Keeping It Going -New User

Hi I just got my coal stove a few days ago ,and im having
quite a problem keeping it going.I will put a load in the stove at night when I get home from work@
around 11:30pm and this will just be glowing when im up at 7am,mostly ash I have lost the fire around 5 times
and when I re start seems to go great for around 6 hours,but overnight I lose it.I don't know if im putting too much coal too little or what im getting frustrated .My shaker grates are parallel to each other and move up and down and seem to dump a lot of ash coal,I have cranked them too much and dumped the whole fire once!Using a reading swatara cs-85
any tips for a new jack would be helpful!!!

Before you shake it down, open the ash door to get the fire revved up nice and hot for two or three minutes. Shaking a cold fire may kill it. You see gray ash when you reload? You are at the end of the fire, load more coal in it. Fill it to the top of the firebrick. Mound it up in the center. The #1 biggest mistake for newbies is not enough coal. Don't be afraid to load it up, it will not waste coal. You will actually burn less and have much less trouble with the fire. Some stoves want the coal banked at a reloading, give that a try too.

You may find some useful tips here too: Shaking Down/Reloading A Mature Fire

Most of the ash is in the sides of the firebox so I will try banking it up in the middle a bit more
and I will also put more coal on the fire.Just re-started this morning and its running great nice and hot.I
will also make a poker as im reading that they seem to work well in getting rid of the built up ash.
I guess it takes a while to get the hang of getting a good fire going and keeping it going.

The other common thing that I have noticed from newer posters is to make sure you are not burning off the coal too quickly by allowing too much draft through the bed of coals.

Do you have a barometric damper and manometer to measure the draft?

Each stove/chimney setup is a little different and has its own "personality". You will get it close by following suggestions here and can tweak it to maximum efficiency by trying slight variations on your methods. Keep at it and in a couple weeks you'll be a "pro"!

Don't get discouraged. I am a first time coal user and was having the same problems. It is just a matter of shaking it down enough and making sure you load the stove up.I ws ready to give up thinking I had made a bad investment but after a month of frustration things are going good now. There is a lot of helpful info on this site. Good Luck

It looks like I was not using enough coal and was shaking down to much
I do have a barometric damper installed but I cant tell if its working or how its supposed to work.
its very windy here today and the damper is moving a lot (opening and closing) so im guessing its
working. I will keep at it and im guessing I will get the hang of it soon.

If your not using a poker to make the fine ash drop I doubt your shaking it too much...probably the opposite because it sounds like a clogged bed of coal and make sure you fill it as full as possible and it does not need to be level you can heap it towards the center if you have one side that is more open or shorter than the rest.make sure you have a barodamper .
When your ashpan fills with large red hot chunks of coal not a few red speckles you have shaken it too much.

Renbor check your PM.
I have a Manometer you could borrow or I can come to you and give you a hand.

Jimbo that would be great.Again I woke up at 7:00 am and the fire was mostly ash
with a small burn at the center I managed to get it going again but the house was 60 degrees and falling
I loaded up at 12:00am and turned the damper down so it would not be so warm(was 80 in the house)
and now at 9:00 its just getting going again.I really don't want to get up at 5 every morning to load and shake this thing down.I have to be doing something wrong.

Renbor - I looked at the Satatara on their website - where is the combustion air for underfiring the coal controlled?
It may be you are just firing to hard during the night - is the ash door slotted? or is there a temperature controlled damper in the back? My Hitzer has both. baldeagle

baldeagle wrote:Renbor - I looked at the Satatara on their website - where is the combustion air for underfiring the coal controlled?
It may be you are just firing to hard during the night - is the ash door slotted? or is there a temperature controlled damper in the back? My Hitzer has both. baldeagle

The control for the draft is on the door in the front of the stove where the ash pan goes in there are no slots,
just the half moon shaped damper you can close

You may have that draft control open too far and are burning through the coal too quickly at night. Do you have a thermometer on your flue pipe, magnetic or probe style, if so, what is the measured temp? That will help determine if you are overfiring and sending heat up the chimney.

Everybody's stove and set up are different, but to give you an idea my Harman Mark III has a draft control knob on the ash pan that I keep no more than 1/8" open (1-1/2 turns from closed). This gives enough heat and very long burn times - 12 hours and the fire is still strong when shaking down and refilling. The flue pipe temp measured with a magnetic thermometer is about 200* at that setting (about 18" above exhaust port, before the baro). If mine is open further than 1-1/2 turns then it burns much quicker and the flue temp goes higher - around 300* and I waste coal.

I think I finally figured out what was wrong.My stove does not have the blower
on it because it was back ordered sooo I put a fan behind the stove to circulate the heat.
I didn't realize it was blowing to close to the damper and that small bit of air getting in there
was messing up the burn,making it way to fast.I have since mover the fan so it cant blow by the pipe
and I have not had a problem.I should have the blower by Friday and it should solve everything!

As Saturday Night Live's Rosana Rosanadana would say, "It's always something--if it's not one thing, it's another."