just wondering...

Here is the lighting up of my batch, so you can get the sense of how strong the draft is.



I often used to start up my old J tube with meths.

Hi Hazel, welcome to the tread, sorry I can't help you a whole lot right now I just bought my Liberator and still trying to tweak it to work properly. And this is the first I heard of an ondol stove I had to google it ;o)

Well this is the first night since last week that it is cold enough to light up the stove. It's not that cold but at least colder outside than inside. I've tried lighting it up like Graham was mentioning, sort of. It didn't work, I took the chimney cap off to see if I'd get more draft. Didn't work either. I figured my wood must not be dry enough. So tonight I installed the pellet hopper. Surely that will work right?
Nope. My pot of water has been on the stove for about an hour and is still not boiling. Almost seems to be worst than burning with wood, and even lighting it with a torch took longer than expected and the fire was not that impressive.

So what now? Lengthen the chimney pipe either in the mass or on the roof? What if I put more elbows in the mass wouldn't that count as more length? The instructions say not to use more than 4- 90* bends, I only have 3, don't know if one more will help.

What if I left it like that, is it dangerous if the stove doesn't burn that hot? I would imagine it would create as much creosote as a regular wood stove, and maybe carbon monoxide?

Helene, (and those on here more knowledgable than me), you might be able to start a draft using the clean-out to heat the distal part of the exhaust system with the feeder open drawing air from the room. Then provided you have a good draft, you could start the feeder tube fire.

Maybe. If that doesn't work it seems like there is an airflow restriction to me, maybe in the cap. That thing should be chugging.

Certainly sounds like it hasn't been installed correctly somehow.

Can you take a video of the thing in action with the pellet hopper?

Can you measure the temperatures along the chimney with an IR gun?

Are you seeing any smoke at all coming from the roof chimney when you start it up with wood?

Helene,   Its helpful for me when I have an issue with something to take things one step at a time - meaning, to eliminate variables so that eventually the problem gets isolated and identified. A relatively easy thing to do would be to eliminate most of the bends in the chimney pipe to see if anything improves. I would make it look like the picture below with one 90 coming out the back then straight up. It looks like you could use the piping you already have to achieve this. If this doesn't improve your drafting issue then there is something else wrong.

Helene, can you take the top off that stove off? If yes, i would be curious of seeing pictures of the insides.


And, are you still running this pipe circled in red, partly open?

If yes, plug that immediately.  Someone has had the same kind of problem with their liberator.

https://permies.com/t/76612/Installed-Liberator-Rocket-Heater-improve

Satamax,  Thomas asked this same question and Helene answered:

Helene Tesiere wrote: .......Yes there is a cap at the end of the clean out pipe, it just looks like there isn't ;0) .

Gerry Parent wrote:Satamax,  Thomas asked this same question and Helene answered:

Helene Tesiere wrote: .......Yes there is a cap at the end of the clean out pipe, it just looks like there isn't ;0) .

Sorry for being slow!