First Full Load of Coal

OK, the stove has been seasoned and first full load is fired up and burning. Stove is happily burning away at 375 degrees with the throttle open about 1 turn. The living room level is a nice toasty 74 and it's 42 outside with a cutting wind of about 10-15mph. I will probably have back the throttle down to 3/4 of a turn to keep from using the window-stats tonight. I'm gonna have to get a handle on how to run this thing in warmer weather so I don't have us basting in our own juices.

Pics of fire progress

LOOKIN GOOD!

Your doing a good job. Welcome to the wonderful world of coal. You will be a seasoned coal vet in no time. Again, looks like you are doing just fine.

Feels great doesn't it? Just throttle back and enjoy.

Do you have a thermometer on the front of the stove and on the black chimney connector pipe if it's accessible? The first one will help you control the heat production; the second will indicate how much heat is going up the chimney. Over time you will come to know how to adjust your air intake valve by the temperature of the stove front. That in turn will let you know how much room heat that temperature will produce for you. Right now I have the air on the Mark II set at 3/4 open and the stove is 250*. At that temperature, the stove is producing a room temperature of 75*. The outside temperature is 34* so I'm nice and toasty. You are well on the way to learning the ins and outs of your stove in order to produce the best heat possible at the lowest cost. Lisa

I just thought of something - did anyone mention that you don't need a bunch of "blue ladies"dancing in order to have a heat producing fire. Turn that air valve down to produce less heat. During the warm transition days from fall to winter or spring to fall you may not see much of the blue ladies at all. Your fire may look dead but it's not. The coal bed is burning slowly and will produce heat. That's where a stove front thermometer will help. I know from experience that if my stove front has a temperature of 100/150* my fire is good even though it's not producing massive amounts of heat. I can easily refresh it in the evening if I need to.

I will modify this to "First Untended 12-Hour Burn." I got my first long burn of more than six or seven hours last night, and it has just simply been a matter of trial & error, using a little intuition, learning the quirks of my furnace (Yukon Eagle IV that heats my WHOLE house), and most importantly, not being STUPID! Right now it's about 20degF outside (U.P. of MI) with a wind chill of about 10degF. It's a nice 72degF in my house, even as I wait for the furnace to come back up to temperature after having shaken and reloaded with coal. I find at these temps I'm burning about 60lbs of coal per day, 1 1/2 bags, so I find that probably appropriate for a 2500sqft house. One trick I learned last night, before I forced myself to stay away from the stove for the night, was that I got the entire coal pile really hot by cracking open the ash pan a bit and letting the flue temp hit 800degF. Once that entire coal pile turned completely red-orange, I shut the ash pan and left it for the night. Flue temp quickly went down to about 500degF and over 12 hours only dropped to 400, putting out nice heat when I checked it this morning after 12 hours.

One other trick I've learned by just playing with my shaker grates a bit. Once I shake down, empty the ash pan, and add a good layer of fresh coal, I give each grate (I have 2) one sharp shake. Doing that really gets the blue ladies dancing by opening up an airway from underneath. As this forum points out, being a hand-stoker is kind of an art that you can only learn by "doing it." Unless you have a partner right there with you to "do it" as well, it's hard to teach someone else how to get the knack of managing a coal fire.

Everything went well overnight with one exception. I turned the air intake the wrong way so it was actually open almost two turns. I found out about it when I went to check the stove before going to bed. When I came out of the office I noticed that it was hot in the living room and I could smell the stove. Well it wasn’t a meltdown, but the stove was running about 450 degrees according to the thermometer on the side of the stove (there is no room around the door for a thermometer and no room for a stack thermometer). No real problem since Harman says to keep the stove under 500 degrees, but definitely on the warm side for a 39 degree night! The living room and surrounding rooms were a nice tropical 84 degrees. No biggie, I backed the throttle down to ¼ turn, opened a window-stat, and baby sat the stove for a couple of hours to make sure the fire didn’t go out then went to bed.

Got up late, and proceeded to do my first shakedown, no problems there and it only took about 1/3 of the coal bucket to fill it back up to the top of the fire brick. I’ve kept the spinner open about 1/2 turn all day and the stove is happily burning away at 280 degrees. I might skip the shakedown this evening since the stove is using so little coal and back the throttle off a little more since the house is about 75 degrees today. A little more practice along with adding some vents to move the warm air around and hopefully I can tell the oil company to kiss my butt next winter!