Draft Adjustment Procedures

I got into a discussion last week with a few coal burners regarding combustion air adjustments on bimetallic air controlled coal burners. It seems the majority prefer to use manual air adjustments to control keeping the fire going and set the basic burn rate and let the automatic control add air to the fire if more heat is needed (outside temps drop). Seems a few have had the CO alarms go off because air was starved from the fire because the bimetallic shut down. I did experiment a little with this procedure this spring on our Hitzer. Just wondering what others thought.

As you describe; that's how I run my HITZERS. Small set amount of air(manually). Bimetallic air control acts as governor. (Reaches set temp, it closes), (Need more heat, it opens), (Gust of wind, it closes). By manually setting a small amount of air, the fire is never completely starved. It will respond quicker, with more even heat out-put. Some members have drilled small holes in the bi-metallic flapper door, so that the air is never completely shut off.