I have a wood furnace in the basement that heats the house with forced hot air. It has worked well all year until the last month or so. The fire chamber is filling with smoke so whenever I go to add more wood, it backs out and the basement fills up with smoke. Yuck! In the past I would open the ash door to provide more oxygen and that did the trick but now it just makes the smoke back down the chimney and come out the chimney clean out door and again into the basement. I have had the chimney cleaned as well as the pipe leading from the stove to the chimney. The interior of the stove looks OK too. Any ideas would be appreciated since we are still getting cold weather here and I need it. Thanks.

-- teresa (teresam@ascent.net), March 27, 2002

Answers

Is there an air inlet that needs to be cleaned, too? Our wood heater has two small pipes that channel air INto the fire box. Those get clogged on occasion and results in the smoky situation you mentioned.

-- Rose (open_rose@hotmail.com), March 28, 2002.

Well somethings blocking your chimney, get it cleaned again, check from the air inlet through the furnace, the pipe, the inlet to the chimney (block type?) and through it again. If it was profesionally cleaned call them back.

-- Ross (amulet@istar.ca), March 28, 2002.

A long shot, but any physical changes outside your house? New buildings, old ones gone, trees budding out, tree fell down? Can change the wind patterns, my furnace guy said 2 times in his career such things have messed up a working furnace, needed a longer stack to fix again...

--->Paul

-- paul (ramblerplm@hotmail.com), March 28, 2002.

I've found that barometric pressure can greatly influence the performance of a wood burner. If the weather is humid, about to snow with mild temps the stove'll act up.

-- john (natlivent@pcpros.net), March 28, 2002.

How about the type of wood you are using? Have you changed anything such as a new load of wood.

-- Mel Kelly (melkelly@webtv.net), March 31, 2002.

Have you installed or are you running any new ventilation equipment? A bathroom or kitchen fan can depressurize your house causing air to sucked down the chimney. Check the ducting on your furnace. If for whatever reason one of your ducts is releasing air outside then that will also cause your house to be depressurized and that would explain your problem.

-- curt (curtislarson177@hotmail.com), April 01, 2002.