Larry,lsayre wrote:Not to expose my ignorance here, but can you safely keep a fire going in these old coal fired cook stoves year round, so you can cook on (and in) them year round?
Here's more to give you an idea of how well these old ranges can run in warm weather.
Last Friday I baked a meatloaf in the range oven.
It was 60 degrees outside. A temp when I used to shut the stove down for the season. And, after resealing the oven this past winter, I don't have to have the range blazing to get the oven up to 350.
I was using about a 50/50 mix of nut and stove coal (see picture). In the pictures you can see there's plenty of heat in that firebox and the oven is staying right at 350 with the following damper settings.
To keep the oven down to 350 degrees (it wanted to run hotter with the stove/nut mix).
1. I had the primary damper open only a sliver at the two outer openings - closed for the middle three. I modified it many years ago so that the two outer air slots have been filed a few thousandths wider gap than the inner three slots. That gives me more of a progressive adjustment and finer air tuning to get lower, longer-lasting run times than having all five primary air slots the same width as the stove was built.
2. The MPD was fully closed - just using the holes in the MPD plate. Mano was reading .015.
3. The damper to the water reservoir was closed to reduce heat radiating surface area heating the kitchen. That also channeled a higher percentage of flue heat around the oven.
4. If I had been using all stove coal, instead of a mix, I would have needed to open the check damper at the base of the stack to help bleed in cool air and kill some of the strong draft - otherwise the stove/oven would have been running too hot.
A few weeks ago, I had no trouble keeping the range idling along during the day with just nut coal when it was in the 70's - 80 degrees outside.
With wood it is even easier to run it in hot weather.
Paul