smoke in house

I have a new rocket stove in my basement. It works fine when it is going good but as the fire dies down, it starts to smoke back into the house. My house seems like it is starved for air (negative pressure). When the force of the fire dies down, the air starts coming back into my house. I have a 6 inch system. The exhaust is going out the side of the house. If I leave a window open it seems to help some, but that kind of defeats the purpose. I tried running a 6 inch fresh air line into the house to feed the fire, but it didn't help that much when the fire is going out. Also, I read it is not safe so I don't want to go that route. I am getting close to giving up. Any ideas would be much appreciated.

You aren't going to like this answer: vertical chimney out the roof

don kopa : A short list of the things normally found in the home that if switched on and blowing air from inside the house cause The Rocket Mass Heater to
Back draft !

1) any running clothes dryer !

2) a gas fired hot water heater !

3) the range hood over the cook stove in your kitchen !

4) the Exhaust fan in your bathroom that removes excess moisture and shit smell !

5 a remotely located, but still within the house Space heater !

You need to research the topics Stack Effect, and Whole House Stack Effect.

It is possible that your outside vertical chimney is just not tall enough.

However there are locations where Rocket Mass Heaters Will not work without first tightening up your house !

Sometimes Basement Rocket Heaters can not be made to work at all, Question, with a very dry house, why are you exhausting
the dryer vent out of doors at all this time off the year!

For the Good of The Craft ! Big AL !

My understanding is that Don has his rocket heater chimney going out the side of his house. That's why I said he needed a vertical chimney out the roof.

Cindy Mathieu : Good catch, I missed that, Thank you Cindy !

When Ianto Evans was perfecting the basic Rocket Mass Heater RMH, he was also looking for a home site for what became Cob Cottage cobcottage.com and
rocketstoves.com He found a place with a very stable Micro Climate with steady winds during a short Pacific Coast heating season, Here he build a series of
houses around his RMHs, that sit lightly into the land, looking not unlike mushrooms. Most were well under 15' tall! and most all were able to take advantage of
those Favorable steady winds to allow construction of horizontally discharging Chimneys to the lee side of his structures !

Many People feel that somehow they were promised that they too could expect to Retro fit Conventional Housing to include an RMH with a Horizontally Discharging
Chimney ! It is a problem of our own creation and I hope that the brand new 3rd addition of the 'Rocket Mass Heaters' Book addresses this issue! It is not in
anyway a poor reflection on anyone to say that most Americans, or other citizens of the world, could not tell you where their prevailing winds are coming from right
now!

A tall enough vertical chimney should give strong hope to anyone that It will 'draw' whatever type of heating unit you have in your house! Like the meme about
Terrorists, you need to be ever vigilant! The ''Storm of the Decade'' coming out of a different direction could be the only event that makes a well made horizontal
Chimney fail to 'Draft' but what if its a 3-day or longer storm- - - - - ?!! We don't all live in California or Florida! For the Good of the Craft !

Think like Fire, Flow like a Gas, Don't be the Marshmallow ! As always, your comments and questions are solicited and welcome ! PYRO - Logically BIG AL !

Thanks for all the comments. So a higher chimney is the answer? This doesn't seem to make sense to me. Just to see what would happen, I added about 15 feet of 6" stove pipe along my outside wall to go up higher. Then I checked the draft at the stove and it didn't seem to make a difference. Still experiencing cold air pouring into the house. Maybe heating the pipe (lighting a fire) would be the answer? But I am afraid that when the fire starts to go out, the pipe would cool quickly and the air would come back in. Does anyone know if insulated pipe would make much of a difference vs. galvanized pipe? I hate to go through the expense of putting in insulated pipe if I am not convinced it will work. Maybe this rocket stove won't work in my basement? I appreciate any comments/ideas.

Don, may be it's time to get the camera out, and post pics, and do a little sketch.

But, as allen said, if your wholme house acts as a chimney, it will be hard to overcome. Do you have hot air underfloor heating? Or was the house fited with this in the past? Is it a fully underground basement?

The exhaust is going out the side of the house.

This is the statement to which I keep referring.

Did you get the pipe up over the top of your roof? Yes, insulated pipe would make a difference. You need some heat in the pipe in order to keep the draft working. The principles of chimney draft are the same no matter whether its a rocket heater or a traditional cast iron unit.

Please post some pictures of your chimney setup.

I moved the rocket stove to my attached garage and piped out the the top of the roof. It made a huge difference. The chimney effect that I have in my house did not allow me to put the rocket stove in my basement. Maybe if I put a chimney all the way to the roof it would have worked, but I'm not sure. I wish somewhere in all the research I did, the importance of a chimney was stated. Showing these things exhausted out the side of a house is not practical unless you have the perfect situation. Now I have to figure out how to get the heat into my house from the garage. Probably tie into my cold air return. Thanks for all the comments in helping me figure this out.