Is soot normal with a wood burning stove?

[Freezehead]

Sorry if this is a stupid question but I am very new to the world of wood burning stoves...

Anyway, we had a wood burning stove installed recently and were told to have a 1 log fire, then a 2 log fire, then a 3 log fire then use it normally after that. We have had the 1 log fire and it all seemed fine however I have noticed that already there is soot round where the flue goes up the chimney and a little on the wall behind the stove (there are pictures of this on my profile) Is this normal? I was kind of expecting it to be not totally clean and was certainly expecting to clean the glass on the stove regularly but I'm surprised that there's soot after such a small fire. Please advise me!

[karinmaria]

We have one and not had a problem like this. I was surprised at how much the window needed cleaning though!

I think the flue might not be long enough or perhaps not installed correctly. The flue we have goes quite far up the chimney.

Definitely not an expert though! Ours is pretty new.

[Fayrazzled]

Definitely not normal. Definitely not. I wouldn't use the stove again and would get the person who fitted it back out. Was the fitter HETAS registered? (They should be). Otherwise get a knowledgeable chimney sweep out for their opinion. Did you she a carbon monoxide monitor fitted too?

[PotteringAlong]

Nope, not normal. If you're setting the fire correctly then the window shouldn't soot up either.

Get the person who fitted the fire to check it and look on YouTube for videos of how to set the fire properly!

[mrsminiverscharlady]

Agree that is not normal at all, assuming that you've kept the door closed during use? It's difficult to tell from the pictures, but it doesn't look very well sealed where the flue connects to the top of the stove. My stoves were sealed with fire cement around all the joins.

[Freezehead]

Wow thank you for the super fast responses! I'm definitely going to contact the people who installed it and get them back out. They are HETAS registered and they did fit a carbon monoxide detector but obviously something's gone wrong. Thank you very much for all your replies.