Coalpail.com Forum

I am in my third year of burning coal with no problems. I have a LL 85000 BTU stoker and I just noticed a smell so moved my co2 alarm closer to the stove and was getting 35-55ppm readings and a little white smoke coming out of the coal in my hopper. I shut the stove down and will work on it today, any ideas on what to look for.

Bob

what is your draft in the flue now compared with the start of the season?

I'd start by looking for fly ash that needs to be cleaned out of horizontal runs of flue pipe. (or cleaning out a power venter if that is how you are running)

For sure, ash build up would be the first thing to check. Most people get an idea of how often their coal device needs pipes & passages cleaned. Some can go a whole season, some need to be cleaned once a month. Also, different coal makes different fly ash. If you change type of coal, things should get checked in 30 days.

Oh, and just to be technical....it's CO, carbon monoxide, not CO2, carbon dioxide! No biggie...as long as you have a detector you are doing the right thing.

All pipes are vertical with 6" coming out of top of stove going into 8" up thru second story and out. I will be checking draft when I borrow meter today. When I was checking damper last night it was drawing quite a bit of air in.

Since you say you have little or no horizontal pipe for fly ash to settle in, let me ask this...do you have a barometric damper?

If yes, was it wide open a lot yesterday when it was very windy outside? ...or was it mostly closed?

My thinking is that your baro is too small or is just set for too high of draft and the stove was experiencing a high volume of draft and drawing excess air from the hopper.
Had you not caught it it would likely of eventually burning back into the hopper.

You done good checking CO and getting it shut down right away.

Manometer will tell the facts.

I have the same "pipe straight up" configuration and I too have experienced odor and CO readings. I have found that the ash likes to build up right where the flue collar is at the top of the stove. I have a bent length of copper tubing that I stick into the flue pipe through the baro and use compressed air to blow all ash down into the stove. Also one year I did not remove my black flue pipe for the summer and it looked fine when heating season rolled around and worked well for several months. But a large piece of very thin rust fell off of the pipe and was blocking most of the flue right at the stove connection again.

Glad to see you back on here Rick.

Long time no hear............

Rick