Managing Low Slow Burns

freetown fred wrote:That would work well with my 50-93 MA--Got a pin & cotter pin connecting the 2 grates.

Yah but with those bi-metal thermo-majiggs you just lower it and walk away. I once got 57 hrs on my Vigilant, I could put my hand on it without medical attention needed and then bring it back

Update: When I got home from Florida on Friday I lit the furnace back up and thought I'd try a couple burn cycles without adding the blanket of fines. Nope, it wasn't just some fluke, I had a miserable time with the fire. Half of the fuel bed extinguished and the Half that was burning was very sick. I had the ash door open for an hour and a half just to restore some health so it could get shook down. Flue pipe wouldn't even pass 265 degrees. This happened on Saturday and Sunday evening tendings. So last night I applied the blanket of fines, furnace ran slower and cooler overnight and all day today. At rev up time today it took 10 minutes for the pipe temp to fly right on past 300 degrees. At shake down the fuel bed glowed orange, nearly every piece of coal in it. What a difference that blanket makes. I'm thrilled that I found a use for my 55 gallon barrel of fines lol.

If anyone is struggling to keep a low slow burn healthy try this. I'm loving it

Edit - if you don't have fines, a few bags of rice coal would blanket a lot of fires.

Lightning wrote:Update: When I got home from Florida on Friday I lit the furnace back up and thought I'd try a couple burn cycles without adding the blanket of fines. Nope, it wasn't just some fluke, I had a miserable time with the fire. Half of the fuel bed extinguished and the Half that was burning was very sick. I had the ash door open for an hour and a half just to restore some health so it could get shook down. Flue pipe wouldn't even pass 265 degrees. This happened on Saturday and Sunday evening tendings. So last night I applied the blanket of fines, furnace ran slower and cooler overnight and all day today. At rev up time today it took 10 minutes for the pipe temp to fly right on past 300 degrees. At shake down the fuel bed glowed orange, nearly every piece of coal in it. What a difference that blanket makes. I'm thrilled that I found a use for my 55 gallon barrel of fines lol.

If anyone is struggling to keep a low slow burn healthy try this. I'm loving it

Edit - if you don't have fines, a few bags of rice coal would blanket a lot of fires.

Sounds like it works fine in your furnace! My problem is that I have hopper fed stoves and am loathe to remove the hoppers as it's SO easy to maintain Hoppers makes fines hard to run thru them in a blanket style. I am running alternate straight coal off the upper section of my bunker and every other scoop will be from the bottom of the pile containing about 30% fines to a scoop. I use a small square end shovel and burning at ultra low temps usually only calls for two scoops /12 hrs.
Some separate and throw fines away but the Scottish (not Scotch) in me will be damned if I will not burn them as I paid for them along with the load .. They do burn as I see little or no unburned fines in a shakedown. About every 3 days I give her a good knifing from up thru the bottom and still see no unburned fines. I do like my DS Machine Newstyle Champion made back somewhere in the 1980's. Pure radiant stove with no newfangled gimmicks. I only wish it had a round tapered firebox.

I had a pretty exciting event last night lol. So I did my usual shake and load with a blanket of fines on top. Normally, I leave the ash door open till the volatiles ignite and run the pipe up to 300 degrees. As you might assume, it tends to heat the house up quick too, especially when it's 60 degrees outside. This time in an attempt not to overheat the house I left the ash door open, but only for a few minutes then I shut everything up and was done with it. While I was knelt on the floor centered in front of the furnace the volatiles ignited, hahaha. If you can imagine, a cylinder of flame similar to a Titan rocket lift off shot out of the secondary inlets right past me on both sides. Scared the dog *censored* out of me. Yep, pretty exciting event. I was surprised to find the baro door still on the pipe lol. I wish I woulda got that on video. Stuff like that would go viral

Let's make sure the volatiles are lit BEFORE locking her up next time, okay?

Glad to hear your listed amongst the survivors".

If your going to do much more of that, Google, "anti-back-fire valves" for your salt & pepper secondary feeds. Or at least, don't ever grow long sideburns or your screen name will change from "Lightning" to, "flash"

Paul

Don't get him goin on the flash Paul. We've already seen him in uniform.

Thanks Paul , had I been off center a couple inches one of my arms would have been hit right on the bare skin between the welding glove and t shirt. I bet it woulda "left a mark" too lol. Or even better yet, once in a while I take the flashlight and look down the tubes to make sure the caps are on the other end (since I knock one off occasionally). That woulda been just plain dangerous! Sometimes ya git lucky. I did feel the blast go right passed both my arms, missed by an inch or two.

It's a good reminder of why we do, what we do... For example, letting it breath and ignite before shutting doors haha.

For gosh sakes if you ever do anything like that again, please please please TAKE A VIDEO! I could use a good laugh

Hard lesson to learn but most of us have had something similar happen, but on a much smaller scale. My only major one was a fuel oil space heater and that blew the whole pipe off.

joeq wrote:Don't get him goin on the flash Paul. We've already seen him in uniform.

OMG, I missed this post
Joe speaks the "truth of light" lol

you are a brave one....Mr. Grinch.

With the warm couple days here I thought I'd bring this thread up. I put a 10 pound blanket of pea and buckwheat size on top of 40 pounds of stove size last night. Overnight and until I got home from work today I just had the primary open a sliver. At 1:30 I closed the primary air as far as possible which still leaves less than a square half inch roughly for combustion air to get in. Heat output near nothing, she's sleepin.

Down to -.01
Over the load door 167
Top of pipe 2 ft from stove 118

That's about as low and slow as it gets.

Check out the sleeping baby coalies. Pretty "cool" Lee.

joeq wrote: ↑

Tue. Feb. 20, 2018 4:49 pm

Check out the sleeping baby coalies. Pretty "cool" Lee.

Thanks Joe!
"Baby coalies"
Love that....

Seven hours later not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse....
One beer and 13 minutes with the ash door open -
I've since added 28 pounds of stove size and another 10 pound blanket of pea/buckwheat size, ignition is imminent.

.... and back to sleep till tomorrow night's tending