Blower Mod to my DS1500

Last year was my first year burning coal. Due to the number of power outage's we have here, I bought a DS1500 because it had no Electronics and a simple bimetallic thermostat to control combustion air. It uses a gravity induced air circulation concept. It has 2" vertical tube's around the perimeter of the fire box that pulls air from the bottom at floor level and out the top. It does work however not as well as I anticipated. DS does not offer a forced air system for the Circulator series, so for this season I added a blower system. I basically incased the bottom of the stove with 1/8" aluminum creating a plenum. I used rubber edge trim to seal it up. Due to the floor not being perfectly flat each piece is cut and filed to fit. Then I added the blower in the back to pressurize the plenum forcing air up thru the tubes creating massive amounts of heat being left on the table. In this case going up the flue. Attached are pictures of the new and improved.

Somehow I ended up responding to my post. Well I might as well make use of it lol. The blower has a speed control that I mounted on the wall shown in one of the pictures. It also came with a button stat that I have not installed yet. Don't really need it burning coal as once started it stays lit. However with wood burning out at night the Stat would shut the fan off.

this is a new and interesting direction for dealing with the convection tubes on the circulator models.

will be watching for update reports. do you have enough control to run the fan VERY slow ? it would seem easy to move so much air that you over strip the heat soak of the tubes and end up just blowing cool air around.

steve

Blower set up is available for the DS Circulators, I don't know the prices. Peachey at Belleville, PA. had them.
Someone local maybe making them.

Yes the speed controller can reduce the CFM fairly low. Right now I am burning wood so there is a lot more heat hitting the tubes above the fire box creating lots of heat. So I can run the blower full speed with no issue. Thus far I am very happy with the out come. Once I switch over to coal I will have a better ideal.

I called the vendor that I purchased the stove from prior to starting the project and they said no blower was available. I have about a 100 bucks into the blower kit and rubber trim. I had the Aluminum laying around.

Update:

So I have had the fan system running for a month with coal. It works quite well. It allows me to use the stove on a lower setting while producing much more heat. When it got warmer outside I turn the fan off or speed down otherwise it would overheat the house. Well worth the investment of labor and material.

I'm impressed. With that mod, it would be something I would consider for putting in my over-sized under insulated garage. The theory behind the tubes is fantastic and your blower system makes the best use of it.

Thanks much. Unfortunately without the blower system I was not impressed much at all considering they hype I got from the Amish dealer on the BTU output of this design. Hindsight being 20/20 I should have bought their stove with the fan option.

I see another positive with your blower mod. And that is; The fan is in back, and on top of the plenum box, Pressurizing the sealed box. This will make for much cleaner air circulation. You could even filter the fan.

Without the sealed plenum box, those circulator tubes pick up dirt, dust, fly ash, etc., and floats it around the room. Very dirty...... Being my 1600 is in a shop, I'd stir things up a little below the stove, just to show people.

Yea I knew that going in so I added the rubber trim to not only keep the dirt to a minimum , to also remove any vibration from metal to metal contact creating unwanted noise. It is pretty quite.