Coalpail.com Forum

Is the stove level?

What is the height of the flame? Also are you on a chimney or powervent? What is your draft?

I'm really curious to see the resolution of this .

Thanks for the suggestions!

The stove is perfectly plumb and level.
The chimney is located centrally and is made out of cement block with clay liner and drafts very well.
The stove has been running for about 30 days. The grate holes should still be clear. I vacuum the fly ash from the inside walls about every ten days.
The Fasco has been plugged into a separate wall outlet for 2 hours now and the stove temp has not changed and remains exactly 520 degrees. I've changed the Fasco's inlet cover from 1/2 to completely open and did not observe any changes in burn or stove temps.
Unfortunately, the plastic tube on my manometer melted last week. But, the draft is essentially meaningless at this point. Even if the draft was 1.0 that wouldn't explain low coal consumption.

Should I hit the RESET on the coal-trol just in case a setting was changed inadvertently?

Hit reset and start over. Or try it without the coaltrol

I have the LL econo 1. It is rated almost exactly the same. We have a two story with three bedrooms upstairs and the econo 1 in the dining room. We are using it as our sole source of heat for our 895 square foot house. We burn a little over a bucket a day averaging about 35-45 lbs a day. Living Room stays around 70-72 and upstairs bedrooms stay around 65-68 with outside temps in the low to mid 20's. Side temp measured with a Centech infrared thermometer is 475-500. It is a 100% manual operation, no coaltrol, no electronics. Only electrical usage is the feeder, combusition fan, and the convection fan. They are wired so that they stay on the entire time with no modulation of any kind. Straight AC voltage from the outlet. Your temps are not too far away from mine. This house was built in 1895 and leaks air like crazy from everywhere.

You can punch reset on the coaltrol and let it go back to factory settings and then bring it back up but I don't think that is your problem.

***Are you using the convection fan? The stove was made to put out max heat with the convection fan running.***

You said you had it in the basement for two years and moved it upstairs this year and the temps are the same. If there are no air flow problems, no coal feed problems, and your using the convection blower then I am here to tell you it ain't the stove. It's air flow in your house.

Get incense and put two sticks together. Stand at the base of the steps and hold them up near the ceiling. The incense smoke should go up. Next move them to only a few inches above the steps and you should see the smoke go down the steps. Do this in each room and note the air flow. You may need to buy some small table fans to get the circulation going.

Try the incense trick and see where the convection currents in your house are going. If the smoke don't move that means the heat ain't moving.

Rev. Larry

Larry,

I agree with most of what you said, but the math just doesn't add up. A 70,000 BTU coal stove should burn over 120 lbs of coal per day at full output. My stove on the other hand, burns about one bag per day which is about 22,000 BTU's per day.

If we use the rule of thumb that for every square foot of area you need 35 btu's, then I need a stove that nets 34,000 BTU's per hour. That's quite a shortage between the two.

Is there anyway to adjust the depth of the coal fed on to the grates?

Yes your math is correct but do you really want to burn 120 lbs a day or do you want to heat your home? Yes the stove can put out 70K per day in a perfect lab environment set up on the perfect chimney with the draft set at exactly factory specs that doesn't change. Since I have my stove in manual operation, I can force it to put out twice the heat I have it set for right now but that is not the solution to MY problem.

My problem is air infiltration (leaks) or cold outside air seeping into the house from every knook and cranny, outlet, window, and door. I can force the stove in manual operation to run till burning coals are falling into the ash pan but that won't do me any good unless I can move that heat to where I want it to be.

The measurement we use in the real world is are we warm or not. Not whether or not were burning the right amount of coal.

Don't get hung up on side wall temps and such and concentrate on where is the heat going that is being made. Every setup is different, every stove function is different, every stove puts out what it will depending on the location, the chimney, the air flow in the location, the carbon content of the coal, etc etc etc. Our warmth is determined by how we distribute the heat being produced. The stove can't distribute it, the stove only produces the heat. We have to set the mechanisms in motion to move it where we want it.

From what you posted our homes are similar in square footage, set up, and stove max capacity. I leave the end of the hallway bedroom door open and the window in that room one inch open. That allows air to flow out (hot goes to cold) which forces air flow up the steps and through the hallway to that room. That stimulates air flow in each room and walla we have heat in the bedrooms that have the doors open. I only figured this out by going around the house with incense sticks seeing where the air was flowing.

Find out where the heat is going that is being produced and max that out before blaming the stove.

Rev. Larry

Burning a stove where the surface temperature is 600 degrees it outputs 2,850 BTU's per sq ft of radiating surface (Lil Heater has just 10 ft) equals 28,500 btu's.

Burning a stove @ 800 degrees it outputs 5,430 BTU's per sq ft of radiating surface equals 43,440 btu's.

