Lil' Heater.

EarthWindandFire · Post by **EarthWindandFire** » Wed. Dec. 11, 2013 7:15 pm

I didn't want to start a new thread but I'm having a few issues I need help with. First, I have hot coals falling off the grate even though I have the max feed rate cut down to just 15. That doesn't seem right and I may have to lower this even further.

Second, I installed the new Quiet combustion fan a few weeks ago. The fan is significantly quieter but the stove should be hotter than it is. The sides average 512 degrees and the stack temp is about 200 degrees. The FR (firing rate) is at 99 right now. My house is 960 sq feet Cape, four rooms on the first floor with open floor plan, a bathroom and two bedrooms on the second floor. One of the bedrooms is a spare, so the door is always closed, so I'm really just trying to heat 860 square feet. The first floor is heated to 72 degrees but the kids bedroom upstairs only gets to about 62 degrees, a ten degree difference, but the bedroom feels warm and the kids haven't complained.

The stove is located on the first floor, smack in the middle of the house. This should be the ideal location for a radiant and convective heating appliance. The stove uses very little coal, about 40 lbs per day. I am not frugal about coal use, I wouldn't care if it burned 10 tons per winter, I just want a warm house.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

P.S. Please don't suggest a boiler, this house isn't worth the trouble and cost.

Flyer5 · Post by **Flyer5** » Wed. Dec. 11, 2013 7:23 pm

EarthWindandFire wrote:I didn't want to start a new thread but I'm having a few issues I need help with. First, I have hot coals falling off the grate even though I have the max feed rate cut down to just 15. That doesn't seem right and I may have to lower this even further.

Second, I installed the new Quiet combustion fan a few weeks ago. The fan is significantly quieter but the stove should be hotter than it is. The sides average 512 degrees and the stack temp is about 200 degrees. The FR (firing rate) is at 99 right now. My house is 960 sq feet Cape, four rooms on the first floor with open floor plan, a bathroom and two bedrooms on the second floor. One of the bedrooms is a spare, so the door is always closed, so I'm really just trying to heat 860 square feet. The first floor is heated to 72 degrees but the kids bedroom upstairs only gets to about 62 degrees, a ten degree difference, but the bedroom feels warm and the kids haven't complained.

The stove is located on the first floor, smack in the middle of the house. This should be the ideal location for a radiant and convective heating appliance. The stove uses very little coal, about 40 lbs per day. I am not frugal about coal use, I wouldn't care if it burned 10 tons per winter, I just want a warm house.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

P.S. Please don't suggest a boiler, this house isn't worth the trouble and cost.

We may have another one if you want to try. Give me a few days to do some testing. Then give me a call. Dave

Post by **Rob R.** » Wed. Dec. 11, 2013 8:57 pm

Do you still have your old blower? If it isn't a hard swap, that would be an easy way to narrow down the problem.

How does the fire look? Lazy flame off the fire?

Coal is properly sized without excessive fines or small pieces?

EarthWindandFire · Post by **EarthWindandFire** » Wed. Dec. 11, 2013 9:14 pm

Hi Rob,

Yes, I still have the oem blower, the change over is very easy. The strange thing is, the flame looks pretty good, not huge or anything, but not lazy either. The stack temp isn't particularly high, not hot enough to indicate a problem.

I wonder how the stove would run on buck sized coal, but I have thirty bags of rice still left. If the fan is the problem, due to lower cfm's, then the buck might burn well.

The coal quality looks very good, it's Blaschak.

Ed.A · Post by **Ed.A** » Wed. Dec. 11, 2013 10:33 pm

Hrmm, doesn't sound like a Coal Size issue. Grate is clean, no air blockage?

Perplexed, it's not like you're a novice.

EarthWindandFire · Post by **EarthWindandFire** » Fri. Dec. 13, 2013 1:56 pm

I finally swapped out the combustion fan last night. The oem Fasco is back on the stove. However, my hopes for a miracle were quickly dashed when I took temp readings off the stove two hours later. The stove did indeed heat up, but only by 30 degrees. So, instead of 490 degrees maxed out, it heated up to 520 degrees. I have done everything possible to check settings and look for causes as to why I can't get enough heat.

I vacuumed under the grate, which was done during the rush to switch out the fan before the fire was lost. Stupidly, I used my wife's five hundred dollar Sebo vacuum and melted the hose. A replacement hose will cost me fifty bucks, that's my Christmas present to myself.

The stove is maxed out, the FR is 99 and I moved the feed rate back up to 18, which makes the hot coals go right to the edge of the grate. The grate is completely on fire, no dead-spots or plugged air holes. The coal-trol is set at 72 but the downstairs is just 67 to 69 degrees. The draft is a little high, but not by much.

This morning on the way to work I had an epiphany of sorts - how come I'm only burning one bag per day ???
It seems to me that a 70,000 BTU coal stove at max burn should be using nearly three bags a day. I almost think I have the 40,000 BTU burner from the original Hyfire installed by mistake. At 40lbs per day, the stove is only putting out 22,000 BTU's gross per hour. It should be at least double that!

I just don't understand why others are heating houses that are 2, 3 and even 4 times larger than mine with the same size coal stove. The last two years I had the coal stove in the basement, the house was just as warm as it is now. This year, I move the stove upstairs, and its not any warmer.

Any thoughts or comments would be appreciated!

