Should I Be Concerned?

A good pair of welding gloves will help keep those battle wounds away.

Yeah, I have a pair of welding gloves but they are getting on in years. It is definitely time to replace them.

I have another question about coal and instead of creating a new thread I'll just ask it here.

I shook down and loaded my stove at 1800 then topped pit off just before bed at 1900. When I woke up at 6 this morning I noticed it didn't use much coal throughout the night. I only put 3 shovel fulls of coal in it this morning. Should I have even bothered putting coal in it? Like I said it didn't even really consume any of the coal I put in last night.

I always top off every 12 hours...
Just so it becomes a habit...

OK , cool. I figured topping off couldn't hurt but just wanted to make sure.

I left the air pretty much closed today. Its only open enough for me to slip a piece of paper through. My wife says the stove is hovering between 310° and 300°. It was at 320° when I woke up this morning.

Sounds like you and the wife are really getting the hang of it, glad to see you stuck with it - way to go!! I think one of your challenges will be to not mess with the set up too much once you have it burning full time, I know it is hard for me not to "play" with our Harman. If you can get your wife to do the ash emptying you will be way ahead of me!

Now that it sounds like you have the coal filling and air-flow dialed in, the other thing to get figured out on each stove is the shake down method. You need to make sure you get enough of the ash out so it doesn't smother the air getting to the fire, so how often and how hard to shake may take a couple tries to get dialed in. It took me about a week initially where I dumped the fire and then wasn't shaking enough to get the best results. But, I also didn't have this forum way back then to learn from everyone and speed the learning process along. Now it's second nature.

We are still a ways off from lighting the stove ourselves, it hit 80* yesterday down here in MD.

Congrats and have fun with the fire this winter!

I've been shaking down in the evening. Then I fill. I closed the air pretty much all the way this morning after I topped it off and it was hovering around 300° - 310° all morning. I just talked to her and she said it is at 290° now. I had her open the air a hair more. Not sure if that was a good idea or not.

Your temp drop could simply be the result of the warmer temps outside as the day goes on and the draft pulls a little less through the stove. Your set up and stove is obviously different, but I wouldn't be concerned with a 10* - 20* temp difference in my Harman through the day, I would probably have left it alone, if for nothing else than experimental purposes!

IOF,
I would agree with titleist1, I would not worry so much about 10-20 temp changes. Like stated draft, outdoor temps, and other factors can have an effect on the temp change. find a setting that works and leave it there, thats the beauty of coal.

Glad to see you are getting things worked out, you will have this down by the time you really need it
Have a great day, Eric

Thanks. I'm glad too. Heck, I'm going on day 3 of burning. I'm still really excited that I kind of got it to work. I got home this afternoon at 1600 and waited until 1730 to shake it down and get it ready for this evening. I was surprised to see that it was holding at 310* again (yes, my wife opened the air on my direction when it dropped to 290*; I got scared and thought it was going to go out.) and I had enough coal in it to go another few hours before shaking it down. Of course I shook it down and loaded it for the night though. I am planning on topping it off before I go to bed. But, I did just kind of leave the air to see where the stove would settle (which it settled at 290*) so I'm going to leave it there.

I'd also like to take a moment to apologize. I'd like to apologize for being angry with my Chubby last week when it went out in a 24 hour period. I'd also like to take a moment to thank everyone for being so helpful in answering my sometimes, stupid and sometimes incomprehensible questions.

how are the temps in your house . how much coal did you burn in 24 hours

During the day when I get home at 5pm the house is 80° with the stove set at 320°. At night the house drops to about 70°. It is currently 3am the stove is sitting at 330° and it is 36° outside and the house is 72°

I've used between Sunday night when I lit the stove to this morning, Wednesday at 3:18am a little over 50 pounds of nut anthracite. If I look through the window of the stove I can see quite a bit of the nut I put in last night is still unburned, maybe around 10 pounds or so.

I have an 18 gallon Rubbermaid container sitting next to the stove that holds 150 pounds of nut. Next to that I have another bin that holds 50 pounds of pea that I am not going to use and on top of that bin I have another bin that holds 50 pounds of Cowboy Brand Lump Charcoal that I use to light my stove.

That's a good report IOF, I'd say you are on your way to a nice warm winter.

290* is still pretty hot...
I run my stove down to 180* with no worries...
Not a Chubby but you should be able to idle the stove at 225*...
without worries of it going out...

Yeah, I've been trying to idle it down each day. It'll be easier to do that this weekend when I'm home to watch it.

My wife called said she is cold so she opened the air to make some heat.