A Challenge to Anthracite Stove Makers

Coalfire wrote:Nothing personal and I'm not going to try and argue it cause your mind is made up and that is how it is. I don't understand this two story house and basement stuff, see you will have to explain that to me size and temp that your are trying to achieve with your 50lbs of coal. Like someone said are you heating a 4000sqft corn crib or a 1500sqft house? You said 50lbs of coal 50x13000= 650,000btu per day if you get every last ounce out of the coal 650000/24= 27,083btu/hr average. so your are saying I could put a 30K BTU space heater in the basement of a two story house and heat it comfortably on a sub zero day?

Good reasoning and I think valid.

Looking at it another way with my own house which is a raised ranch built in 1990 with good insulation I burned 600 gallons of oil per year. This was with keeping the lower level at 55 and the upper level 64to 65 degrees. In my area there are about 6500 degree days per year. Dividing that by 600 means I burn a gallon of oil for every 10.8 degree days. A degree day is the average temperature for the day subtracted from 65. So on a day that averages zero there are 65 degree days divided by 10.8 and I would burn 6 gallons of oil. 6 times140,000 = 840,000 BTU divided by 24 hours = 35000 BTU per hour times .80 oil burner efficiency =28,000 BTU per hour to heat the house to the temperatures indicated above on a zero average day which is 60 degrees average for the whole house. So for each degree of heat I burn 467 BTU per hour. To raise the average temperature to 70 I would need to burn an additional 4670 BTU for a total of 32,670 BTU per hour. Actually the figure would be higher since the heat loss of the house would be higher at 70 degrees, probably more like 35,000 BTU.

In a 2 story plus basement I would guess the figure to be more like 50,000 BTU.

Okay, I will explain the setup. My house is a 2 story log home that is about 1500 square feet in size. It has a full basement with 8 foot high ceilings. The main floor is conprised of a living room, dining room, kitchen and a half bath. The house is a balloon framed house with a center staircase that holds both the stairs from the basement to the kitchen and the steps from the front up to the 2 bedrooms and full bath on the second story. The floor plan is totally open except for the bedrooms upstairs. However, the floor plan downstairs is totally open except for the half bath. There are no walls dividing the rooms. The house is designed as if it was built in 1850 except for the concrete block foundation. The windows are wooden double hung, double pane windows with wooden framed storm windows.
The basement is uninsulated and the snow melts up to 2 or three feet from around the perimeter of the house. Someday I hope to finish out the basement and fully insulate it.
The Glenwood Stove in question operates at around 400 to 500 degrees on the barrel in the coldest weather. I don't run it hotter than that. The 50 pounds of coal in question keeps the basement well above 80 degrees. The main living area around 70-75 degrees and the upstairs around 67 degrees. Those are the measurements those are the facts. Believe me or not. It is what it is.

Does the 1500 sq. ft. include the basement? If it does then it means you are heating the house with about 25,000 BTU per hour assuming 90 percent efficiency for your stove.

franco b wrote:Does the 1500 sq. ft. include the basement? If it does then it means you are heating the house with about 25,000 BTU per hour assuming 90 percent efficiency for your stove.

Yes, it does. The log walls are very tight and the windows seem to be pretty good also. The main advantage of the floorplan is that it is open and the center stair case allows for a strong, unimpeded convective current. The stove is almost centrally located very near the stairs. You can stand upstairs at the top of the stairs and feel the heat coming up. Conversely, if you stand at the bottom of the stairs in the basement you can feel the cooler air coming back down as well. You can walk bare foot on the oak floor above and feel the warmth on the floor. One of the first things I did when I moved here was pull all of the insulation out of the basement ceiling to allow radiant heat to warm the floor directly. It works well. The lay out of this house being what it is, is one of the reasons I bought it. It is extremely easy to heat.

wsherrick wrote:

franco b wrote:Does the 1500 sq. ft. include the basement? If it does then it means you are heating the house with about 25,000 BTU per hour assuming 90 percent efficiency for your stove.

Yes, it does. The log walls are very tight and the windows seem to be pretty good also. The main advantage of the floorplan is that it is open and the center stair case allows for a strong, unimpeded convective current. The stove is almost centrally located very near the stairs. You can stand upstairs at the top of the stairs and feel the heat coming up. Conversely, if you stand at the bottom of the stairs in the basement you can feel the cooler air coming back down as well. You can walk bare foot on the oak floor above and feel the warmth on the floor. One of the first things I did when I moved here was pull all of the insulation out of the basement ceiling to allow radiant heat to warm the floor directly. It works well. The lay out of this house being what it is, is one of the reasons I bought it. It is extremely easy to heat.

