New to Your Forum, and My New Stove!

Those people with that stove they took out of the packing crate think it would settle the national debt. I gave them the business card of the guy that bought the Round Oak baseburner I had and told them it was up to them to contact him and make whatever deal they could with it. So it's hard to tell how that worked out for them. I told them to do some research on the thing before they called the guy as they would only have the thing once. I can't remember what brand it is anymore. It was a medium sized stove, I do remember that. And it had a lot of nickel on it, but it wasn't a really ornate style. For some reason "Lakeside" comes to mind, but it might have been "Riverside". Most of the baseburners I've seen around here over the years have been made by Riverside. And it kind of makes sense since they were just made over along the Mississippi in Rock Island. I've seen 10 or 12 of them over the last 20 years and I've never seen a Riverside that didn't have some cracked castings. They were all large stoves though and who knows how much they've been moved around over the years. And the degree of stupidity that they were handled with....

I did follow that guys thread on lining the firepot on this one with Rutland's refractory cement. It really seems to have cooled the firepot off. I'm really glad about that. It seems to be a good heater and throws off a good deal of heat. It really warms up the floor around the base as well. With the infared thermometer it show readings of around 425-450 on the hottest part of the stove while at the same time it's around 250 at the base. And the stove-pipe as it goes into the chimney is around 165 degrees F. This is the first old baseburner I've ever been around with a fire in it, but it really seems to do a good job for itself. It's only 30 degrees out though right now so it's not terribly cold out. I don't expect this to heat the whole house when it is really cold out. I have an old gravity furnace for that. In this kind of weather though, that gravity furnace is too much heat and I have to keep letting the fire go out.

Sounds like a midwestern stove for sure. I don't know exactly where you are located but I'll assume it's midwest. Allot of people find something like that and go on-line and think they hit the jackpot. They usually compare it to the highest price they find (Like Goodtime Stoves in Mass.) He's about 3 times the price of reality.
Here on the east coast we had lots of foundries and most of the stove brands were quite well knows names like Glenwood, Crawford, Herald, Quaker, etc...etc..

It sounds like you're stove is doing a nice job for you based on it's size and what it heats. That style of base heater was very popular and copied by a load of manufacturers. Your numbers say like it's running really well. How would you compare it to the Round Oak you previously had? I know the RO was bigger but can you see a considerable differance in it's efficiency in comparison?

Welcome to the forum Earl.
You got a really nice stove but also as a bonus a very performant little stove. Mine is also a 12" firepot, down to 9.5" with the liner(small but good for the small space to heat with) and that stove could heat a much bigger space if needed to. Radiates heat so much with those mica plus the convection system helps to move the air around the place...they knew what they were doing at that time .
Keep on sending photos.

SteveZee wrote:Sounds like a midwestern stove for sure. I don't know exactly where you are located but I'll assume it's midwest.

It sounds like you're stove is doing a nice job for you based on it's size and what it heats. That style of base heater was very popular and copied by a load of manufacturers. Your numbers say like it's running really well. How would you compare it to the Round Oak you previously had? I know the RO was bigger but can you see a considerable differance in it's efficiency in comparison?

I'm actually in North Central Iowa. That Round Oak baseburner I had was a really nicely made one. Round Oak really only made one style of baseburner and it was offered in three sizes. They did changet they style of them some, but I think you'd have to see them next to each other to see the slight changes they made! They got into the game pretty late and I think it was around 1907 or 8 when they finally got around to making them. They mostly just made wood stoves and did offer some options to burn coal in them. But it just amounted to a wood stove with an inner liner around the firepot, shaking grates and if you really wanted a coal vase, they made one that would fit into the hole for the lid. But anyway, the baseburners they made are really, really heavy castings and very well thought out stoves. That one I had was huge, and stood about 6 ft. high. This Columbian stove is 5ft 2" (with a knob of blue!) and a much smaller firepot. Anyway, I never had a fire in it. The guy that I bought coal from at that time would not handle hard coal. I showed him a picture of it, and he told me that his Dad coal coal in Ames, Iowa back in the 30's and 40's and after WWII and into the 1950's he hauled dozens and dozens of them out of peoples basements and sold them for scrap iron. So, since he wouldn't deal in hard coal I decided to sell it. Now I buy coal from a different guy, and he only deals in hard coal. It's SO much nicer to burn, once you figure it out.