Larry, moving air that is heated to 60 degrees will only yield 60 degree air no matter how well the air is circulated throughout the home.

Jerry, the founder of Leisure Line said his stoves can burn at 700 degrees without worry. So, why can't I get my stove to heat up to 700 degrees?

If you're not pushing somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 pounds an hour through the stove at max firing rate, something is not right.

EarthWindandFire wrote:Burning a stove where the surface temperature is 600 degrees it outputs 2,850 BTU's per sq ft of radiating surface (Lil Heater has just 10 ft) equals 28,500 btu's.

Burning a stove @ 800 degrees it outputs 5,430 BTU's per sq ft of radiating surface equals 43,440 btu's.

Larry, moving air that is heated to 60 degrees will only yield 60 degree air no matter how well the air is circulated throughout the home.

There needs to be a trade association to agree on standards of how ratings are established to avoid these misconceptions that really are spurious figures because they do not reflect real world experience. It's hard to blame an individual maker because they are forced into it by trade practice in order to compete. Oil and gas boilers and furnaces have had reliable standards for many years and in European countries they are often set in government labs.

When stoves were imported in the 1970s outputs were promptly doubled over European figures.

In general if you cut the output figure in half you will not be too far off.

All I can tell you is I am burning the same size stove, the same BTU output from the same type of coal, burning almost the same amount of coal per day, and heating the approximate same size house with a similar configuration. Our stove temps are almost exactly the same. My living room temps stay around 72 and the upstairs bedroom stays around 65-68. I use the convection blower on the stove 24/7 and we have a small fan at the top of the steps to help circulation. I have been on a mission to find and plug air leaks in this almost 120 year old house. It has a stacked stone foundation and you should feel the air being pulled through the gaps in the stones.

Currently it's 14 outside and it's 68 in the living room. That is a 54 degree differential that this little stove is maintaining for about $2.80 to $3.00 a day. I'll take it.

I can force the stove to go hotter by about another 50-75 degrees and I will get the living room up to 78 and the bedroom up to 70 but it takes 10-12 hours to get it there. I will burn a bucket and 1/2 of rice coal a day getting there and keeping it there. I will have burning coal falling into the ash pan. Any feed rate change I make takes a minimum of 45 minutes to an hour to be realized.

I am not saying there is anything wrong with your stove or that there is nothing wrong with your stove. You mentioned you melted your tubing for the manometer and you have no idea what your draft is. Is your draft enough? Is your draft too much? You don't know. Is your flue pipe clean? Is your pipe the right amount inside the chimney thimble? Is the chimney clean. You are pegging everything on the amount of coal your not burning. Draft is key. Heat distribution is key no matter how many lbs of coal you burn a day.

The speedometer on my Toyota Echo goes to 120 MPH. In reality the max speed on the car is 112. I've never had it over 80. Does that mean that I am going to complain if it won't go 120? If I wanted to go 120 I would get a car that cruises at 120. We can bemoan all we want about lack of uniform standards etc. but that doesn't change reality. I have the equivalent of a Toyota Echo for a coal stove. It's small, it's clunky, it isn't sexy, it has a smallish grate, but it does burn coal. I got it for $50 bucks as a save from the scrap yard, rebuilt it and it does what it does. I could get a bigger stove that cruises at 500 degrees sidewall temp and guzzles 2 buckets a day ( around 80-90 lbs ) maintaining my house at higher temps. We can do it but we choose not to do that.

This all boils down to if you want a stove that will burn 120 lbs of rice coal a day there are plenty on the market. If your unhappy with your stove replace it with a bigger stove.

Rev. Larry

blrman07 wrote:The measurement we use in the real world is are we warm or not.

Sounds like Mark did some measuring and came up with "cold".

I agree that there is probably some room for improvement with heat distribution and tightening the house, but it does seem like something is a amiss with the stoker.

blrman07 wrote:I am not saying there is anything wrong with your stove or that there is nothing wrong with your stove. You mentioned you melted your tubing for the manometer and you have no idea what your draft is. Is your draft enough? Is your draft too much? You don't know. Is your flue pipe clean? Is your pipe the right amount inside the chimney thimble? Is the chimney clean. You are pegging everything on the amount of coal your not burning. Draft is key.

All good things to check.

I have come to the conclusion, and realization, that nothing is wrong with the stove. The Lil' Heater is meant for "supplemental" heating only, not as a single source heating appliance. If I were using the Lil' Heater in conjunction with a furnace, my heating situation would be different.

As franco b said in a previous post, the stove BTU ratings are spurious and lacking any legal definition or oversight. I'm not faulting Leisure Line (Matt and Dave), in fact, I applaud them for the help they have given me and others over the last 4 years.

The correct stove for my heating load would be the new Pioneer 110 stoker. The Pocono, Hyfire and Anthraking are basement furnaces, not really acceptable for a living room. Where's Santa when you need him?