Ok well then that makes sense you are heating a total of 1500 sqft total. using at most 50lbs. I am heating 2500sqft stove in the basement no insulation, 28 year old windows, ok insulation in the first floor (it is a ranch) this winter it was -5F and it was 78 in the house, my wife said that was a little to warm, so I try to keep it at 74. during that period I was using 75lbs of coal.

That is what I was trying to say earlier that you didn't want to understand when I said it takes X amount of btus to heat an area If you would bring a glenwood here it would probably take 75lbs of coal to heat this house under those conditions. maybe 73 if it is so efficient.

Eric

Lots of talk about efficiencies in this thread. Do keep in mind that all efficiencies stated in testing are combustion efficiencies. Nobody measures how efficiently the system transfers the heat to the space it's trying to heat. That is an important part of the equation, and almost impossible to measure.

The old Glenwood baseburners appear to have captured all aspects of these efficiencies very well. I've run modern thermostatically controlled coal stoves and the Glenwood is head and shoulders above all I've tried. I'd love it if someone wanted to donate one of these modern stoves they consider the "best available" to install here in my house and we could do some side by side testing (Heck, I'll put up all the labor to switch the stoves in and out for the side by side testing... LOL)

It will be really interesting to see how the Glenwood runs this coming winter with the magazine installed. I'm sure there will be lots of updates as the winter of 2011-2012 progresses...

dj

I think we have to realize that when William speaks about antique stoves it is not just a heating appliance he refers to.

The late 1800s were a time when a revolution in heating was occurring. Coal was becoming king. It was the age of cast iron and foundry's competed for the services of artists and mold makers. There must have been a lot of excitement in the air, just as in our day we witness the revolution in computers. The same thing happened in radio, television, and very much in cars. The old apprentice agreements spoke of teaching the art of a craft. Look at a telescope from the 1700s and every line delights the eye, including the delicate yet strong tripod mounting. The exquisite proportions of a New Jersey made tall case clock. Art was very much the business of the crafts. I remember a friend and I along with a half dozen others standing transfixed at the sight of an early Rivett lathe that a dealer had just gotten in. Other lathes were just as good but nothing could touch that lathe for its perfection of fit and beauty of line.

So there is such a thing as industrial art and like a classic twin six Packard touring car certain stoves were standouts in their field. But unlike the car, what if that one hundred year old stove could perform just as well or better than most of the modern counterparts? What if you could partake in the excitement of the culmination of design of long dead artists; and feel as they must have felt every time you looked at it? The Shaker religious sect believed that their work was a form of worship. We see the result in the artifacts they have left to us. All good and lasting industrial art is inspired in the same sense.

I think that is the message William is preaching, hence his use of so many superlatives.

franco b wrote:I think we have to realize that when William speaks about antique stoves it is not just a heating appliance he refers to.

The late 1800s were a time when a revolution in heating was occurring. Coal was becoming king. It was the age of cast iron and foundry's competed for the services of artists and mold makers. There must have been a lot of excitement in the air, just as in our day we witness the revolution in computers. The same thing happened in radio, television, and very much in cars. The old apprentice agreements spoke of teaching the art of a craft. Look at a telescope from the 1700s and every line delights the eye, including the delicate yet strong tripod mounting. The exquisite proportions of a New Jersey made tall case clock. Art was very much the business of the crafts. I remember a friend and I along with a half dozen others standing transfixed at the sight of an early Rivett lathe that a dealer had just gotten in. Other lathes were just as good but nothing could touch that lathe for its perfection of fit and beauty of line.

So there is such a thing as industrial art and like a classic twin six Packard touring car certain stoves were standouts in their field. But unlike the car, what if that one hundred year old stove could perform just as well or better than most of the modern counterparts? What if you could partake in the excitement of the culmination of design of long dead artists; and feel as they must have felt every time you looked at it? The Shaker religious sect believed that their work was a form of worship. We see the result in the artifacts they have left to us. All good and lasting industrial art is inspired in the same sense.

I think that is the message William is preaching, hence his use of so many superlatives.

Not that I dislike the appearance of the Glenwood, but it doesn't really fit the decor of my house. But it is good looking and I can make that part "work" for my house. What makes it work for me is that the stove really "works"! It kicks out heat with very little fuel consumption. It circulates the heat in my house better than my forced air oil furnace. Go figure... I've run modern stoves and sure, I like the thermostat, but I've never seen one that produces as much heat as evenly distributed with as small amount of coal burned as the Glenwood.

