I have repeatedly come across information that it is not recommended to heat a stone stove in winter, then extinguish, then melt again, etc. We do just that at the dacha, because we are there "raids", and there are no other options for heating the house yet came up with.
The most problematic moment for me is kindling the stove when there is a thaw outside.
It turns out that the smoke enters the room, and does not go out through the chimney to the street, as it should. This problem was so urgent for me that I learned on the fly to determine whether I would smoke the room when firing up, or everything would turn out well.
To do this, I just need to check the temperature outside and in the house. If the thermometer columns inside the house show a lower temperature than outside, then you cannot do without smoke in the rooms. Because of the cold air in the chimney, back draft is created, so the smoke gets into the house.
I've tried several methods. At first, I left the stove shutter open, hoping that this would help equalize the temperature inside and out. As a result, the smell from the firebox spread throughout all the rooms of the house. I had to come up with something else.
And then a construction hairdryer came to my aid. I think it is quite possible to confine ourselves to an ordinary hairdryer, which dries hair. I took a sheet of thick cardboard and made an impromptu shield out of it. In terms of dimensions, it will turn out to be slightly larger than the furnace door. I cut a hole in the cardboard for a hair dryer.
Before starting kindling, I open the valve and close the ash pan. Then I open the firebox door, point the hair dryer at it and warm up the stove for several minutes. Thanks to these manipulations, the stove can be melted faster, and the smoke does not get into the room.
Once the electricity was cut off at the dacha. Since it had been freezing the day before, it was very cold in the house. I began to think about how to replace the hair dryer in the absence of electricity. And then the foot pump that we use to inflate the air mattress came to mind. I decided to use it.
I made a "window" in a cardboard shield, in which I fixed the end of the pump. I put small chips in the firebox, closed the ash pan, set the valve in the open position and started kindling. Working as a pump, I practically did not allow the smoke to get inside.
I hope that this information will be useful to you and will come in handy someday.
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