Box Stove to Base Heater Conversion Adventure

freetown fred wrote:Got 2/3 of a full bin left & 12 5gal. buckets filled by the stove--using around 40 lb per day:) You're good Larry

WAAAYYY back when I was first looking for a new stove to replace my worn out Riteway #37 Fred recommended a 50-93 I guess I should have listened.

Sunny Boy wrote:If you can still find any these days, I use a piece of smoldering cotton twine.

Sometimes you can find it in hardware stores. Shipping/packing supply houses carry it too. http://www.uline.com/BL_3757/Cotton-Twine?pricode ... &gclsrc=ds

Cotton twine smoke is dense and the smoke stream stays small and concentrated. Far more so than twisted paper, or incense sticks. Hold it very close to all edges as you move it along the edge slowly. If there's a leak that matters, it'll be stronger than the stove's surface convection currents and you'll see the smoke column deflect at the leak, or get sucked in if the leak is really big.

Unfortunately the old mechanics trick doesn't work well. Stoves don't have RPM's that can be easily heard to change with fuel enrichment into the intake system. The only noise you'd hear with a stove leak would be the load boom !

Paul

Butcher's Twine is another similar product.

where can I buy butcher's twine

the time has come. I've let the stove empty the hopper, I will pull it out and switch over to direct mode and shallow fire bed in the morning.

looks very likely that I only have about 2 more weeks of burning to go and it will be just enough to keep the damp from the forecast rains out of the house.

a soon as I have 2 back to back 50* nights the show is over.

well, I had the fire out the 6th and 7th then relit for 8th thru the 12th. have been out from 13th thru today and looks like i'll being lighting back up for the next 5-6 days of rainy, 50 +/- highs and 30's lows.

what a crock, if i'd been moving faster I could have brought a Locke 120 in the house to test in stock form.

You know what they say, hindsight is much clearer than foresight but not worth a dammsight...

dj

been doing an experiment for the last week to see if I could run low and slow enough in direct mode to not over heat the house during the day.

long answer short, no.

i have succeeded in proving that one of the primary advantages of base heaters and especially the suspended fire pot design is the ability to keep the fire bed warm enough to keep burning at unbelievably low burn rates.

the gross output of a stove like this in base mode at high cruise in the dead of winter is awesome enough but, the ability to run almost unnoticed during 60+ days and just roll up and carry the house thru 35* nights without a hitch is real neat.

all on 4-5 ash shovels of coal every 12 hrs.

If you had a more typical chimney with marginal warm weather draft instead of your self-admitted vacuum cleaner like chimney would you feel comfortable leaving it in base-burner mode at 60 degrees outside?

lsayre wrote:If you had a more typical chimney with marginal warm weather draft instead of your self-admitted vacuum cleaner like chimney would you feel comfortable leaving it in base-burner mode at 60 degrees outside?

yes, I believe I would. mostly because while I've been messing around this past week I had more draft problems in direct mode than ever in base mode.

now you would think that since I was sending exhaust out of the combustion chamber straight up the flue that the flue and chimney would be maintaining MORE heat and better draft but some how that just wasn't the case.

i was fighting to keep from having outright draft reversals and spending alot of time reviving over cooled and seriously waning fires.

i believe this is because in base mode I have far more surface and stove core at a more even temp. in direct mode the stove was cycling, cooling and opening the primary dramatically to catch up then closing and coasting out to an unfavorable degree.

you would think that some of the answer would be to set the bi metal higher to keep the down slope from being so pronounced but in reality all that did was move the cycle higher and make the house more uncomfortable.

That temp oscillation sounds to me like the bi metallic is fighting a fluctuating draft pressure. I bet a baro would fix it...

I am watching this refit very carefully. I am putting a Locke 120 in a church in Helfenstein Pa. and want to incorporate some of this down the road for them under our Stove and Heat ministry.

blrman07 wrote:I am watching this refit very carefully. I am putting a Locke 120 in a church in Helfenstein Pa. and want to incorporate some of this down the road for them under our Stove and Heat ministry.

Larry,

you are going to want to keep an eye on this thread, Building a New Era Base Burner for what happens with the Locke 120 project.

this thread we are in is about the DSM stove I converted last yr. and really has little in common with the Locke 120 project.

Lightning wrote:That temp oscillation sounds to me like the bi metallic is fighting a fluctuating draft pressure. I bet a baro would fix it...

possibly...........IF I wanted to just start chasing my tail counter clockwise rather than clockwise. as in dealing with the symtoms rather than the cause.

there is fluctuating draft pressure but, it's not causing the oscillating temps. it's the other way around.

in direct mode with a shallow fire bed even average draft over scavenges the combustion chamber, cools the fire bed and drops the flue temp, thus inhibiting the draft, causing the bi-metal to over react initiating first a further drop in the in stove draft force then a heat surge, then a prolonged coast down.

the solution is just go back to base mode, run a deep bed and add about 10-12 #'s to the top ever 12 hrs. hold the draft down around .03 and let it have what ever primary it takes to keep itself going.

even if I hadn't proven that a baro. is not a viable option in my installation, I wouldn't shut down, open the flue system, install one and re light, re build a 16x14x9 fire to see if it would help.

well, got my summer fill notice from my coal dealer for this yr. nut at 239 ton/ bulk, delivered. I ordered 3 ton to refill my main bin.

this was the result of matching my stove input log with what I have left. that showed that for the heat season just past I used 7,165 #'s of nut. not the 6,000 i'd hoped for but a long way from the 12,000 the previous yr, so good enough for me.

i hope to do better with my new project stove.

thanks for watching,
steve

Steve,

The house was just as warm, ... plus about a 40% reduction in coal used to do it with. I'd say that's a fantastic improvement !!!!!!!

Paul

Sunny Boy wrote:Steve,

The house was just as warm, ... plus about a 40% reduction in coal used to do it with. I'd say that's a fantastic improvement !!!!!!!

Paul

Did the 40% less coal turn into 40% longer time between tending?