Lighting and Maintaining a coal fire

freetown fred wrote: ↑

Thu. Oct. 10, 2019 5:51 pm

I'm gonna run with adding a 3' section of pipe--YEP a mano. will tell ya what your draft is but won't improve it. Ya already know your draft sux or you'd be up & running. Leave MPD open==ash door vents wide open & let her go--don't worry about over firing, that stove is built like a tank!! Keep adding coal all the while. Now close MPD 2/3 & close ash door vents 3/4. It's like you're babying her. DON'T over think all this--just do it. What type of cap are you using? What size pipe?? 6"? Add that 3' pipe section.

Hrdnox1 wrote: ↑

Mon. Oct. 07, 2019 11:16 am

Alright, this weekend was an epic fail for me and lighting my hand fired Alaska Kodiak. The story is as follows:

First fire-up was Saturday 10-5-19 around 5 pm (ish), I used a combination of crumbled up newspaper, kindling, small fat wood and a bag of charcoal briquettes and some nut. I got really good heat and great fire, so i tossed a shovel full of nut on the fire, kept the air intake wide open. I repeated this process for about 2-3 hours, the flames were licking towards the back of the stove like expected. Once i got a good 2-3 inch base of hot coals i added another scoop or two of nut and kept cleaning up the garage. Now I'm into this for over 4-5 hours and should be able to to just throttle it back, walk away and come back out to a nicely heated garage in the morning , am i correct in assuming that? Well it didn't happen, my stove went Austin 3:16 on me and i found it stone cold in the morning.

Second attempt was Sunday afternoon now its WAR! Newspaper, kindling, fat wood, 12" seasoned oak log, Fire starting gel, lump charcoal and a gardening blow torch. This fire was intense, i kept adding nut coal and had a good 3-4" base of HOT coal. Dialed it back for the evening, came out before going to work and again stone cold!

stove.jpeg

Above should be a picture of my setup.

H, I had similar trouble at first on my Vigilant 2. It burns bit coal and for anthracite you have to remove a plate inside the stove over the primary air tube. The plate reduces air intake for bit coal, and anthracite needs much more air intake. I thought the installer removed the bit plate, but he didn't. Once I removed it, I found one of the clean-out covers in the firebox was missing inside the stove--I used aluminum foil until one arrived, and finally it worked fine. The missing clean-out cover allowed primary air in the underfire chamber to bypass the firebox and go through the flamepath passageways to the chimney, reducing draft through the coal. Yours probably does not have the side flamepaths. And maybe to convert to anthracite you just open the air more.
My Barometric damper is set between 4 and 6.

All gaps in the clean-out hole, Stove pipe joints and stove pipe to thimble have been sealed with black furnace cement from a caulking tube.

I have 2 windows opened in the garage about 3 inches.

I'm using Reading chestnut bag coal.

My elevation is around 1,700ft

The barometric pressure was 29.95 inches on Saturday and 30.17 on Sunday

It was rainy and cold (Highs in the upper 50's and lows in the low 40's) with steady winds.

Is there something i'm doing wrong/incorrectly?

Should i switch up to stove coal or drop down to Pea?

My last ditch effort is to add one of these:
https://www.northlineexpress.com/tjernlund-automa ... -8803.html

I really don't want to for the simple fact of power outage and needing to redo that electrical on the wall behind it.


Any and all help would be much Appreciated.

2001Sierra wrote: ↑

Thu. Oct. 10, 2019 10:41 pm

That fan for inducing draft is a bad idea. The stove needs to draft normally to be safe.

Hrdnox1 wrote: ↑

Fri. Oct. 11, 2019 3:46 pm

Here's a picture of the chimney from outside my garage.