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Default wood stove flue too hot?

If you are meaning the brick chimney with a vitrified clay liner is getting
warm on the outside after several hours, I would consider that normal. The
tile liner/brick exterior are masonry units in contact with each other. Heat
will eventually start to transfer, in certain masonry stoves this is
considered a heat sink to hold the heat for future release.

The pipe between the stove and the chimney is normally single wall as it is
supposed to be an additional source of heat. The chimney should be either
masonry with a clay liner, or a masonry with a stainless steel liner, or a
class "A" double wall insulated metal chimney. While masonry chimneys have a
problem, especially if they are on an outside wall, of having a lot of
creosote and moisture until they slowly heat up, they are very durable.
After all the clay liner is kiln baked and heavily glazed with kiln baked
coating. Anything your wood stove will do will be less than it survived
during manufacture.


wrote in message
ps.com...
Thanks for the speedy replies.

I should have specified the pipe temperatures in my original post. The
thermometer I use shows the "best combustion" range as 300 - 475 F.
Over 475 is labeled "too hot". When it gets up around 500, I shut 'er
down to cool off a little.

The stovepipe is defintely single-walled - I have pulled it out of the
chimney myself to look at it. It is probably not up to code. I am
having a new wood furnace add-on attached to my oil furnace next year,
but would like to get through the winter with this stove. But I don't
want to crack or otherwise ruin my chimney or burn the house down in
the mean time.

And to clarify, it is the brick chimney that I am worried about, not
the metal pipe. I have inadvertently let the metal pipe get red hot,
so I'm pretty sure it can handle 500 F. I'm just not sure how hot the
chimney itself is supposed to get. It is the chimney that gets too hot
to touch. (I may have mis-used the word "flue" in my original post.)
One friend tells me that the clay liner won't stand the heat of a wood
stove, but another friend tells me that he has run his stove 24/7 for
the past 3 weeks (he has a clay liner - ie, no metal insert).

Thanks again, I appreciate the help..
Stephanie D.