Unburned Coal?

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Body Hammer
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Post by Body Hammer » Thu. Sep. 17, 2009 6:20 am

Just fired up my new TLC-2000 Wednesday morning for my first coal fire ever. I used the lump charcoal method described on here by several of you. I put a couple shovels of it in the center of the grate, and covered remaining grate on either side with a layer of nut Blaschak. Then went from there til I had a nice bed of red hot coals in about 45 mins. Fantastic! I'm going love this!
I filled it about half up.(one bag). It ran flawlessly til we went to bed. About thirteen hours. I would guess it went another three or four hours after that. It ran around 200 -250 stack and stove. With a little breeze that we had here yesterday, the baro worked as it should. Glad I installed it.
Is it normal to have a layer of unburned coal when a fire that's not running that hard dies out? And can I just push that to either side to start a new fire? As with wood, I don't plan on letting out when we get into burning weather. But wanted to season the stove and pipe while I could have all the window-stats open. Love that term!

 
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coal berner
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Post by coal berner » Thu. Sep. 17, 2009 6:56 am

Body Hammer wrote:Just fired up my new TLC-2000 Wednesday morning for my first coal fire ever. I used the lump charcoal method described on here by several of you. I put a couple shovels of it in the center of the grate, and covered remaining grate on either side with a layer of nut Blaschak. Then went from there til I had a nice bed of red hot coals in about 45 mins. Fantastic! I'm going love this!
I filled it about half up.(one bag). It ran flawlessly til we went to bed. About thirteen hours. I would guess it went another three or four hours after that. It ran around 200 -250 stack and stove. With a little breeze that we had here yesterday, the baro worked as it should. Glad I installed it.
Is it normal to have a layer of unburned coal when a fire that's not running that hard dies out? And can I just push that to either side to start a new fire? As with wood, I don't plan on letting out when we get into burning weather. But wanted to season the stove and pipe while I could have all the window-stats open. Love that term!
Your problem was you only filled the stove half way with anthracite you need to keep the stove filled to the top of
firebricks Anthracite is not like wood you can't Just build a small fire the coal fire will burn out . Must keep it full Anthracite like deep beds of freash coal to burn long . Clean out the stove and start over you can put the unburnt coal back on once you have a new fire going Pushing it to the sides will not work relight it It is not like wood . Have fun with the new stove
Last edited by coal berner on Thu. Sep. 17, 2009 6:58 am, edited 2 times in total.

 
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CoalHeat
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Post by CoalHeat » Thu. Sep. 17, 2009 6:57 am

Is it normal to have a layer of unburned coal when a fire that's not running that hard dies out?
Yes.

Glad you like your new "toy".


 
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captcaper
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Post by captcaper » Sun. Sep. 27, 2009 6:21 pm

You must have a 3 to 4 in bed of red coals going at all times..for Antracite..6 to 8 in for soft coal. So get the fire going good with a 3 in bed of coals then fill the box up to the top,turn down draft and let it burn for the night or day then shake until you see red glowing under the grate then fill up again. Repeat,Repeat..etc.

I started my fire last Nov.1 it went all winter until March before I lost it.

 
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Post by 9mmruger » Mon. Sep. 28, 2009 11:57 am

I fired my Hitzer 30-95 for the 1st time this weekend as well using the match light charcoal briquette method that several of my Amish friends use. Worked great. I wanted to burn off the stove before the season. As it was I had a fire for 30 hours or so and have about 15lbs of unburnt coal leftover. I will use that when I relight the stove as it gets colder. It was a wonderful warm heat and my wife loved it. Looking forward to winter.

 
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Body Hammer
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Post by Body Hammer » Mon. Sep. 28, 2009 3:36 pm

I'm guessing the 30-95 has a hopper. I'm starting to think I should have gone that way. Like the sound of that burn time. But I also enjoy tending a stove. Just not as much as I did when burning wood. That 2:00am crap is for the birds.(owls). I haven't wished for cold weather since I was a kid. But I'm getting just as loony as the rest of you coal burners now! :dancing:


 
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lowfog01
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Post by lowfog01 » Mon. Sep. 28, 2009 8:53 pm

Body Hammer wrote:
Is it normal to have a layer of unburned coal when a fire that's not running that hard dies out? And can I just push that to either side to start a new fire?
As someone mentioned coal likes a deep bed. If it doesn't get it, the fire dies out. It will die, too, if you don’t clean the ash out well enough. You have to start from scratch then. Clean the unburnt coal out and put it in a metal container to be burned later. Just mix it in - little by little, ashes and all - when you have a good fire going. When I was a newbie, I dumped my coal bed a lot while learning how to shake the ash out. This left me with a mess of ash mixed with a whole lot of unburnt coal. My husband took half inch metal screen and a plastic commercial milk case and made me a shifter so I could recover the unburnt coal. Fortunately, I don’t dump the fire much anymore and generally it’s not worth shifting the ashes to recover the minimal unburnt coal from the daily shaking but the shifter is still sitting out back just in case. Lisa

 
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CoalHeat
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Post by CoalHeat » Mon. Sep. 28, 2009 10:01 pm

I dumped my coal bed a lot while learning how to shake the ash out.
That's a problem only us Harman owners have, part of learning how to fire a Harman hand-fed is knowing how far to move the shaker lever to avoid dumping the fire.

 
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BingeBob
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Post by BingeBob » Wed. Sep. 30, 2009 8:48 am

I'm Kinda new at this but...

I ave had a layer of unburned coal every time I have had the stove going (about 3 times) and every time I have just built an oak fire right on top of the old stuff and then filled it as normal. The stuff burns eventually.

When I do this I do shake the hell out of it and then clean my ash pan before I load it back up...but all the solid pieces of black or gray stuff stay in there.

-Bob

 
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New Hope Engineer
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Post by New Hope Engineer » Wed. Sep. 30, 2009 8:59 am

the only time I have any unburnt coal is if I let the stove go out.i just put them aside and when I start up the stove through them back in. :)

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