Coalpail.com Forum

I heat about 1500 sf of the back of my uninsulated old house with the range. And it's the smaller, if not smallest, size range that Glenwood made. The Glenwood Models F and N are about the same size - 18 wide oven, which has been big enough to easily fit a roasting pan with a 20 lb turkey.

If you combine a couple of the choices allowed in the National Fire Codes, you can get a range's rear clearance down to 9 inches from what the codes call "combustibles". For a small range such as my Sunny Glenwood or a model F, It doesn't come out as far from the back wall as my GW #6 has to, even with a wall-mounted heat shield. The range is only 30 inches from the back side to the front edge of the oven shelf. My GW #6 is 37 inches from the back of the pipe elbow to the front edge of the nickeled skirt.

The range is in a corner of the kitchen. From the left hand wall by the hearth end to the other end of the range is 75 inches. That's longer than most because my range has the water reservoir tank on the end which adds about 6 inches more than with just the same range having an end shelf. Pic of position below.

I made a simple sheet metal box that covers the rear of the range and hangs from the back edge of the cooktop by the two mantel shelf screws. I filled it with two layers of one inch thick rock wool sheets. That also helped reduce heat loss through the back of the range to an outside wall and it increased oven temps without having to push the firebed as hard and use more coal.

The hearth end of the range will need more clearance, not just because it can't be shielded but to be able to tend the fire and ashes safely.

Paul

Well I haven’t started using coal yet but I have been having a fire in the evenings to take the chill out, and of course been doing some minor cooking.
Here is a picture of the 508E I just finished for a woman in southern New Hampshire. Hopefully she will be joining the forum this fall to learn the ways..
Dana

Great job, Dana. I hope she does join and enjoys using the range as much as we do.
Love that double shelf mantel ! That lower shelf is one of the type with the swing-out trivets ?

Paul

Sunny Boy wrote: ↑

Mon. Sep. 16, 2019 9:38 pm

Great job, Dana. I hope she does join and enjoys using the range as much as we do.
Love that double shelf mantel ! That lower shelf is one of the type with the swing-out trivets ?

Paul

Thanks,
No they don’t swing out, they actually have a set screw in the center to told them in place, I’ll take some close ups tomorrow it seems to be a less common mantle than a standard E

Okay, I doubt many people have done this - cooked using an ornate mica-windowed baseburner.

This was more in the category of "can we get the thing hot enough?" rather than anything practical - and yes we can.
The bread was delicious, by the way!

For anyone curious, this is a McClary No. 114 with the piggyback oven, my best guest is manufactured around 1896. Last year, I had issues with draft - decidedly not enough of it with two 90-degree bends and a 45-degree bend, and a chimney that was not taller than the peak of my roof. I floated many options, from a draft-inducing chimney cap on windy days, a taller chimney, etc. but I went in a different direction.

Against the advice of people on this forum, I installed a fan on my chimney. Not cheap. But wow is it effective. Draft beyond my wildest dreams - you can hear it howling through the stovepipe! Yes, all the questions about "what if the power goes out?" and "corrosion!" are well founded. The device has a 10-year warranty for corrosion and I'm not very worried about losing power. The stove still runs without the fan. We are on the same power grid as our hospital so the longest we've ever lost power has been 10 minutes, even while the rest of the city takes longer to come back online.

We got the stove up to 350F on the top rack before putting the bread in. I suspect that might be close to the upper limit on this model, though they did make these stoves with larger firepots. Definitely not designed for cooking, but in a pinch, that piggyback oven can come in handy.

Next up? Pizza. This was just a test run.

The fan, by the way, is an Enervex RSHT 12: https://www.northlineexpress.com/enervex-chimney- ... nly-1.html . My contractor is a friend of mine, so he got a sweet deal on the price and didn't mark it up for retail. It has a voltage regulator wired right into the 110v line (which I thought was odd) so you can adjust the fan speed with a simple dial. Now, I'm cookin' with coal!


