Manual Pipe Dampers .. How, Why, When

 
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freetown fred
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Post by freetown fred » Sun. Mar. 24, 2013 6:55 am

Personally, I keep my MPD completly closed from begining of season till end of season except when I am topping off hopper. My under air/ bi-matallic thermo flap is what controls my burn rate even on the warmer days. Even closed, my MPD allows volitiles to escape through chimney pipe. This method is just what works in my particular set up. I reached this conclusion through my first season of trial & error. Nothing is set in stone here, mostly observation & common sense ;)


 
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Post by lsayre » Sun. Mar. 24, 2013 7:23 am

When did the barometric damper come into common use, and how long did humanity depend upon heat from coal stoves (presumably utilizing manual dampers) before the barometric damper came into being?

 
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Post by perch » Sun. Mar. 24, 2013 7:54 am

well I want the most heat for the amount of coal I use?

 
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Post by freetown fred » Sun. Mar. 24, 2013 8:13 am

It's all give & take here perch--example--pix of your set up, where are you located geographically, FIND OUT what model your unit is ( with pix someone might be able to help with that), external or internal chimney, where is your MPD located, etc, etc ????? Ya want specific answers, give up some specific info my friend ;) PS--the fast burning has nothing to do with your MPD or for that matter a Baro--it is your under air setting

 
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Post by Chuck_Steak » Sun. Mar. 24, 2013 1:35 pm

lsayre wrote:When did the barometric damper come into common use ...
My guess, when they started using fuels like oil and gas.
With those fuels, there is a set amount of fuel being pumped
into the combustion chamber. It's the same all the time.
In order to get "fire" you need to mix air with that delivered
amount of fuel. It is very important, to have the proper amount
of air to mix with the fuel, all of the time.
If you had a strong draft one day, your flame would be very lean.
Weak draft, the flame would be very dirty/weak.
That's called metering. Making sure that the ratio of air/fuel is constant.
Like your car engine.
It has to have say 15 to 1 ratio. The computer takes care of that now.
It used to be the adjustment on your carburetor.

With wood and coal, it is not as much an issue. They are going to burn
regardless of draft. Providing of course there is one.
Neither dampening device will help in that scenario.
Manual damper, or baro, you are basically helping control the intensity of
the fire, not so much the efficiency of the burn... Like with oil/gas.

Dan

 
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Post by Dallas » Sun. Mar. 24, 2013 2:18 pm

perch wrote:well I want the most heat for the amount of coal I use?
On this subject, there is a lot of "theory" provided, which has no valid reason or proven basis. (many times, makes no sense!)

Burning a "hand fired" correctly, is a fine tuning of the controls for "heat required", "time required" and "efficiency".

"Starting the stove" or getting a new fuel load burning, quickest, would be done by opening the MPD and the under-fire draft. By leaving these two controls in this "open position", unattended, is one of the best ways to burn the house down! Leaving the MPD open, will allow the fire to burn hottest, depending on the under-fire damper setting, but it is not the most efficient use of the stove and fuel. The MPD can be closed significantly, which will help to keep the heat in the firebox, and improve efficiency.

The under-fire draft can be used to fine tune the "burn" to result in the temperature you desire or the length of time you want the fuel load to burn (such as, through the night or day, while at work).

If, the fire were to tend to burn too hot, with the dampers closed, as the older non-airtight stoves might do, the over-fire draft could be opened, which would satisfy some of the draft, without creating more heat from the stove. A common trick, with the old kitchen stoves, was to tip the top lids a little bit. While I believe, these stoves had '"over-fire" dampers, they still seemed to tip the lids. ??

Burning the stove with no MPD or the MPD open, is like driving your vehicle at 50 mph in low gear .. very inefficient!
Also, I've never heard of opening the MPD to "allow heat to escape"! If it's too hot, the answer would be, to restrict the under fire air supply further.

It's all about learning the stove and fine tuning!

 
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Post by dcrane » Tue. Apr. 09, 2013 7:09 am

I've learned to try and steer clear of MPD/BARO threads because everyone seems to have different experiences and its highly dependent on the stove, chimney, draft, set up each individual has.

BUT, I just wanted to say that opening the MPD does indeed allow heat to escape... In other words, if my living room is sweltering hot and I want to cool it down I would open the MPD and close down the under fire air controls, if I merely closed down the under fire air controls the room would NOT cool nearly as fast as it would had I opened up the MPD as well.


