smoke coming out of woodstove when the stove door is on

I have a woodstove setup as you can in the picture below:



The chimney pipe, after exiting the wall, makes another L turn and goes up a few meters more. I think the overall height of the chimney pipe is about 4.5 meters (15ft or so). The diameter of the pipe is 13 cm (about 5 inches).

Now my problem is that if I leave the door of the stove open during burning, some smoke comes out of it. Is this normal and expected for a woodstove? It doesn't seem to be related to downdraft as I have an H-cowl which pretty much prevents the downdraft issue (also this happens in any weather regardless of the wind/pressure situation).

I am asking this because I have a fireplace in our main house and I can burn it without closing its door at all (of course it has a higher and wider chimney). I hoped to be able to do the same for my woodstove. Perhaps its design is faulty?

Any advice and experience sharing is very welcome.

Oguz

This type of woodstoves are designed to get the air from below. My woodstove does not outright smoke inside, but the fire slows a lot when I open the door.
If you want radiated heat, you need a different kind of fireplace.

Beautiful one you have ❤️

when I had back-draft problems with my woodstove, I discovered that it was caused by a blocked cap at the top of the chimney.  When was the last time you inspected and cleaned the creosote from your chimney?

I'm not a wood stove expert, but for the wood stoves that I have dealt with, smoke coming out the door was caused by not enough draft up the chimney.

The cross-sectional area of the open door is much higher than the cross-sectional area of the exhaust pipe, so the draft up the chimney would have to be enormous to be able to successfully keep an inward draw on the whole door area. As said above, these stoves are designed to run as airtight stoves, with controlled air input from vents.

I am confused by the statements  “if I leave the door of the stove open…”.  Are you talking about leaving the door open for a prolonged period?  

I think it would be expected that with a stove like that, you can't leave the door open without some smoke coming out into the room.  Mine sure does.  If I crack it open an inch, then it doesn't smoke out but when the volume of air that comes in through the door meets or exceeds the volume going up the chimney, I'll get smoke.  The ratio of air up the chimney vs air in through the door depends on a number of factors (weather, temperature delta between in and out, how tight your house is, how hot the fire is, etc).

John F Dean wrote:I am confused by the statements  “if I leave the door of the stove open…”.  Are you talking about leaving the door open for a prolonged period?  

I am also confused. The whole point of a stove is to provide an engineered system for efficient, controlled, and safe combustion.

A stove with the door open defeats the purpose. It may burn too hot and cause damage, or exhaust smoke into the room because the chimney draft is inadequate, or quickly build up creosote in the chimney, or spit out sparks and cause a house fire.

That design looks very similar to a stove I purchased recently (but not yet installed).  [I've left the US distributor's logo on the photo below for copyright purposes.]   The cross sectional depiction of such cookstoves indicates the convoluted path that the exhaust must take around the oven (baking) compartment before exiting up the flue.  It may well be that, even with good chimney draft, an open door would allow a more immediate path of exhaust escape into the living space due to the obstructions encountered in the cook design of the stove.  This would be unlike a fire-place and chimney which are less obstructed in exhausting the combustion and draft.  Just a possibility....

Well, thank you very much for the great answers. To reply to this point:

John F Dean wrote: I am confused by the statements  “if I leave the door of the stove open…”.  Are you talking about leaving the door open for a prolonged period?

Yes, my intention was to "sometimes" burn it with an open door to enjoy the fire as one does with a fireplace. Of course when I am sitting nearby and closely watching it to avoid a dangerous situation.

Regarding to this:

Douglas Alpenstock wrote: I am also confused. The whole point of a stove is to provide an engineered system for efficient, controlled, and safe combustion.

You are right. I think I thought if the fireplace in the main house can burn without smoke coming out, the wood stove can too. But they are entirely different designs. And I think in general fireplaces are designed to burn with an open fire.

The comment by John Weiland could be quite to the point:

John Weiland wrote: The cross sectional depiction of such cookstoves indicates the convoluted path that the exhaust must take around the oven (baking) compartment before exiting up the flue

.

I didn't think about this before. The smoke definitely takes a more convoluted path around the baking compartment. This is definitely not the case with a fireplace (or perhaps a wood stove without a baking compartment).

And my situation is very similar to Mike Haasl's:

Mike Haasl wrote: If I crack it open an inch, then it doesn't smoke out but when the volume of air that comes in through the door meets or exceeds the volume going up the chimney, I'll get smoke.

Only when I open more than an inch or so, the smoke comes out more visibly. I guess the issue is settled then. With such a wood stove design, one cannot expect smokeless burn if the lid is on -- which is not a safe way to burn it anyways.