusts will do to my coal stove chimney. Another words do I have to worry about it blowing down the chimney, or creating too much draft and pulling my fire hotter than I'd like it to be?

I only started burning coal half way through last year, so high winds are new to me.

Thanks

BTW There is no Baro on a Vermont Castings type stove, there is an internal damper.

Rob

Rob, she should be fine, but it all boils down to commmon sense. CO detectors up & functioning properly????

PS--I have no baro on my Hitzer 50-93--Somewhere down the line if'n I were you, I WOULD install a MPD--just an old farmers thoughts

I would keep a close eye on the stove temperature, and like Fred mentioned...make sure your CO detectors are functional.

I loaded up the stove a little bit ago and in no time the wind had it going like a Prairie Fire. I just cut back on the primary's to just a tiny bit, gave it a little secondary air and adjusted the pipe damper. The fire quickly returned to a lazy, slow burn.
If you only have primary dampers on your stove, cut them back until they are almost shut. You must watch the fire to see how your adjustments work. If you have a pipe damper, close it to the point that you can see the fire is obeying.
One of the foundational principals in learning your stove is patience and observation. You have to observe how the stove runs and learn from it, because every stove installation is different. They all have unique personalities.

I have a baro and this wind is sucking the manometer right off the scale!

I had to cut the air down a bit but the Mark II is still keeping me nice and warm, even with the door open so I can listen to the storm.

I got no problems here .. 50 mph - 70 mph gusts ... this storm is a dud I think .. as most of them are the the gov't says

Basically your going to basically have sporadic high draft situations which will cause your fire to go hotter for times. There are different ways to deal with this depending on your setup. Barometric dampers are a prime way to deal with this, cutting back the primary air in to the fire is another, or increasing the over-fire air a bit to help bleed off the excessive draft.

Like the others said it is good to have working CO detectors, also i recommend having ash or sand around you can shovel into your fire to cool it down if needed.

I'd just watch the stove extra and run it and make adjustments as necessary is the only way to learn.

Hey Thanks Everybody for the feed back, so far so good, we've had gust up to 50 ish mph according to weather bug. I have the stove idled realllll low(350 deg), just in case it takes off on me, I am being carefully not to make any big adjustments, keeping extra ash in(not shaking it too much) I have extra ash right out the back door in a metal can, and I have new bat. in the CO and smoke detectors. Powers flickering so I'll be glad for the hand fed if we loose it completely.

I think I'm pretty good, thanks again, be safe!!

Rob

Robmail1 wrote:I have extra ash right out the back door in a metal can,

I keep a 5 gal. bucket with sand close to the boiler.Throwing ash on the hot fire might make one hell of a mess

As to loosing the chimney... If you have more than about 4 feet of metal pipe above the roof where the pipe comes thru, you should have a brace on it. I had guy wires on an 8 foot tall chimeny at my last house. I have about 4 feet of chimney above the roof on my current house with no brace, but then it hasn't been thru a huricane yet eather. I have a two legged metal brace on my garage woodstove chimney which is about 5 feet high.

davidmcbeth3 wrote:I got no problems here .. 50 mph - 70 mph gusts ... this storm is a dud I think .. as most of them are the the gov't says

FWIW, I moonlight as an Emergency Manager and Ive been getting some pretty horrific message traffic today from the Northeast as a result of the storm. Its most definitely not a dud.

It's a dud in this part of MA. The government only cares about what's east of 495 anyway, so we're used to that. It's only a crisis if Boston is affected.

Fired up the stove with some cardboard today just to get the chill out. Even though it's 60° out, the wind is sucking the heat right out of this place. Chimney was pulling between a.02 & .06 with no fire due to the wind. We didn't even get a 30 mph gust at the roof level where the anemometer is, but the trees on the hills around us were getting hammered. At one point they looked as if they were laying flat! Wind speed is MUCH higher up there. That's about the highest wind speed I've ever seen on the hill in the 10 years I've lived here. The house has seen 40 mph gusts once before, but this time it all skipped over us. So far my barn is still standing and no trees came crashing through it so all is well.

This post powered by Yamaha .... Lost power at 14:05, as usual out here.

The Glenwood 116 only crept up from 200 to 250 overnight with winds in the 35-45 range. MPD closed all the way (Mine has a hole in the middle) and primarys closed. Not bad for no baro. If it had been worse I'd have opened the feed door secondary gas burner. That acts like a check valve.

I've never seen an MPD that doesn't have enough clearance/ hole in center to get the gas's out & prevent down draft--maybe I need to get off the hill more often--I'm not a fan of baro's on hand fired--NOW, them girly stoves--I can't speak on--way to confusing & too many if's involved--like SZ--on a night like last night I shut down the MPD & confidently go to bed. Most times I'm 7/8 to completly shut all heating season