Friday, December 10, 2010

Woodstove! Not! Quite!

Having finally finished cleaning up the messy job I made of grouting, and isn't that water cold, I set the woodstove in place this morning...


...but I still can't use it, because...


Yeah.  A little something missing there.  And now for the part that's been worrying me.

Now, I've got additional stove pipe.  But - as with the grouting - this is something I've never done before.  Clearly, we have a rigid connection between the stove and ceiling box.  Clearly, the sections must overlap.  Clearly, short of temporarily lowering the floor or raising the ceiling, they can't.

My neighbor tells me that what I need is a short section of larger diameter, that slides over and locks the stovepipe to the stove then bolts into place.  Maybe so, but nobody local seems to sell that.  At least, not for 8" pipe.

I'm pretty sure it's not all that complex, for people have been using woodstoves for a helluva long time and I never heard of it being this big problem.  Suggestions?  Anybody?

Please?

10 comments:

TJIC said...

Slide the woodstove forward 1 foot on the floor. Prop up the front legs with shims. Put the pipe in place, both at top and bottom (you've got the hypotenuse working for you, so it's going to fit). Wiggle the stove back 2". Pull out a shim or two. Wiggle the stove back another 2". Pull another shim. Etc.

Mayberry said...

I was gonna say tinfoil and duct tape, but methinks TJIC has the solution...

Anonymous said...

Joel,

I couldn't tell from the pic if you were using double wall or single wall.

If double wall, you can probably kludge something together, but better to go with the proper telescoping section. Northline.com sells it i think.

If single wall, well maybe you can cut a straight section with tinsnips to fit....I think there is a small and a big end.....one might fit the cut off section...try it with a scrap section.

Anonymous said...

From the photos it appears that you need a short piece to fill the gap from the current stove pipe to the ceiling insulator gadget.

As Anon has said it is not difficult to cut a section to fit [tight is MUCH better than loose] using a hacksaw and tinsnips.

Another option that does not entail cutting stove pipe is to put two of the flexible pipe joints in in place of a short piece. [moving the stove forward a tad to get them to fit snugly is probably a good idea.]
These flexible joints are 90* pipe joints made in four sections that rotate into a myriad of weird positions. They are made to make possible the awkward joinings of stove pipe and ceiling insulator gadgets as well as other joints.

The joint would look som'at like this. [Pardon my lack of cad software and CAD skills.]
---l l--ceiling insulator gadget
l l
\ \ the flexi joints
\ \ are here.
l l
l l
l l

This will make necessary the moving of the stove forward enough to allow the flexi joints to fit.
probably a matter of inches.

Use the small screws to lock the stove pipe 'joints' together to make the finished installation much more stable.

Stay Safe,

gooch

Anonymous said...

Well that didn't work worth a pip.
Apparently blogger doesn't recognize blank spaces as a legitimate use of it's valuable space.

So all of the blank spots in my drawing got removed in my absolutely perfect rendition of an engineering diagram of a working stove pipe installation.
Ahem ... hack-cough-cough.

{GRIN}

gooch

Joe in Reno said...

Joel
Usually the ceiling box is built so that the stovepipe will slide up in it further than what it 1st appears. The stove pipe should not "bottom out" in it when properly installed. There needs to be some room in the cap for the pipe to expand when it heats up or the pipe will tend to buckle. The trick is to cut the stovepipe to a length that will seal when installed but leaves you enough slop that you can push it up into the cap enough to get it just above the rest of the pipe. You push the pipe up into the cap, line it all up, and drop it back down on the main stack. Some times you need to crimp the top end a little (they make a tool for this, but I've done it with needle nosed pliers) to get it up into the cap.

Big Wooly said...

Do you have a section with an adjustable damper built into it that fits right above the stove? That's the piece I would "adjust' to make everything come together. If you don't have one, it'll make it harder to control your temps and draft.

Joel said...

BW, I do have a damper that I'll install in the pipe as soon as I figure out how to install the pipe itself. Important, I agree.

Right now the stovepipe up to the ceiling box is 8" single-wall. Everything through the ceiling and above is 6" double-wall, and there's a reducer in between. Someday I hope to score a better stove, and it'll almost certainly use 6" pipe because almost everything does. The guy I consulted at the stove store told me a reducer wouldn't screw up my life as long as it was as high as possible.

Thanks for the help, guys, and please keep the suggestions coming. So far I've got a couple of possible directions.

Pat H. said...

There's a crimping tool that is used to reduce the diameter of the stove pipe you already have so that it slips into another section of pipe the same size. The short section of piper will have to be crimped as well so that it slides into your through ceiling fixture.

Crimping tool.

You work it slowly around the end of the pipe, putting the crimps in continuously until the pipe slides in about 2-3 inches. It's self sealing, no clamps are necessary.

Pat H. said...

Also see HOw to crimp stove pipe.