I took that Round oak all apart and cemented it back together, and it would have been a VERY efficient stove to use. It had the hot flue gas go all over the place before it went up the chimney. It also had a flue in the center of the back that had an opening at the bottom to draw air up from the floor into and around that nickel plated dome at the top and out that oval register opening behind the finial. This stove has that opening for heating an upstairs room, but it's not a large enough stove to have all the windways in that end of it like the Round Oak had. This is also an older stove so I suppose that may have a little to do with it.

nortcan wrote:Welcome to the forum Earl.
You got a really nice stove but also as a bonus a very performant little stove. Mine is also a 12" firepot, down to 9.5" with the liner(small but good for the small space to heat with) and that stove could heat a much bigger space if needed to. Radiates heat so much with those mica plus the convection system helps to move the air around the place...they knew what they were doing at that time .
Keep on sending photos.

I have to admit, I'm really suprised at how much heat this little guy puts out. It wouldn't heat my whole house when it gets much below 15 degrees out, but it does a fine job with anything above 15-20. I have a 3 bedroom two story house built in 1912. It wouldn't warm the house up very fast if it were stone cold, but if it's already warm, it will keep it that way. I also have a cookstove upstairs and I can build a fire in it if I need to, and between the two stoves the house would be quite warm. We kind of forget with these old stoves, that they would have had a cooking fire going most of the time also, and most people 100 years ago did not want heat in the basement sice they kept food down there.

That fireplace insert of yours is a honey! I found one of those up in Minneapolis for $300 a year or so ago and tried to get a friend of mine to buy it for his house, but he wouldn't. Now he regrets not listening to me. But those things are nice looking and they put out a lot more heat than a fireplace would. AND with a lot less dust.

And you are right about people knowing what they were doing years ago. I read a book on warm air furnaces and making them more efficient. And it was explaining the findings of a study that was done in a house near Chicago from 1880's into the ea1920's. At the beginning it said something to the affect of "with coal now at around $3 per ton it makes sense to try and find the most efficient way possible to burn it so as not to waste good money" So they had this 5 bedroom large house that they did the study with. I forget how many furnaces went through that house over the 50 years, but it was a lot. It mentions base-burners and how efficient they are, but that a design like that for a warm air (gravity) furnace was too costly and since most home owners expect to burn about anything in a furnace, might give trouble. It was amazing how much study they did on those things, and how complete the study was. Everything that went and and out was weighed. Outside and inside temperature was kept track of and so forth. In the end, they concluded that for all practical purposes, the gravity furnace that you almost always see, was the most efficient. A good baseburner would be more efficient, but it was no longer the fashion to have your heat plant in the front room!

They also mention that the doors on a baseburner are not completely airtight and that it would not be desirable for them to be completely airtight as a very small amount of air admited over a hard coal fire is needed to burn off gas as it is coked out of the coal. It seems they said about 8 to 10% of the heat comes from that source.

EarlH wrote:

nortcan wrote:Welcome to the forum Earl.
You got a really nice stove but also as a bonus a very performant little stove. Mine is also a 12" firepot, down to 9.5" with the liner(small but good for the small space to heat with) and that stove could heat a much bigger space if needed to. Radiates heat so much with those mica plus the convection system helps to move the air around the place...they knew what they were doing at that time .
Keep on sending photos.

I have to admit, I'm really suprised at how much heat this little guy puts out. It wouldn't heat my whole house when it gets much below 15 degrees out, but it does a fine job with anything above 15-20. I have a 3 bedroom two story house built in 1912. It wouldn't warm the house up very fast if it were stone cold, but if it's already warm, it will keep it that way. I also have a cookstove upstairs and I can build a fire in it if I need to, and between the two stoves the house would be quite warm. We kind of forget with these old stoves, that they would have had a cooking fire going most of the time also, and most people 100 years ago did not want heat in the basement sice they kept food down there.

That fireplace insert of yours is a honey! I found one of those up in Minneapolis for $300 a year or so ago and tried to get a friend of mine to buy it for his house, but he wouldn't. Now he regrets not listening to me. But those things are nice looking and they put out a lot more heat than a fireplace would. AND with a lot less dust.

