New Burner Gibraltar MCC

I have been burning wood in a stove on my first floor to heat my 1860s farmhouse for the last 12 years which I enjoy but I wanted to add a coal stove in the basement and recently bought a Gibraltar MCC on craigslist for 75$. I thought that was a pretty good deal. The stove is in good shape and I tore it all down and cleaned it out really good. The only damage I could see was that the baffle plate is warped and it did not have the firebrick retainers so I fabricated my own with some scrap steel I had.

My house has r13 in the walls and r38 in the attic but it has 26 double hung single pane windows and 7 doors so there is a lot of heat loss. The wood stove does well but i have to feed it a lot to keep up during really cold weather which is why I added the coal stove. The coal stove is hooked up to a 32 foot masonry chimney and has a manual pipe damper attached. I also installed a class A metal chimney for the wood stove which formerly used the masonry chimney. I have smoke alarms and CO detectors installed on every floor of the house.

I just fired the stove up to try it yesterday. I live in NEPA and have access to lots of anthracite suppliers but I just picked up a few bags of nut coal from tractor supply to try the stove out. I was able to run the stove all day and overnight and keep stove temps of 400-550. It is currently running now at 500 degrees and I have used about 80 pounds of coal so far. I put the thermometer on the top face of the stove just to the right of the door. Not sure if this is the best spot. My basement has no heat in it and the walls are field stone and not insulated which I plan on doing soon. I was only able to bring the basement up from 50 to 65. I realize that i am probably putting a lot of the heat the stove is making into the walls but I wasn't sure if I was running the stove properly. I don't have a thermometer for the flu temp but I can touch the pipe without getting burned.

My plan is to run the wood stove in the fall and spring and the coal stove when it gets colder and have the option to run both when it gets really cold. If there is anybody on the forum with this stove that can offer advice on it would be appreciated. Coal is a lot different than wood so I'm sure there is a learning curve.

Be careful how yo insulate those field stone walls...
Cutting off the heat from the basement to the field stone wall...
May result in frost heaving of the wall...

Welcome to the forum.
The MCC is a great stove!
You'll learn how to run that stove, sounds like you have a good idea how already. Coal is a lot different then firewood.

I have that stove. You got a terrific buy at $75!!! Gibraltar’s put out some serious heat. Welcome.

I forgot to mention that, a very good deal!

Thanks. A lot of good information and experience in this forum. It was a good deal. It ran well last night it was 500 degrees when I went to bed at 10pm and it was still 500 degrees when I got up this morning at 5:30. You cant beat the consistency of burning coal. It was pretty windy here yesterday and I was wondering installing barometric damper would help keep the draft more consistent and give a longer burn?

yes a baro will help keep the draft more consistent not letting it go over the setting you set it to

i have the same stove, i love it! i hear nothing but good things about it... how do you like it so far? what kind of temps and burn times are you getting?

I run it at 450-550 depending on the outside temp. I shakedown and reload at 12 hour intervals. usually 5:30 am and 5-6 pm.

BGH wrote: ↑

Fri. Dec. 28, 2018 6:40 pm

I run it at 450-550 depending on the outside temp. I shakedown and reload at 12 hour intervals. usually 5:30 am and 5-6 pm.

nice, and how much are you adding on shake down? 20 30 40lbs?