lsayre wrote:When did the barometric damper come into common use ...
perch wrote:well i want the most heat for the amount of coal i use?
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.