And you are right about people knowing what they were doing years ago. I read a book on warm air furnaces and making them more efficient. And it was explaining the findings of a study that was done in a house near Chicago from 1880's into the ea1920's. At the beginning it said something to the affect of "with coal now at around $3 per ton it makes sense to try and find the most efficient way possible to burn it so as not to waste good money" So they had this 5 bedroom large house that they did the study with. I forget how many furnaces went through that house over the 50 years, but it was a lot. It mentions base-burners and how efficient they are, but that a design like that for a warm air (gravity) furnace was too costly and since most home owners expect to burn about anything in a furnace, might give trouble. It was amazing how much study they did on those things, and how complete the study was. Everything that went and and out was weighed. Outside and inside temperature was kept track of and so forth. In the end, they concluded that for all practical purposes, the gravity furnace that you almost always see, was the most efficient. A good baseburner would be more efficient, but it was no longer the fashion to have your heat plant in the front room!

They also mention that the doors on a baseburner are not completely airtight and that it would not be desirable for them to be completely airtight as a very small amount of air admited over a hard coal fire is needed to burn off gas as it is coked out of the coal. It seems they said about 8 to 10% of the heat comes from that source.

I don't know if you have seen any of the many posts about base heaters and base burners here on the Forum. Do a search and you find a wealth of information. You are just echoing what some of us have known for a long time. They spent large amounts of time and money on research during the late 19th Century to design appliances that would maximize the efficiency of whatever type coal you had available. The Zenith of all of this study, as you have found; is embodied in a Base Burner or Base Heater. Many here are rediscovering these magnificent designs and it makes me very happy that they are. I would not ever have another type of stove for Anthracite.

What a beauty! Thanks for sharing.

EarlH wrote:

SteveZee wrote:Sounds like a midwestern stove for sure. I don't know exactly where you are located but I'll assume it's midwest.

It sounds like you're stove is doing a nice job for you based on it's size and what it heats. That style of base heater was very popular and copied by a load of manufacturers. Your numbers say like it's running really well. How would you compare it to the Round Oak you previously had? I know the RO was bigger but can you see a considerable differance in it's efficiency in comparison?

I'm actually in North Central Iowa. That Round Oak baseburner I had was a really nicely made one. Round Oak really only made one style of baseburner and it was offered in three sizes. They did changet they style of them some, but I think you'd have to see them next to each other to see the slight changes they made! They got into the game pretty late and I think it was around 1907 or 8 when they finally got around to making them. They mostly just made wood stoves and did offer some options to burn coal in them. But it just amounted to a wood stove with an inner liner around the firepot, shaking grates and if you really wanted a coal vase, they made one that would fit into the hole for the lid. But anyway, the baseburners they made are really, really heavy castings and very well thought out stoves. That one I had was huge, and stood about 6 ft. high. This Columbian stove is 5ft 2" (with a knob of blue!) and a much smaller firepot. Anyway, I never had a fire in it. The guy that I bought coal from at that time would not handle hard coal. I showed him a picture of it, and he told me that his Dad coal coal in Ames, Iowa back in the 30's and 40's and after WWII and into the 1950's he hauled dozens and dozens of them out of peoples basements and sold them for scrap iron. So, since he wouldn't deal in hard coal I decided to sell it. Now I buy coal from a different guy, and he only deals in hard coal. It's SO much nicer to burn, once you figure it out.

I took that Round oak all apart and cemented it back together, and it would have been a VERY efficient stove to use. It had the hot flue gas go all over the place before it went up the chimney. It also had a flue in the center of the back that had an opening at the bottom to draw air up from the floor into and around that nickel plated dome at the top and out that oval register opening behind the finial. This stove has that opening for heating an upstairs room, but it's not a large enough stove to have all the windways in that end of it like the Round Oak had. This is also an older stove so I suppose that may have a little to do with it.

Thanks Earl, that's pretty interesting. Now that you mention it, I do recall the Round Oak base heaters that came in 3 sizes. A person I know has all three in their stove shop up in Minn. They look very similar to that Columbian you have now, in that same style versus the Glenwoods, Quakers, or Herald style. I would have thought they would have made one with a round jacket top like the wood/coal stoves and changed the base and flue route on the back but instead they went with that other popular style with all the mica windows. As you mentioned, all of their stoves were well made with quality castings. I think they were known for that. Real shame about that guy scrapping so many back in his time but who knew that cheap oil wouldn't be cheap forever!