Woodstove Smoke Blow Back Solution

November is very windy here in Coastal BC. Storms tune up in the Gulf of Alaska and march down the coast with very little respite in between. One blustery evening, Wayne and I were talking about improvements to our float cabin that have increased our quality of life. Little surprise, the top two relate to storms. One was the shock absorber system John invented for our anchor cables. The other was our woodstove chimney cap.

Last December, I shared a solution to our wood stove smoke blow back and downdraft problems. Our friend John found a wind protection chimney cap at RONA. As long as the wind was less than 15 kph (9 mph), our wood stove worked fine. But if a stiff breeze came up, especially a southeast wind, smoke was forced back down the chimney and into the cabin. It sometimes got so bad we had to stop using the stove (hard to do if there was wood burning) and start up our Big Buddy propane heater.

The solution was a GW Metal (Item #90142) 6" Revolving Weather Cap. GW Metal is a Canadian company and the Rona shelf name is Cap B Vent High Wind. The cost is $51.99 CAD plus taxes. Check your local home hardware store for a similar version.

Last week we had strong 24 kt (47 kph/29 mph) winds during a passing weather system. The result was much different than our previous chimney cap. After about six hours of strong, gusty winds, there was only one small blow back of smoke through the wood stove door. Here's a video of our new chimney cap in action.



The only problem we've encountered is some smoke escaping from the stove while lighting a fire during light breezes. Sometimes we use a long pole to manually move the cap to point into the wind. If it's a very light breeze, burning a twisted piece of newspaper under the smoke shelf before lighting the kindling is enough to start a draw up the chimney pipe. That usually does the trick.

So, if you are looking for a solution to a smokey woodstove, try a new Revolving Weather Cap. -- Margy