Vogelzang Sentry VG810CL and anthracite

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Caravan
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Hand Fed Coal Stove: Vogelzang Sentry Coal Stove VG810CL

Post by Caravan » Fri. Nov. 10, 2017 1:36 pm

I'm new here, and first I just want to say that this forum is an amazing source for information regarding coal burners, probably the definitive source online!

Anyway, I'm a little new to burning coal, and I recently bought a used Vogelzang Sentry VG810CL coal stove and put it in this week. I already had an area in my home for such a stove; this is my homeplace that I recently acquired, and my dad had a Suburban Coalmaster in this location when I was growing up, which was basically the same style of burner as this Vogelzang.
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I'm a little new to coal, and decided to try out anthracite first. It didn't go very well. I did manage to get it lit using charcoal, but the fire never did quite take off and eventually went out, leaving a firebox full of partially burnt coal. I've since moved to bituminous for now, and it's going well, especially since I discovered the additional draft wheel on the ash pan door, which wasn't mentioned or shown in the manual I found for the stove:
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I sprayed a little PB Blaster on it and gave it a few taps with a small hammer, and it was then usable. I do now realize that the draft wheel would have likely been a big help to the anthracite as well, especially since the hole for the main front draft door is very small on the inside:
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However, after reading a post on here about modifications that are usually needed for these types of multi-fuel stoves for burning anthracite, I 'm wondering how these modifications would apply to this particular unit. Especially when it comes to these grates in the back of the firebox:
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And the front part of the firebox under the door:
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Especially with the rear grates, are these for additional airflow that is mainly for wood and bit coal, and thus the kinds of things that I would need to block with fiberglass if I really want to burn anthracite?

(On a side note, if I choose to continue burning bit, should I avoid covering these with coal?)

Thanks!

 
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Post by franco b » Fri. Nov. 10, 2017 8:06 pm

Those rear grates will probably bypass air until they ash up. Pile coal there to minimize that.

The flat areas on either side of the shaker grates will also ash up. Will have to be cleared of ash with an L shaped poker from above. Nut coal anthracite needs at least 8 inches depth to maintain burn.

Bit coal is dirty nasty sooty stuff, so if you have access to anthracite use that.

 
Caravan
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Hand Fed Coal Stove: Vogelzang Sentry Coal Stove VG810CL

Post by Caravan » Sun. Nov. 12, 2017 1:35 pm

After a few days of burning bit coal, I had a nice full bed of coals going last night and I decided to give the anthracite another try. It ignited, and I had a very nice fire going with it for a few hours, and it was glorious! After adding a few more layers over the course of those few hours, I turned my lower dampers down a bit, and turned the MPD down to about 75%, and after about an hour with those settings it was still going nicely so I thought it was good and went to bed.

It was mostly out in the morning, 6 hours later, with yet another firebox full of brown coal. I probably only had about 4 or 5" depth, so based on what you said about the depth is it safe to assume that this was the problem?
franco b wrote:
Fri. Nov. 10, 2017 8:06 pm
The flat areas on either side of the shaker grates will also ash up. Will have to be cleared of ash with an L shaped poker from above. Nut coal anthracite needs at least 8 inches depth to maintain burn.
Does this mean they will have to be completely clear at all times? If that's the case it seems like that's going to be difficult to accomplish without losing lots of good coal pieces in the process, both burning and fresh. It also seems like this would count as fooling with the coal bed too much, which I read is bad for anthracite.

I was using chestnut size anthracite. Would it work better if I tried the larger stove size, for improved air flow? Would the larger pieces need more, or less depth? It's only 6" from the bottom of the feed door to the grates.

 
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Post by franco b » Sun. Nov. 12, 2017 3:15 pm

The side areas don't have to be clear of ash, but that leaves you with less burning coal. It might even be beneficial to act as insulation to keep heat in the burning mass. The penalty might be less heat output over a given time just because less coal is burning.

Stove coal needs a deeper bed than nut. The point is that enough heat has to be kept up to keep the mass burning. Running at a higher output the bed can be thinner. One piece of wood burns poorly, but two pieces radiate heat to each other and keep burning. A minimum heat has to be maintained to keep burning and the deeper bed does that more easily. A fire dies at the outer edges first because that is where heat is lost more than in the center.

A good hot fire will take a lot of poking with no harm. It's the dying or ashed up fire that is sensitive to that. Paul recommends first revving up the fire and adding a bit of coal before shaking, just for that reason.

