Smoke seeping around the door, or a fire you cannot calm?

A wood stove is meant to be close to airtight. The only air reaching the fire should come through the air control you set, and the only way out for smoke should be the flue collar. Every door and glass panel sits against a rope gasket that keeps it that way. Over a few seasons those ropes flatten, harden and pull loose, and the first sign is usually a thin wisp of smoke from the door edge when you open the damper to reload, or a dark stain on the glass corner. A simple test shows it: shut a dollar bill in the door at a few spots along the frame, and if it pulls free without a tug anywhere, the seal is gone there. We replace the gasket with the correct diameter and density for your stove, reset the latch so it pulls the door snug, and reseal the glass. A warped door or cracked glass is a bigger job, but it is still worth knowing which one you have before buying anything.

A stove that roars, glows red at the top or will not slow down even with the air closed has the opposite problem: air is getting in that should not. A burned-through baffle plate, a cracked firebrick that exposes the steel, or an air control that has seized partly open can all do it. Stoves with a catalytic combustor have another failure point; when the catalyst clogs or crumbles, smoke goes straight up the pipe unburned, the glass blackens quickly and the room smells of it on reload. We pull the baffle, inspect the firebrick and catalyst, and test the air control through its full travel. Some parts are cheap and quick, others need ordering. You get a written price for each before we start. In Pacific Palisades and the canyon areas toward Brentwood, homeowners often keep a stove as backup heat for power cuts, so a stove that has sat idle for years also gets a nest and debris check before any fire goes in.

Plenty of smoke problems start in the stovepipe rather than the stove. Single wall pipe sections are pushed together with the crimped end pointing down toward the stove, so dripping creosote stays inside; installed the other way round, they leak tar and fumes at every seam. Each joint needs screws, and the pipe has to keep a set distance from walls and ceilings. Too many elbows, or a long horizontal stretch, slows the gas enough that the stove smokes when the door opens. Where the pipe enters a masonry chimney, a loose thimble lets room air into the flue and kills the draft. We check each of those, sweep the pipe and flue, and look for the shiny, flaky creosote that forms when a stove is run low and slow too often. That glaze is the fuel for a chimney fire, and it builds faster with damp wood. Firewood split and stored under cover for a season burns hotter and leaves far less of it, which matters in coastal Malibu where logs pick up moisture overnight.

Local rules shape how a wood stove gets used here. South Coast AQMD Rule 445 sets no-burn days during poor air quality, and the "Check Before You Burn" forecast tells you when they apply. Wood stoves are covered, so we talk through how often you realistically get to use yours, and if a gas or pellet option would serve the house better. Wildfire season adds a second concern. After the Woolsey Fire in 2018 and the Palisades fire of January 2025, many homeowners in Malibu and Pacific Palisades asked us to check spark arrestors and caps on stove chimneys, since a hot stove can throw embers on a Santa Ana night. A stainless cap with an intact screen is part of every wood stove visit we make. When the repair is done, we light a fire, close the door, set the air low and watch for smoke at the seams and a steady draft at the collar. To book, tap the call button on this page and describe what the stove is doing.