How Important Is The Pellet Stove Pipe For Safety and Stove Efficiency?

When consumers are choosing a pellet stove or boiler, the location of the wood pellet burner is very important. You must position the stove so many inches away from any combustible surface, and the pellet stove pipe must also have a route through and out of the property that cannot potentially start a fire. The cheaper pellet stove pipes are single walled. This means that the outer surface of the pipe gets very hot with the combustion gases, this means if the stove pipe is installed incorrectly close to combustible materials, a fire is a very high risk. Also single walled pellet stove pipes can also have problems with creosote build up on the internal of the pipe. This is because the gases cool and condensate forms and this will result in a build of creosote which is a problem.

How Important Is The Pellet Stove Pipe For Safety and Stove Efficiency?

So, as discussed single walled pellet stove pipes are not ideal, as they can lead to an increased risk of fire as well as an increased risk of creosote build up. What a creosote build up will do is reduce the draw of the pipe to vent out the combustion gases. Eventually this will choke the fire, but up until that point you will also have lower combustion efficiencies which will increase pellet fuel consumption. Really a single walled pipe is not really suitable for today's modern stoves. So what are the modern single walled stove pipe alternatives? Well there is the double walled and also the direct vent pipe. The double walled pellet stove pipe has a layer of insulation between the two walls. This keep the outside of the pipe cool to reduce fire risk, however it also keeps the exhaust gases hot to reduce creosote build up which reduces cleaning maintenance.

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How Important Is The Pellet Stove Pipe For Safety and Stove Efficiency?

As well as the double walled pellet stove pipe, there is also the direct vent stove pipe. This design of stove pipe can actually increase combustion efficiency. Normally a pellet stove will be using combustion air from the room, however by increasing the temperature of the combustion air you can achieve a higher combustion efficiency. Therefore a direct vent pellet stove pipe is a double walled pipe, however the space between is empty. The combustion fan on the pellet stove pulls air from outside, pass the inner side of the pipe where the hot combustion gases are flowing. Heat in then transferred into the new air before each reaches the fire. As the combustion air is already at a raised temperature it reduces the amount of heat it takes away from the fire, therefore this reduces fuel consumption and increases maximum fire combustion temperature.

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