Coalpail.com Forum

on a tri burner stove made in 1987.

I can pick one up dirt cheap but the can't seem to find any info regarding specifications before they were bought by Reading stove.

The only info I could get from the owner was that it has a test date on it from 1987 it is only 20k BTU's and that it is in excellent running condition. I hope this pic works.

Any info available will be greatly appreciated.

Welcome to the forum, that unit doesn't look like anything I have ever seen. I do have lots of experience making the triburner stoker unit work properly. If you post some pics of the mechanism I can give you some tips on making that thing work like a new unit.

One word of caution though, if it really is only 20,000 btus you will need to let us know how big your house is, how well insulated and how it is laid out. This will help in letting you know if this stove will just add extra heat to your already existing method of heat your house, or take care of most of the heating chores.

In any event, if it is dirt cheap buy it! You can't go wrong buying any coal appliance that is in servicable condition for dirt cheap.

Thanks for the quick reply.

The 20k BTU's is what i'm worried about also. I didn't actually get to see it in person yet but the owner says there is a plate on the side and it says 20,000btu's but he cant find a model number anywhere. I'm hoping he just read it wrong but who knows.

My house is fairly small. The footprint is only 30' by 15'. It's a two story with living room and kitchen on the first floor and two bedrooms and bath on second floor. The bathroom is small so an electric baseboard heater isn't costing much to run and I get a better nights sleep if its chilly in the bedroom so as long as 20k is big enough to heat up the basement and first floor I'll be happy. There isn't much insulation at all in this house but I'm remodeling room by room and I intend to over insulate as much as possible.

Let me know what you think.

Thanks

We never really defined dirt cheap, so I'll say if the stove is less than $300 and is in decent shape, buy it. You can try it out and learn some things and always get your money back out to purchase a new Stove.

You never mentioned if you have a good place to put it in the basement and if there is a chimney available. If the basement is drafty and poorly insulated you will need to at least stop the air leaks. I would also recommend an outside combustion air inlet to alleviate pulling cold air into the house. Another effective method for getting max heat out of the stove is to pull the inlet air for the convection fan from the first floor instead of the basement. That way you will be heating already pre-warmed air instead of cold basement air, plus it will help to initiate a convection loop between the basement and first floor.... if you are able to do some or all of these things I think this stove should have a good chance of heating your first floor nicely.

Well he wants $300 for it. compared to new stoves its dirt cheap. I might be able to haggle the price a bit since its pretty small.

The stove will be going in a central location in the basement it will be replacing an oil burner so I'll have a chimney.

The basement is poorly insulated at the moment but it is pretty tight as far as drafts go. The oil burner running every so often would actually keep the basement comfortable but with the price of oil these days and the oil burner was soon due for replacement anyways I figured If I could find a coal stove cheap I'd give it a shot.

Thanks for the tips provided and since I'm a newbie to coal you will be hearing from me quite often.

Sounds like a plan, keep us posted.

I believe that is an older model of the current Reading utility furnace rated 20,000 - 70,000 BTU, I saw that on Craigs List as well.

Hi,
FYI,the old tri-burner stoves were made by Shenandoah Stove for triburner with a triburner feeder installed. The small burner was a 30,000 BTU. They never really sold a lot of units. Soon after they designed the burner, Alaska started to buy and market the Alaska stoker stove with the little known triburner feeder. Alaska was very successful with the stokers and bought thousands of the burners off of triburner.
Jerry LLS

I with Jerry on this one that stove looks very similar to the shenandoah wood /coal combo we had growing up except ours had aheat shield jacket around it. That door handle mechanism is the same one that was on the handfired unit we had. I can tell you that sheandoah had sold out last I new and moved to Harrisonburg, VA and had downsized greatly and that was 9 years ago when we got parts the last time. So they may be completely out of business by now.

Well, I picked it up this morning and it seems in pretty nice shape. All the gaskets look new and no holes or cracks in the thing.

As it turns out though it is only a radiant model so no convection fan but I'm working on a design for a unit to sit on top and blow air down over the stove.

Here's some pics. Any tips or tricks to get the most out of this stove are greatly appreciated.

Looks good. Fabbing up a hot air jacket and a fan is simple and effective. Keep us posted.

i saw that on craigslist also.......looks similar to the reading stove utility heater...... good luck with it! reading stove company can hook you up with parts

I spent the last four hours ripping out the oil burner, cleaning the chimney and hooking up the little thing. Didn't get a chance to get coal this weekend but the previous owner had a gallon jug full of rice so i'm using that for the test burn. It's been going on full bore for the last 45 min. I don't know if i'll even see a noticeable temp change with that little bit of coal.

Time for a shower I'm black with soot from head to toe from the chimney.