by mannytheseacow » Tue Oct 21, 2014 9:17 pm
Good thoughts, Byron. Those are things that I have looked at, too. With this rebuild I have a huge top-gap so I'm fairly certain it's not that. I think the riser is diameter is about the same as my 6" was, as my 6" had a huge insulative mass around it. The plenum is way bigger... not that much that could go wrong. The only area that could be pinching, in my opinion, is the 180 at the far end. I fabricated 8" ducts into the old 6" cleanouts by cutting the 6" cleanouts with a grinder and splaying them out. wider, covering the area with a sheet of tin over the top, and cobbing around it. I'm pretty sure it's ok, but I've never really measured it. One thing that I did try was connecting two 6" 90s to the cleanouts there to make a loop that redirected flow back around and increasing the volume in that area.... and it had no effect.
I'm with Matt on the fuel. I've worked through some large crotch splits at the front of my pile and gotten into some older, dryer, smaller fuel and there are no smoke-back issues. These loads tend to burn through in 30-40 minutes.
Matt, the window is pretty cool, and mostly aesthetic. Honestly, it hasn't really had any effect on draw, though I love being able to load longer fuel and leave it without trying to balance the inverted pot on the top of a stick, hoping it falls correctly as the fuel burns down. The one downside to my window is that it is up a little higher on the stove. The bottom of the window stays clean but the top and edge farthest from the burn tunnel have gotten pretty black from smoke. It still lets light through but not as much as if it were viewing the burn tunnel.
Actually, I hate it. It works real good and now I have no reason to be tinkering with the stove. Bah!
"Knowledge is power. Arm yourself."