Remember this picture from page 2?


I did a test burn tonight with just the 4' stack. I had to prop that rain cover on the top because it was still shooting flames, AND sparks. This isn't the glow from the fire, it is the actual flames shooting into the bottom of the rain cap and flowering out.


Here it is now, all closed up and cooling off. No sparks or flames, just smoke and the whole thing is about 300 degrees cooler (only 250 or so) so I feel comfortable leaving it unattended.


I was hoping that moving the damper up high would help it last longer by getting it out of the flames. It's not going to matter if it is still getting blasted like this. I think a baffle is going to have to be a priority now. Once I was burning actual logs, and not cardboard and mail, the sparks pretty much stopped and everything was a lot less scary. When installed, there is going to be an extra 5 feet of pipe on top of that 4' black pipe. I don't think that will calm the sparks down though, as it will just shoot them out the top still. I'm going to look into a spark arrestor to be safe.

Finally, the thin metal oven rack didn't work as well as I thought. I guess people aren't cooking stuff as heavy as logs in the oven. Do those lines look straight to you? The rack must have bowed down in the middle a good 3 inches. That rebar/angle iron grate is looking better and better.