It’s Check Your Stove Week at Gr8Fires. All this week we will be giving you short tests and visual checks to perform to make sure your woodburner is ready for winter.
Day 1: Check Your Baffle
Is heat disappearing up your chimney?
A hole in the baffle plate is about as bad as a hole in your pocket. The baffle sits at the top of your stove to stop flammable gases having an easy escape route up the flue.
Even in a relatively new stove, holes can appear in the baffle plate if hot soot has been allowed to sit on top of it over a sustained period.
And, if there is a hole, the fuel that should be heating your home is going straight up the chimney. Buy a replacement baffle plate to stop that happening.
How to check your baffle
At the start of Check Your Stove Week, we’re going to examine your baffle plate to make sure it is fit for action this winter.
To do that, simply look inside your stove and you should see the baffle plate resting an a notch or ledge just below the flue outlet. It will easily lift out of place.
If soot has built up on the plate, take care not to distribute this around your room while removing it.
Help! There’s a hole in my baffle
If you do find a hole then the best course of action is to buy a new baffle plate. As I’ve already mentioned, using a baffle plate with a hole in it just means that you end up using more fuel and spending more money.