I can't answer for William, but for myself, I'm a very practical person. If the Glenwood didn't produce - I'd sell it and get a stove that did. How many stoves have I gone through in the years I've burned wood/coal? I couldn't answer. But I can say the Glenwood has kicked all their butts... And that's strictly from a performance perspective.

dj

Ok lets agree to disagree william, neither of us is going to budge , I do have a couple questions though. 1. what is behind curtain three you never told me. 2. I am heating a much larger area than you, so my coal consumption is higher(that is why I said x amount of btus to heat an area), back to my original question would a glennwood save me coal

Ok enough with that lets talk about combustion efficiency, you talk about your low stack temp are you relating that to combustion efficiency? Hear me out on a car you can have as near complete combustion as you will get and the exhaust is hot. Now the farther back you go the cooler the exhaust will get. So do you think stack temp is actually an indicator of combustion efficiency? Interesting thought huh, I wish we had our gas analyzer yet I would put the probe in the pipe and check the hydro carbons, co, co2, and o2 comming out of the exhaust that would be an awesome way to check combustion efficiency. What do you think.

Eric

Coalfire wrote:Ok lets agree to disagree william, neither of us is going to budge , I do have a couple questions though. 1. what is behind curtain three you never told me. 2. I am heating a much larger area than you, so my coal consumption is higher(that is why I said x amount of btus to heat an area), back to my original question would a glennwood save me coal

Ok enough with that lets talk about combustion efficiency, you talk about your low stack temp are you relating that to combustion efficiency? Hear me out on a car you can have as near complete combustion as you will get and the exhaust is hot. Now the farther back you go the cooler the exhaust will get. So do you think stack temp is actually an indicator of combustion efficiency? Interesting thought huh, I wish we had our gas analyzer yet I would put the probe in the pipe and check the hydro carbons, co, co2, and o2 comming out of the exhaust that would be an awesome way to check combustion efficiency. What do you think.

Eric

Stove temperature and stack temperature relate to Thermal Efficiency not Combustion efficiency. Measuring the amount of gas and what kind is a sure way to find out how well the fuel is burned. In theory perfect combustion leaves nothing but carbon dioxide and water as the only by products. Of course that is never reached in reality. The closer you get to that state the better the combustion. Thermal efficiency tells you how what percentage of actual energy you are getting of the total potential energy available.
Oh curtain no 3 has the peach colored 74 Gremlin Hatchback. How could you pass that up?

My last post I was trying to have some serious dialog, appaerntly you can't accept that. I had the question of combustion efficieny, what are you basing that on, and how have you tested that? It is a serious question not being a smart a**. I wrongly related your stack temp to combustion effiency talking sorry.

Just wondering, Eric

Coalfire wrote:My last post I was trying to have some serious dialog, appaerntly you can't accept that. I had the question of combustion efficieny, what are you basing that on, and how have you tested that? It is a serious question not being a smart a**. I wrongly related your stack temp to combustion effiency talking sorry.

Just wondering, Eric

Sorry I just realized that and edited the post. My apologies.

Thermal efficiency is not rated on free standing stoves as far as I know. As dj stated, Lab testing only tests for combustion efficiency. I read an article that was published in 1911 or 1912 that the average coal stove efficiency was about 70 percent. That included all the good and bad ones. I don't think the average coal stove efficiency level has gone up any since then. It's probably near the same, but; again that is Combustion efficiency, not Thermal efficiency.
To understand the difference. Let's again take the standard open fireplace as an example to illustrate. Everybody knows or has read that fireplaces are terribly inefficient, but are you aware that an open fireplace has a combustion efficiency of well over 90%. That is, most of the heat value in the fuel is converted to heat and not wasted as unburned solids or gasses. It is the Thermal efficiency of a fireplace that is so bad. Even though most all of the fuel is converted to usable heat, the fireplace just throws it all up the chimney instead of heating the room it is in. So that is the paradox that we are faced with is how to make an appliance that is both thermally efficient and efficient at combusting the fuel at the same time.

Interested in test equipment?
http://www.bacharach-inc.com/combustion-test-kits.htm
This site mentioned soilid fuel in the past but I don't see it mentioned now.

Short Bus wrote:Interested in test equipment?
http://www.bacharach-inc.com/combustion-test-kits.htm
This site mentioned soilid fuel in the past but I don't see it mentioned now.

If you want to calculate combustion efficiency accurately, these hand held units aren't quite up to the task. You have to measure CO, CO2, O2 and H2O along with temps and such (maybe some more things, I'd have to go look it up). You have to do a complete chemistry on the fuel you are burning in addition to the measurements on the burning stove.

I was looking at getting myself set up to do this on my stove. First I started looking at the hand held units like the one you are pointed to, but by the time you get one that does enough measurements to get good numbers, the prices are way to expensive for my blood. Then I started looking at used hand-helds and laboratory units but couldn't find any that were in good enough shape and reasonably priced so I've pretty much dropped the idea now. It just isn't economically reasonable. I'd have to have a business doing this all the time to justify the costs.

The hand-helds you are indicating do a bunch of calculations and assumptions that are only valid if you know a lot about your fuel and how it burns. They work great for fuel oil, not so great for coal. Just an FYI...

dj