Post by **Rob R.** » Fri. Dec. 13, 2013 3:11 pm

Are you measuring the draft at the breech or over the fire?

Can you rewire the combustion blower to straight AC power and see if it changes speed?

McGiever · Post by **McGiever** » Fri. Dec. 13, 2013 4:14 pm

How is the chimney?
Nothing crawled/fell down inside?
No other leaking openings elsewhere in lower part...or is it a shared flue?

It's not always the stoves fault.

Flyer5 · Post by **Flyer5** » Fri. Dec. 13, 2013 7:53 pm

EarthWindandFire wrote:I finally swapped out the combustion fan last night. The oem Fasco is back on the stove. However, my hopes for a miracle were quickly dashed when I took temp readings off the stove two hours later. The stove did indeed heat up, but only by 30 degrees. So, instead of 490 degrees maxed out, it heated up to 520 degrees. I have done everything possible to check settings and look for causes as to why I can't get enough heat.

I vacuumed under the grate, which was done during the rush to switch out the fan before the fire was lost. Stupidly, I used my wife's five hundred dollar Sebo vacuum and melted the hose. A replacement hose will cost me fifty bucks, that's my Christmas present to myself.

The stove is maxed out, the FR is 99 and I moved the feed rate back up to 18, which makes the hot coals go right to the edge of the grate. The grate is completely on fire, no dead-spots or plugged air holes. The coal-trol is set at 72 but the downstairs is just 67 to 69 degrees. The draft is a little high, but not by much.

This morning on the way to work I had an epiphany of sorts - how come I'm only burning one bag per day ???
It seems to me that a 70,000 BTU coal stove at max burn should be using nearly three bags a day. I almost think I have the 40,000 BTU burner from the original Hyfire installed by mistake. At 40lbs per day, the stove is only putting out 22,000 BTU's gross per hour. It should be at least double that!

I just don't understand why others are heating houses that are 2, 3 and even 4 times larger than mine with the same size coal stove. The last two years I had the coal stove in the basement, the house was just as warm as it is now. This year, I move the stove upstairs, and its not any warmer.

Any thoughts or comments would be appreciated!

Are you sure the gasket is at the back of the grate? And the grate is down all the way. That is the usual cause for these symptoms.

EarthWindandFire · Post by **EarthWindandFire** » Wed. Dec. 18, 2013 6:54 am

I had to take a vacation day and stay home with the kids yesterday due to the snow. This gave me an opportunity to check the gaskets and the grate. All gaskets are installed and the gap between the blower box and the grate is so tight I can't even pass a butter knife in between.

I still can't get the stove to burn more than a bag per day.

It would be nice to hear from other Lil Heater owners. Am I the only one experiencing this problem of an under performing stove?

Owners of other brand stokers talk about their stoves being under-rated in BTU output. I have the opposite problem, this stove is outputting less than a third of rated capacity.

blrman07 · Post by **blrman07** » Wed. Dec. 18, 2013 8:02 am

It sounds like your getting sufficient feed and the only other culprit it could be is air flow.

Fire = fuel+air+ignition.

You have fuel, you have ignition the only thing left is combustion air flow.

Either you need to move the combustion fan directly to a continuous 110 volt source, seal the grate rear and sides with refractory cement and ensure that the combustion fan inlet is not restricted or all three.

Only thing left at that point is a power vent excessive flow malfunction of some unknown type, if your using one.

Rev. Larry

Post by **Rob R.** » Wed. Dec. 18, 2013 8:37 am

Rob R. wrote:Are you measuring the draft at the breech or over the fire?

Can you rewire the combustion blower to straight AC power and see if it changes speed?

EarthWindandFire · Post by **EarthWindandFire** » Wed. Dec. 18, 2013 8:54 am

I did forget about plugging the Fasco directly into a regular wall outlet. I'll do this as soon as I get home. I will also try sealing the area around the exterior where the stoker enters the stove body.

But what happens when I do all these things and nothing works?

Maybe the stove is working perfectly and it burns coal so efficiently that it puts out 70,000 BTU's on just one bag of coal per day!!!!

Carbon12 · Post by **Carbon12** » Wed. Dec. 18, 2013 9:00 am

Yeah, at max firing rate it should be about 129 pounds of coal in 24 hrs. If the grate is burning to the point that hot coals are being pushed off and it's only burning 40 pounds a day, something is really amiss. It's not burning the coal fast enough. Feed rate can't be too high because it's only using 40 pounds per day. Combustion air could be low resulting in hot coals being pushed off grate but that still doesn't explain the measly 40 pounds per day usage. I'm stumped.

Flyer5 · Post by **Flyer5** » Wed. Dec. 18, 2013 9:01 am

EarthWindandFire wrote:I had to take a vacation day and stay home with the kids yesterday due to the snow. This gave me an opportunity to check the gaskets and the grate. All gaskets are installed and the gap between the blower box and the grate is so tight I can't even pass a butter knife in between.

I still can't get the stove to burn more than a bag per day.

It would be nice to hear from other Lil Heater owners. Am I the only one experiencing this problem of an under performing stove?

Owners of other brand stokers talk about their stoves being under-rated in BTU output. I have the opposite problem, this stove is outputting less than a third of rated capacity.

This is the gasket I am talking about. Just trying to make sure you are looking in the right place. Dave Tips & Tricks

PS also are the air holes in the grate clean?