So try a deeper bed slanting away from the door and not shutting down quite so much. Once successfully keeping the fire 12 hours you can experiment further with small changes. You might keep notes on what you do and results.

There are areas of the stove that might be allowing air to bypass the grates. Burning bit gasses well usually means over fire air. Heaping coal over those rear grates might minimize that. That area will ash up eventually.


 
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Post by Lightning » Sun. Nov. 12, 2017 3:53 pm

I agree with Franco, that stove can and will burn anthracite successfully, but you must block any places that primary combustion air can bypass the grates. I use fiberglass insulation to block such places in my Clayton. I'm very pleased with how my stove can burn anthracite,once I made the proper modifications.

I believe your issue is two part, #1 the bypassing primary combustion air at that sloped end plate and #2 once you try to idle the stove down while the chimney is hot and the draft is strong, the chimney cools and you are losing draft which results in an out fire. A barometric damper will help with that, you'll be able to run more primary air at idle and as the chimney cools at idle the baro will allow less air into it, keeping the draft stable. It's all about maintaining enough heated air mass in the chimney to keep the draft chugging along.

I went thru this when I first starting using anthracite. The wobbling draft pressure kept me very busy adjusting and readjusting the primary air to suit the draft. I also went thru the phase of losing fires with a lot of unused coal in the fire box.

Stoves that don't have any automatic primary air control such as a bi metallic thermostat will greatly benefit from a barometric damper.

 
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Post by Caravan » Mon. Nov. 13, 2017 12:19 am

Thanks for the tips, guys! The barometric damper will be the first thing I try, possibly in a week or two.

Lightning, it was your mods that I was referring to. (I also watched your video!) Those vents shouldn't be too hard to plug up on this thing, but I may give it a whirl with just the baro damper first. By doing what franco mentioned about covering them with coal, I had the fire going rather nicely last night for a few hours. It seems to me that air would be good as long as it's coming up underneath some burning coal.

 
Caravan
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Post by Caravan » Mon. Nov. 13, 2017 9:11 pm

So at this point I am very, very frustrated. I cannot seem to manage to get even a bituminous coal fire to last all night.

I'm a little reluctant to believe that needing a baro is the case with the bit fire, since my dad never had trouble maintaining a fire in a stove that was very similar to the one I'm using, with the same chimney and flu configuration. All he had was a MPD. He always used "run of the mine" bit coal.

I know this is the wrong side of the forum, but, can you guys give me some tips on building/banking/maintaining a bit fire? Do I not make it as deep? This is what I'm going to be burning until I have more time and money to mess with the barometric damper and give anthracite another try. I think the main thing I'm uncertain on is recharging, and how much to put and where. I know to leave a flame and not cover all of the burning area. It seemed like pulling the hot coals toward the front and filling the back with fresh coal was working, but at this point I'm not even sure of that. Everything burns great when the ash door is open, but after that all bets are off unless someone is around to poke it once or twice an hour.

 
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Post by corey » Fri. Nov. 17, 2017 6:22 pm

If you have any bit coal fines get a fire going and put some on top of your fire to hold it.


 
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Post by joeq » Sat. Nov. 18, 2017 10:22 am

Welcome to the forum Caravan. (Do you own one? Dodge?)
Your stove looks like it might perform well, once she's all tuned in, and utilizes the proper methods of operation. The grating system looks like a good design, and almost reminds me of the highly cherished prismatic set-up. (Almost)
You provided some great pictures of your stove. Thanks. Was curious about your piping outside. I've learned through recent thread discussions, that if your chimney outside is single wall, your draft could suffer due to cooling. Could you give us some input as to what your chimney is outside, and the normal conditions of your surroundings? (IE very windy, or possibly restricted for some reason.) It would be nice if you had a manometer, to help troubleshooting.
Also, what is your procedure for shaking down the ash bed? I don't see the handle for the grating. Are you clearing the bed of all ash? What does your ash pan look like when emptying in the morning?
I can't offer any advice on burning bit. Never had it. But heard it acts a lot like wood. I noticed the spinner on your ash pan door, looks a bit small for anthracite, but I really can't see the slots.
I hope you keep at it, cause we like hearing success stories with coal. Good luck.

 
Caravan
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Post by Caravan » Sat. Nov. 18, 2017 1:25 pm

I actually got the hang of burning bit in the past few days since my last post, and have been able to make it last all night and into the next day. I'm pretty sure my issue was simply not adding enough coal. On the advice by someone on the bit section of the forum, I've also been reading the past posts of a member named "Berlin" and that has been helpful.