 
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Post by Lightning » Tue. Apr. 09, 2013 2:30 pm

Yeah I've seen some people get a little feisty around these parts lol :oops:

 
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Post by coalcracker » Sat. Oct. 12, 2013 12:34 pm

I'm reading this old thread and just chuckling- yes, bats DO come down the stove pipe into the house. I've had TWO bats flying around in my house that got in via the stovepipe, and found 2 others dead inside the pipe itself, over the past 20 years. The 2 that were flying around in the house, I shot with a Daisy BB gun both times. They come in during the warm months when the stove is not burning.

flue pipe dampers- were invented in 1810 back when stoves burned wood and were not airtight, and homes had no insulation. They were later fitted to early anthacite burning stoves that were also not airtight, i.e. the stoves had no rope seals around the doors, just flanged. The homes back then leaked a TON of air around doors, windows, through the cracks in walls, from basements/cellars. Getting a little coal CO in the house was not as serious as today.

in a modern home that is typically over-insulated for heating costs, I'd not use any type of flue pipe damper on a coal stove, because when you close the flue pipe, the gases only have one other place to go- into the room and living areas. It may raise the stove temperature some, and make it heat slightly more, but the risks far outweigh the benefits. In my own house, it's so airtight that I have to crack a window slightly to give my stove more air during low-draft days.

with a wood stove, using an automatic barometric fuel pipe damper can be equally dangerous, as when it closes, chimney temperatures go down, and creosote buildup increases. If a chimney fire occurred, the baro would close complelely, opening the chimney to room air and feeding the chimney fire, turning your chimney into a blast furnace turbo engine- and possibly burning your house down.

a baro damper was originally an oil furnace/boiler device that was adapted and retrofitted to a coal and wood stove. Every one I've seen with one on it, went out of calibration as they get corroded, rusty, and the sensing devices inside become old and defective. then they stick and just don't work. I know a guy who bought a coal stove with one on it, and could never get it fired, and gave up on it. All he had to do was remove the darned baro damper and it would have worked just fine.

a lot of the guys saying you need these devices, are in the business of selling them, and a good manual damper can go $50-$80, and a baro controlled damper even more.

I've been heating with coal in my existing house for 20 years with no damper and 2 different stoves. The Harman holds a coal fire for 36 hours if fully loaded. It's airtight and if I turn down the intake draft belore 3/8 turn from the full closed point, the stove simply goes out in short time.

what would I need a damper for, to reduce it even further ? an airtight stove has full control from the front air vent controls.

my stove actually came with a direction sheet that specifically said, DO NOT INSTALL ANY TYPE OF FLUE PIPE DAMPER, DOING SO VOIDS WARRANTY AND IS DANGEROUS .

if you close the flue pipe damper, and open the front air drafts on a wood or coal stove, you will OVERFIRE the stove, hold the heat in, push smoke and CO into the room, and turn the stove cherry red, destroying its metallurgy and cracking the firepot.

it's like pounding a potato up the exhaust pipe of a car. I had a car once that had a partially plugged converter in the exhaust, it held heat in the engine and burned the heads off 4 exhaust valves.

the damper was something useful on old stoves of the 1800-1980 era, but now it's really no longer needed or necessary, and on many stoves it's downright detrimental and dangerous to use.

I'd only give a damper thought if I had a stove with an extremely strong chimney updraft that made the fire run away uncontrollably, or I had a stove that I was burning heavy and not getting any heat from. Most stoves I've encountered with problems, were because they didn't have enough draft, not because they had too much.

 
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Post by dcrane » Sat. Oct. 12, 2013 12:55 pm

coalcracker wrote:I'm reading this old thread and just chuckling- yes, bats DO come down the stove pipe into the house. I've had TWO bats flying around in my house that got in via the stovepipe, and found 2 others dead inside the pipe itself, over the past 20 years. The 2 that were flying around in the house, I shot with a Daisy BB gun both times. They come in during the warm months when the stove is not burning.

flue pipe dampers- were invented in 1810 back when stoves burned wood and were not airtight, and homes had no insulation. They were later fitted to early anthacite burning stoves that were also not airtight, i.e. the stoves had no rope seals around the doors, just flanged. The homes back then leaked a TON of air around doors, windows, through the cracks in walls, from basements/cellars. Getting a little coal CO in the house was not as serious as today.

in a modern home that is typically over-insulated for heating costs, I'd not use any type of flue pipe damper on a coal stove, because when you close the flue pipe, the gases only have one other place to go- into the room and living areas. It may raise the stove temperature some, and make it heat slightly more, but the risks far outweigh the benefits. In my own house, it's so airtight that I have to crack a window slightly to give my stove more air during low-draft days.

