What Size Stove Pipe Do I Need

Joe

on connector pipe, stove pipe, stovepipe

2 min read

In this short video I’ll explain how to determine what size stove pipe you need for your wood stove.

Stove pipe, also known as connector pipe, is used to connect your wood stove to your chimney.

To determine what size stove pipe you need you simply measure the collar on your wood stove.  Your stove pipe should match the size of the collar on your wood stove.

For example, if the collar measures 6″ in diameter you’ll need to run [6″ stovepipe](http://www.northlineexpress.com/chimney/chimney-pipe-stove-pipe/stove-pipe/6-inch-black-stove-pipe.html "6" stovepipe").

Most of today’s new high efficiency wood stoves require 6″ stovepipe.

But what if you’re replacing an older wood stove that used 8″ pipe and your new stove requires 6″?

The correct answer is to install a new 6″ chimney.

Many people don’t like that answer because of the cost and so they will opt to try to make their 8″ chimney work.

However, whenever you increase or decrease the size of a chimney you run the risk of your wood stove not drafting properly.

When your stove doesn’t draft properly you end up with issues including..

  • Smoking Wood Stove – when you try to start a fire or when you load wood into your wood stove smoke pours out the door.  This is common with a poor draft.
  • Excess creosote build up will also occur when you have a poor draft because the smoke will “roll” in the flue and cool down forming heavy creosote on the walls of your flue.
  • Your fire may be hard to light and keep lit because you don’t have good air flow through the system.

In the end these problems are not worth the “savings”.  You end up spending time and money sweeping the chimney regularly to keep it safe and you greatly increase the risk of a chimney fire.

You won’t get the full efficiency of your new wood stove and therefore will spend more money in wood which kind of defeats the purpose of replacing your old wood stove with a high efficiency stove.

Now I’m sure some of you won’t listen to my warnings and will want to know how to make that connection from 6 inch stove pipe to an 8 inch chimney which is why I included that information in my video.

To those people I say good luck….

If you have any questions please feel free to call our chimney pipe experts at (866) 667-8454.