I understand that with all the half-burnt coal/coked/cracked chunks left over likely means that the fire was dying down and there was not enough heat being generated to keep it going without fresh fuel to burn. It may have been the same issue with the anthracite.

My chimney is well insulated. Back in the late 70's/early 80's my dad put stone on the front of the house and built the chimney along with it; here's a picture from back then when the front was mostly finished:
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I'm pretty sure the core of the chimney is square blocks with the circular space in the middle, and the stone built up all around that.

As for the surroundings, we do live in a bit of a valley between 2 ridges/hills, but I'm not sure it's quite narrow enough to inhibit the stove. It's mostly clear around the house, but there is a large tree in the front part of the property, off to the left of the house. I don't think that would inhibit anything either, especially since it's pretty bare of leaves now. There are some tall old pine trees to the direct left of the house that may actually be taller than the house, but are rather tapered off and narrow at the top. There's an old house next door to the right but I think my chimney is higher or at least level with the house. It's not directly to the left, it's more diagonal from our place, and would fit in our driveway directly in front of our house if it were pushed over, if that's a good description. As for weather conditions, it's really nothing out of the ordinary.

There are 2 square nubs for the grates behind the ash door. Since getting the stove to burn longer, my ashing routine is to open the ash door to rev the fire up a little, and shake/jerk them around a few times. I then push the hot coals toward the back, and fill/bank the space with fresh coal. I sometimes give a few more grate shakes after pushing the coals back. The resulting ash in the pan is mostly powder, but with quite a few clinkers. I'm still unsure if my routine allows for them to be dealt with effectively; when I push the coals to the back there's a lot of chunks of them among the pile, and it's not clear to me if they will finally melt and get burnt and turn to ash or if they're going to just accumulate.

The damper wheel on the ash pan door has 3 holes behind it. The wheel is on a threaded bolt and allows for adjusting the wheel in and out closer to or further from the holes. The main damper door on the front of the stove is directly to the left of the ash pan door. The damper wheel on the feed door just moves clockwise/counter-clockwise and just allows for exposing or closing the 3 holes behind it, and thus is not adjustable in the same way the ash pan damper wheel is. When I had the stove burning nicely, I had the MPD closed, the main damper in front turned down about 1/4, and was still experimenting with the feed and ash door dampers to see how the affected the burn.

I'm still not sure whether the slanted grates on the back are a good or bad thing when it comes to coal. I try keeping them clear when burning the bit, but they eventually get covered, and it doesn't seem to hurt anything. One interesting note is that my brother found a metal plate, perhaps from the remains of my dad's old Suburban Coalmaster stove that are still on the property, that is shaped in a way that it almost seems that it was made to cover these rear grates. I'm unsure if the Suburban had the same grates in the back or not, and if this plate came with his stove or if it was something he made for it. The plate may come in handy when I go to give anthracite a try again, though covering them with coal the last time I tried seemed to work well enough. Not to mention, when covered with coal, wouldn't they serve to provide additional under-fire air, at least for that part of the bed?

I say some of these things in past tense since, unfortunately, my coal adventure has been put on hiatus due to a house fire 2 days ago. It had nothing to do with the coal stove (which is on the upper floor where my family lives) and was confined to the bottom part of the house where my brother was staying. We didn't really lose any valuables, but it did take out some of the plumbing and damaged some of the house wiring. We're staying in a hotel for now until the fire insurance coverage comes through to clean out and repair everything. Just when I seemed to be making good progress on keeping the coal stove running well...

 
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Post by joeq » Sat. Nov. 18, 2017 3:10 pm

OMG! Sorry to hear about the fire, and am glad to hear it was contained. Your Dad did a fantastic job on the stone work. I can't imagine what that type of work requires, but it looks very time consuming. you need to take a hiatus from here, till you get yourself back together and into your house. Much more important priorities to deal with. And with your detailed explanation above, I'm sure the masters will have you covered with your coal situation, once you return. Good luck with your insurance Co. You'll need it.

 
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Post by coalfan » Sat. Nov. 18, 2017 5:00 pm

as long as you and yours are safe and in good health that what counts dam sorry to hear that !!!!!!!!! god bless you !!!!!!!!!!!

 
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Post by corey » Sat. Nov. 18, 2017 6:41 pm

Glad your all safe sorry about the house fire.

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