emergency smoke-back hack and over-ambition: grab big fan and blow it down the wood feed five mins.

I thought I could start my rocket mass heater (Liberator) on a warm-ish day to take the edge off, it felt clammier than it actually was (55 F), and I got terrible, awful, no-good very bad smoke-back.  The usual things hadn't worked--pre-heating the chimney with a resin block, propaning the chimney, and trying to blow into it with a little fan.  What finally got things burning in the rihtt. direction was holding a jumbo fan at max speed blowing down into the feed tube for five minutes solid, and then it started burning the right direction.  (Taking the wood out and putting it in sand would have been a good idea, but it's hard to reach down into such a narrrow feed tube with tongs, and I don't have very good tongs either).  

A lot of smoke in the house, lesson learned, and a way to make it less bad if I really need it.  I figured I'd post this in case it would help someone

Hey Joshua. I've had a handful of backdrafts from wood stoves, and it completely sucks. Not a happy situation.

Trying to fix the glitch, I found that it was from a too-short chimney (based on the height of surrounding trees) or very rarely (like, twice) from a crazy atmospheric downdraft that no-one could predict. That was weird.

There's nothing wrong with having a Plan-Zed option like a leaf blower to force a draft in a crazy situation. Better than smoking up the whole house.

But: look at the chimney with a skeptical eye, and see if it needs another 6 ft. My 2c.

Oh, yeh - good to know! We're planning to get our liberator ordered in a couple weeks, and we're new to the rockets, but we're both familiar with fireplaces, and I've worked with a fair number (8?10?) of typical wood stoves. Do you know how the liberator handles in comparison with any of those?

Carla Burke wrote:Oh, yeh - good to know! We're planning to get our liberator ordered in a couple weeks, and we're new to the rockets, but we're both familiar with fireplaces, and I've worked with a fair number (8?10?) of typical wood stoves. Do you know how the liberator handles in comparison with any of those?

I am so glad to hear that you have decided on the Liberator.

I found this picture this morning and I so want to get one of these.


source

May be in another lifetime.