with a wood stove, using an automatic barometric fuel pipe damper can be equally dangerous, as when it closes, chimney temperatures go down, and creosote buildup increases. If a chimney fire occurred, the baro would close complelely, opening the chimney to room air and feeding the chimney fire, turning your chimney into a blast furnace turbo engine- and possibly burning your house down.

a baro damper was originally an oil furnace/boiler device that was adapted and retrofitted to a coal and wood stove. Every one I've seen with one on it, went out of calibration as they get corroded, rusty, and the sensing devices inside become old and defective. then they stick and just don't work. I know a guy who bought a coal stove with one on it, and could never get it fired, and gave up on it. All he had to do was remove the darned baro damper and it would have worked just fine.

a lot of the guys saying you need these devices, are in the business of selling them, and a good manual damper can go $50-$80, and a baro controlled damper even more.

I've been heating with coal in my existing house for 20 years with no damper and 2 different stoves. The Harman holds a coal fire for 36 hours if fully loaded. It's airtight and if I turn down the intake draft belore 3/8 turn from the full closed point, the stove simply goes out in short time.

what would I need a damper for, to reduce it even further ? an airtight stove has full control from the front air vent controls.

my stove actually came with a direction sheet that specifically said, DO NOT INSTALL ANY TYPE OF FLUE PIPE DAMPER, DOING SO VOIDS WARRANTY AND IS DANGEROUS .

if you close the flue pipe damper, and open the front air drafts on a wood or coal stove, you will OVERFIRE the stove, hold the heat in, push smoke and CO into the room, and turn the stove cherry red, destroying its metallurgy and cracking the firepot.

it's like pounding a potato up the exhaust pipe of a car. I had a car once that had a partially plugged converter in the exhaust, it held heat in the engine and burned the heads off 4 exhaust valves.

the damper was something useful on old stoves of the 1800-1980 era, but now it's really no longer needed or necessary, and on many stoves it's downright detrimental and dangerous to use.

I'd only give a damper thought if I had a stove with an extremely strong chimney updraft that made the fire run away uncontrollably, or I had a stove that I was burning heavy and not getting any heat from. Most stoves I've encountered with problems, were because they didn't have enough draft, not because they had too much.
Good lord... if the draft pipe is sealed with a potato the stove will go out. The reason Harman says no MPD is because they say "Baro" please... (though the folks here are so well in tune a lot of them have the knowledge and ability to use both!)... I do appriciate the efforts to try and help others and hope we can see your set up and some tips, hints, tricks, etc... but going down this road of dampers here is some very sketchy bussiness (Ima go hide now before lightning see's me :fear: )

 
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Post by Lightning » Sat. Oct. 12, 2013 1:14 pm

No need Bro, I felt bad about my lashing. I won't do that again :oops: Dr. Phil said it's ok to agree to disagree :lol:

 
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Post by rberq » Sat. Oct. 12, 2013 7:28 pm

After thorough consideration, I will be keeping my damper, but only because the price of potatoes is unpredictable. :|

 
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Post by Dallas » Sat. Oct. 26, 2013 9:02 am

Food for thought:
My hand fired is thermostatically controlled, from an upper room thermostat and works nearly flawlessly with an MPD. However, on several occasions, I've forgotten to close the MPD after tending the fire. The result has been: I feel the house getting chilly and the registers are not blowing much heat. When I check the stove, I discover, that I've left the MPD open, and the coal has prematurely burned up, to the point, that it isn't making any appreciable amount of heat. This would be an unusual situation for this time frame, had the MPD been closed.

My conclusion has to be, that the MPD saves me a bunch of coal and allows the stove to make far more usable heat, when closed. Just the facts, as I've experienced them!

 
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Post by freetown fred » Sat. Oct. 26, 2013 9:17 am

Absoutly correct DALLAS--keep the heat in the house:)

 
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Post by rberq » Sat. Oct. 26, 2013 12:14 pm

damper.jpg
.JPG | 21.5KB | damper.jpg
I have had a baro for some years. With my DSM stove, the baro is almost always open at least half way (was not true with my Harman stove). So this year I added a manual damper below the baro, looks a lot like the attached picture. Closed or open, it seems to make no difference whatsoever. Coal consumptions is about the same as before. Right now the stove is at 250 degrees, winds are calm, outdoor temperature about 40 degrees, manual damper is fully closed, and the baro is STILL open almost half way. So my sense is that the MPD lets so much air through, that it might as well not be there. Are there MPDs that have smaller holes, or would that be considered unsafe?
Last edited by rberq on Sat. Oct. 26, 2013 12:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.


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