Pendulum

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Dann757
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Post by Dann757 » Thu. Feb. 19, 2009 8:05 pm

Last night I was exhausted from work and fell out without damping the fire down. I had it at a comfortable mid-seventies. This is the ash spinner open maybe 1/4". I have been happy as hell to be able to idle the fire down by keeping the ash door spinner at 1/8" or a little less. I've been doing this while away for the day. (Glad to be working...) I come home and can revive the fire pretty quickly, and it hasn't peaked and consumed the coal after 8-10 hours.

Well, I woke up in the middle of the night due to it being too hot, but fell out again. Just leaving the ash door open to 1/4" made the coal pretty much consume itself. I can revive it to a point, but the line was crossed this morning, and the addition of a layer of fresh coal was to no avail. There was still orange in there, but too much buildup of ash. I came home to a gone out fire.
The pendulum started when I cleaned out the old dead fire, ash and new coal, through the ash dump. I put a few small cardboard boxes filled with 1" poplar sticks from the woods, cut on the bandsaw to 10" lengths, into the clean firebox; and a few handfuls of coal in there with it. A spritz of mineral spirits and wide open ash door and the fire is off and running.
Then I left the ash door open and the stack temp hit over 500* ! So I throw more coal on and shut the ash door. Not coming back up fast enough for me, so I open the ash door again. Fire comes up hot quickly and the stack hits 500* again. Nasty Lowe's black pipe burning paint smell. I opened the doorstats wide and cleared the place out.
Back and forth like a pendulum until I hit the sweet spot! Now I have a beautiful easy breathing new fire! I only wish I could get a good pic of it! Blue ladies all across the top making that little "puff,puff" sound, a little orange coming up from underneath, stack temp down to 200*. A fresh, easy breathing fire goes a few days almost maintenance free! Very little ash in the pan, no need for much poking. Coal is king!!

 
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grizzly2
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Location: Whippleville, NY
Other Heating: Oil foilfurnace, Jotul#3 woodstove,electric base board.

Post by grizzly2 » Sat. Feb. 21, 2009 7:24 pm

Wow, glad you didn't have a house fire! You must have a good stove pipe and chimney insatallation not to catch something on fire with such high temps. My memory is so poor I would not dare make an adjustment that had to be tended again to prevent an overfire. :shock:


 
Dann757
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Joined: Sat. Sep. 06, 2008 9:10 am

Post by Dann757 » Mon. Feb. 23, 2009 7:41 pm

Yeah, I guess the stack would have lit a match if I touched it to it. This place is so small I'm never far from the stove. And that 500* reading on the rutland thermometer was right at the top of the stove. Thimble and chimney temps didn't get out of control. It came up in less that ten minutes and I got it back down in less than ten minutes. I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to rig up an electromechanical temperature activated ash door closer!

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