BAROMETRIC DRAFT CONTROL MANUAL
BAROMETRIC DRAFT CONTROL PLUS

I'm on my second Yukon furnace now (went whole house wood furnace w/ oil backup) and that means my second baro too, and they just plain work. They do flow a lot of air up the chimney, so since I have an 8' flue on the Yukon, I went ahead and put in the recommended outside air makeup pipe into my furnace room. But, remember, I get no creosote buildup, so no chimney fire risk!

Now as for the chimney fire argument, well, yeah it probably would melt my SS liner into a puddle something akin to spilled mercury, if there were creosote buildup. I dunno, but it seems to make sense, as I get more soot buildup upstream of the baro than downstream. My research led me to this factoid (don't remember where I found this), the flue gasses downstream of the baro are diluted to the point that the creosote doesn't build up. I was baffled why I was not getting creosote buildup (as long as I was following good wood burning practices) when the flue temp downstream from the baro was running 2-250*. Now this one I felt would likely be true. Of course this is occurring seamlessly, not in an up and down, fluctuating manner (referring to the draft, not the baro door). Nope, if the chimney cools, the draft pressure rises (notice, I said pressure not vacuum) the baro door closes and the chimney heats back up. One argument commonly made against them is that they will cool off the chimney too much. Which makes sense, because with the baro regulating the draft, it slows (or regulates) the speed of the the hot combustion gasses leaving the furnace to a manufacturer specified rate, which under most circumstances, it is allowing more time for heat transfer to take place.

BAROMETRIC DRAFT CONTROL PLUS

Plus it seems that the furnace put off more heat too. No more cutting the air intake down to almost nothing to try to control a raging hot fire due to extra high draft during a cold snap or high winds (a baro is the bees knees during high, fluctuating winds!). I quickly found out that it works well and makes a big difference. I went ahead and put it in because Yukon STRESSED the need for it. I questioned the need for it for some of the same reasons mentioned above and more.

BAROMETRIC DRAFT CONTROL MANUAL

When I put my Yukon Big Jack wood furnace in, the manual required a baro installed and set at -.03 to -.04' W.C. I can only offer my experience and maybe add a little information that is not commonly known or misunderstood about baros. There has been several raging debates about 'baros' over on the AS firewood forum. Yes, a barometric draft regulator is basically just an 'automatic' type of draft regulator.

Barometric draft control