I silicone the heck out of the stove exhaust pipe and taped the heck out of the 3 internal joints. There's still some noticeable smoke at startup but much less than previous.
I figured out the brand of vent pipe I have sucks. The next time I have to disconnect the pipe from the stove, I'm chucking it all and getting some better pipe that is gasketed at the joints. This pipe also has a simple stub that you silicone to the stove exhaust and then attach the Tee to that so you don't have to fight silicone every time you need to disconnect the exhaust to work on something. It may be spendy but crappy quality components just ticks me off. No wonder no one local carries this crappy pipe anymore.
And Boomhand, our old pellet stove was a bit noisy. One of the reasons we decided to upgrade. Our new stove is AWESOME! Quiet, warm, and nice to look at as well. It's a little more complicated than it needs to be, but that's the same with most everything these days.
