I’ve heard that you should replace the door gasket every year. I’ve had my wood stove 12 years and I’ve never replaced it. I live in Oregon and I heat my house all winter long (about 3 cords) with the wood stove. Am I missing something about the gasket?
Is it the glass rope type or something else? How long it lasts is going to be affected by the door design.
Same dealio here. Heat with wood all winter long with a wood stove.
Every year I ask the chimney sweep if I should replace the gasket. For 15 years, the answer has been, “Nah. It’s good.”
I don’t think you’re missing anything about the gasket.
Give it the “dollar bill test”. Close the door with a dollar bill in it and try to remove the bill. If it slides right out, then try tightening the door (if yours is adjustable). If you have tightened the door and the bill still pulls out easily, then it’s time to replace the gasket.
Replacing it every year sounds more than a bit excessive to me.
I’ve never had the flue swept either (I live in a one-story house). I like to burn a hot fire (keeps the door glass clear) and don’t load up for the night. You think I still need to clean the chimney?
Yeah, that I would do.
I burn like you, hot fire and when it’s out it’s out. I don’t bank for overnight unless it’s super cold. Even still, the flue gets dirty over time.
Chimney fires are no joke. You could probably get away with cleaning every other year. When you have it done, ask the sweep. Ounce of prevention and all that.
Never had your chimney cleaned in 12 years? Yikes!
If you burn unseasoned wood and crappy wood like pine and you don’t burn it hot, you should have the chimney cleaned every year. But you say you are burning hot, which definitely helps, and if you are burning well seasoned wood and aren’t burning crap wood like pine then you don’t need to worry about it so much. But even then you definitely need to have the chimney cleaned much more frequently than once every 12 years. I personally wouldn’t go longer than 3 years in your situation.
As Aspenglow said, chimney fires are no joke. It’s not like you get any warning signs or anything either. You usually don’t have any problem at all, and then all of a sudden you have a major problem.
Thanks for the advice. I live in rural Oregon so I’m not sure I can hire someone to do that but I think I can get a brush. I’ve looked down it and it looks pretty clean. I don’t like heights.
I live quite rural, too. I’ve found it helpful to mention to tradespeople that they can schedule their service with me when they have enough people lined up in my direction to make it worth their while for the journey. I guess after 12 years you won’t be in too much of a rush. 
I hear you on not liking heights. I don’t like them either. Nothing will induce me to walk around on my roof nowadays.
Are you British? I was thinking that you would probably need a tight door gasket if your fire gets out of control so you can choke off the oxygen supply.
Best done when fire is out.
I have been presuming this - a wood stove is very different to an open fire, in that you can regulate airflow. I’m not saying that it will put a chimney fire straight out, but surely it must be pretty effective at damping it down? (And, where I live, buy plenty of time for the fire brigade to get there - which may well affect perceptions of how serious a thing a chimney fire (with a stove) is.)
Is my assumption flawed? If so, how?
BTW, we do have the chimney swept regularly - every other year or so of burning seasoned hardwood at about a half cord per year.
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It will definitely slow the fire down, but nowhere near to the point of completely choking it out. You won’t have spectacular flames shooting out of your chimney like you would with an open fireplace, but while the fire will be slower, it will still burn very hot inside your chimney. Combustible materials near the chimney (like wooden structure) can catch fire from the heat, and while the flue is designed to have hot gases flowing up inside of it, there are limits to how much heat the flue is designed to handle, and a hot fire inside the chimney can exceed that and damage the flue.
Not British. I also live in Oregon, although probably to the northwest of the OP if his/her username is accurate.
My wood stove has a damper rod that allows me to control the air flow to a fire. But I don’t think it would be effective in choking down a chimney fire fast enough to prevent damage.
That said, my chimney is made of a wall of thick rock cemented together, with a stainless steel flue attached to the wood stove through the chimney itself. It is converted from an open fireplace that never worked worth a damn. I probably don’t need to worry too much about damage from a chimney fire.
Still, I have the same concerns as Treppenwitz as regards outside assistance from the fire crew. Not a chance I’m willing to take.
ETA: Well, exactly as engineer_comp_geek describes. Those flues are expensive! I never want to replace one.
The door gasket is important for the air flow.
I have a pellet stove, which is not quite the same as firewood burning stove, and the airflow is critical to efficient operation. I replaced my door gasket and sealed the leaks in the stove pipes and the difference was impressive.
The glass stays cleaner, the stove works much better, and the gasket material is fairly cheap and easy to do. A leaky door gasket is sucking air from the wrong place, the door. If you seal the door the stove will draw air from where it is supposed to. My pellet stove draws the air from under the house. There are many stove designs. But the stove really should not be drawing its air through the door gasket.
Something to think about.
I always burn well-seasoned wood, fir to start, then oak and madrone. I like to try to engineer the fire. Once the fire’s going, if you can see smoke from the chimney, it’s not efficient.
Does creosote sublimate, or oxidize without catching on fire?
I tried those compressed-sawdust fire bricks, and that got hot enough to scare me. I keep a close eye on my wood stove.
In the 80’s, wood was our sole source of heat for about a decade. The stove design was a top discharge w no converter, and the flue (triple wall stainless) was a straight shot up thru the roof. If it burned, in the stove it went, but mostly green hardwood. During this period we had three or four (to my knowledge:eek:) chimney fires. While they were definitely attention getters, in the end there was no harm done. Each episode lasted about 45-60 seconds and was over… calling the fire department would have been pointless in our case.
Its been years since i retired from the local FD, but was on the roof many times dealing with chimney fires.
A good shot of water into the stove will steam extinguish a ripping fire!
Another way we would fight them is to drop a bag of ANSUL powder down the chimney. Discharging a dry chemical extinguisher into the firebox is very effective also.
Any water poured down a chimney is sure to crack the liners if they haven’t already cracked.
Another thing about chimney fires is the building materials surrounding
the chimney can, with time reduce their auto ignition temp by several degrees. Or so we were taught in sectional school. So that means Season your wood, burn hot and keep an eye on your flu and don’t overlook the pipe between the stove and chimney!!
“Discharging a dry chemical extinguisher into the firebox is very effective also.” For a chimney fire?
Irrespective, you guys must have had an exceptional response time.
Not counting calls to the fire department as a reasonable precaution to potential bad outcomes, does anyone here have experience getting the F.D. to come and actually extinguish a chimney fire in progress?