Coalpail.com Forum

Pushed the stove a little too far today, it is in no way the stoves fault. I did my morning routine but opened bottom damper a little more than my usual 1/4" to lets say 3/8" not splitting hairs here but definitely not a 1/2" and damper closed. I wanted to try to get a little more heat because of the nice 19 degrees we had all day as a high and I had noticed a steady house temp till about 3 this afternoon and it just started to drop so I knew something was up. I pretty much burnt up my whole pot except for top layer so I knew after shaking it down I would have nothing left and that was just what happened. So much for the 1 match club. So I said ok good time to clean but had to be on coldest day we had yet. I can't believe the almost tennis ball size clinkers and 3 trays of ash I removed for about a 9-hour burn. I know there is another thread about blaschak but I do not think its the same as last years. I am getting a day to day and a half on 1 bag but the ash is incredible. My schedule has been shaking down 3-times a day and emptying 2-3 times a day. fill half of pot morning and night and add a scoop or two at 5. This is starting to get a little old.

I've done that plenty of times... Now, if the fire is left on the top running OK, but low, I don't shake, I just put some coal on top of that fire and let it catch. Then I'll shake. If the fire is even lower, I now keep a couple bags of Cowboy charcoal handy and dump that on top of the nearly dead fire, get a good charcoal fire going, then do the shake and add.... Of course, when I've forgotten totally and the only heat left is in the cast iron... it's start from scratch...

dj

Yep - lost my fire in the Chubby this a.m. - I had to travel to my parents house and bring some cough drops and milk. By the time I got back the stove was under 130F so I made a little divot in the center - put a enviro log starter in - some wood pellets around it - and once that caught and was roaring - I added a few scoops of kimmels nut and wa-la.
But now the stove is running at 500F temps and maintaining the basement at 60F where it would otherwise fall to under 50F when it's this cold outside.
Outside temp is 7F.

I too have had my Chubby opened up, about maxed out. Keeping our house toasty with these low temps. I've been burning blaschack coal and noticed a difference in the ash this season...a lot more of it!

My little Jr is cruising along at 525f and keeping the house at 70f with a little help from the Soapstone. Not much help, but a little nonetheless. This is not normal weather we are having in these parts but I must say I am more than pleased with how the Jr has performed.

onedollar,

How many hours are you getting from your Jr running it at 525F? Larry trainer said the Jr is rated at 30,000 btu, do you feel he has underrated the stove...... . . what are your thoughts. How high have you pushed your Jr and what kind of burn time did you get? Thanks.

The snowman.

These stoves are space heaters...if you try to heat the entire house with one on a cold day it is going to need a lot of attention.

Snowman

The Jr stood at 525f for around 7 hours. Then the temp declined to around 425-450f. At that point I gave the ole girl a poke, a couple of shakes and loaded her up for the night. I was asleep by 8pm and did not touch her till the next morning at 5am when I gave her a couple of scoops. I didn't get around to shaking her down till after 7 am. Overnight the Jr was pegged at 425f

I do think the Jr is underrated. How much of that is Larry or the testing lab I don't know. What I do know is this little unit is EASY to operate and is idiot proof. I have fed this stove everything from Stove Coal, to Pea and even a buck/rice mix and the Jr just smiles and eats it up. I will ask Larry what he thinks about the rating as well. My experience tell me that Jr's pump out more heat than the rating reflects. Of course how well ones home is insulated is going to make a big differance in performace just as the temperature outside will as well.

All in all, running the Jr harder with the cold cold weather burn times are down a bit. 10-12 hours instead of the solid 14 I had been getting. I am amazed at how much better I am at burning coal from last winter and I was happy as a clam last year as well.

Rob

My Jr is heating our home with ease. It only needs a little help from a second stove when we have these odd ball extra cold temps. Odd ball temps for us. Perhaps these are normal temps for you but they are not for us here in "Saugus by the Sea" Taxachusetts. A Jr may be a "space heater" for you but for us it does the job and I am not spending a lot of time with it either. Would a Jr heat your home in Chazy NY? Doubt it. If I lived in your neck of the woods I would probably have a EFM as well.

I guess I should have been a little more specific in my previous post...it came off kind of "blunt". I did not mean to imply that a Chubby (or any radiant stove for that matter) wasn't capable of heating any house...I just meant that the stoves are purpose-built to be space heaters, not a central heating plant. In many cases people are able to keep most of their home comfortable with a radiant stove, but once the mercury drops far enough...you reach a point that the stove is being pushed hard, needs shaking/tending much more often than normal, and the area the stove is in will be much warmer than the rest of the house. As long as those conditions only occur a few times per season, it is manageable. The same goes for stoker stoves if they aren't tied into duct work...heat distribution is the limiting factor.

I could heat my house with Chubby stoves...one in the cellar, and one on each end of the first floor would do a pretty good job in any weather.

I have not been on here for a while, but just want to update. I paid a little more attention to my shakedown procedure that I do 2 times a day and sometimes 3 on the weekends because of sleeping in a little and getting off schedule. Since my last episode my stove has been running 5-600 degrees about 90% of the time, only drops a little on a overnight or morning reload and basement temps 68 and first floor 64-65. Then the wife will put the pe--et stove on in the eving and it will bring the temps up to a comfortable level on first and second. I still have not gone through more than 40# in one day. Getting out as much ash as possible but still leave enough to protect the grate and not lose too many hot coals was the key for my situation. The stove really got ash bound before. I could not be any happier with this stove and its performance, actually I can, put it upstairs and get rid of pe--et stove instead of having it in my basement but have no chimney for it where it would have to go. Maybe will have to sell the house and get a home with a chimney just for the chubby!