... and yes, I need to clean my mica better. Actually, installing new mica in a lot of those windows when the stove cools down next.

Nice D!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! American ingenuity

Nice job, Don. Big enough to bake in and cook on.

Paul

Brilliant!!

Well, it’s about 2 weeks earlier than I wanted but I touched off the 1896 Atlantic grand last night on coal for the first time. We went to the cabin in northern Vermont for the weekend to do some grouse hunting and I lit the fairy as well, but when we came home the house was a brisk 51*, the fairy will likely run coal at night and wood during the day because I have a few cord already stacked up there, and the firebox is so small it will only go a few hours on wood.
As for the grand, complete different animal from the little fairy, the fairy’s firebox it only 12”x6”w and 5” deep, the grand is 18” long 7” wide and 8” deep.
Too fill from top to bottom it holds exactly 1 40# of Lehigh nut, where as the fairy is around 18#.
I finished filling it last night at 10pm 2 hours after we got home the house was 64* and I closed it up the same way I have the fairy for past few years it was in that same chimney, I awoke this morning sick but to a 73* house and I tried to shake it down it instantly jammed the grates, upon further inspection it hadn’t used any of the coal it was still burning so little there was only about 2 table spoons of ash, so I flattened the grates back out added the last scoop of small pieces and fines from the bag closed it up with only a 1/16” of primary air and left for work.
Just came home and opened it up to let it get hot to tend not sure what I’m going to find in a few minutes but it’s still cruising at 500ish* cooktop temp and it’s in the 50s outside
Dana

Congrats on first fire in the Grand !!!! But you know what they say,... no pix, no happen. Especially the cookin' part !

Don't feel bad, after many years of using the range with it's small firebox, it took me awhile to learn the when-to-shake of the twice-as-big firebed of the GW #6. Picked a lot of unburned coal out of the ash pan until I did learn the differences.

Paul

After 3 winters heating butchershop with propain and skipping lunch I installed a coal range. Win win, now shop is nice n warm n i eat lunch again.

jedneck wrote: ↑

Tue. Oct. 22, 2019 12:12 pm

After 3 winters heating butchershop with propain and skipping lunch I installed a coal range. Win win, now shop is nice n warm n i eat lunch again.

Great news. But,... without pix of the range setup,.... how can we be sure your heat and nutritional needs are being met ?

Paul

Also have waterfront for it that i plan o using to get heat to back room of shop. Will start thread on that part when i get close to hookin it up. For know waterfront not installed n firebox is bricked up.

jedneck wrote: ↑

Tue. Oct. 22, 2019 12:27 pm

Also have waterfront for it that i plan o using to get heat to back room of shop. Will start thread on that part when i get close to hookin it up. For know waterfront not installed n firebox is bricked up.

Nice. Yeah, that's better!

Most water fronts were set up to work on thermosyphon to a hot water storage tank placed higher than the stove. How are you going to move the water horizontally ?

Make sure to include a low setting pressure relief valve in it if it's a closed system. A sudden pressure leak of a water front into a firebed could potentially cause a very dangerous high pressure steam explosion.

Paul

While were on the subject of water fronts, I posted these links in another thread, but they are just as useful here.
----------------------------------------------------
Here's more details about a "water front". It's about wood stoves, but we can forgive them.
http://solarhomestead.com/using-your-wood-stove-t ... eat-water/

Some of the new welded steel ranges are already set up to connect up pipes to make hot water.
https://www.susprep.com/off-grid-water/hot-water- ... ook-stove/

And here's what can happen when it's plumbed wrong.
https://woodheat.org/heating-water-with-a-wood-stove.html

At some point in the life of the Acorn range that Melissa grew up with, someone cut holes in the end under the cooktop shelf and ran water pipes in the flue space between the oven top and the cooktop. I'd rather find or make a water front that fits in the way the originals did rather than chop holes in an antique range !!!!!

Paul