I need to win my wife over to coal before I could replace the propane furnace.
Just get a new wife, coal stoves are the way to go.
I need to win my wife over to coal before I could replace the propane furnace.
Hi Coalnoob! As was stated, I would get the L.L. and run a cold air return to the stoker from the furthest point possible and let the warm air replace the cold.Coalnoob wrote: ↑Sun. Apr. 22, 2018 8:24 amThat’s what I was thinking, then the salesman who sells both Leisure Line and Legacy stoves said the super mag was a better stove than the LL. Of course this has bugged me for a few days especially when I saw the Super Mag boasted 100 hour burn times. It’s more of a going away for a weekend to my in laws in winter problem than the work week or normal weekend.
If the stove-heated area is higher than the propane-heated area, very little heat is going to come DOWN those stairs. On the other hand, once the upper area is toasty warm from the stove, the propane heat will not go up there, either. Unless lots of coal heat is forced downward by the ceiling fans, the propane bill is likely to stay high.
When you say "hopper style" I'm thinking you mean hand fed, non electric, with a hopper like the Hitzer and DS Machine to name a couple. The above mentioned stokers have a hopper as well. Your stove location is lower so the heat will rise, you can run a fan on the floor pushing cool air towards the stove from away and the warm air should chase the fan.Coalnoob wrote: ↑Sun. Apr. 22, 2018 12:30 pmThe LL seems like the best choice, however I have also talked to several companies who highly recommend the hopper style over the stoker. Seems to me like the LL features would be nice to have. I would love to somehow run the coal air return from one end of the house to the stove. I am no expert but would definitely look into that before next fall.
The stoker is a little more involved to setup initally. You need to make sure the draft and combustion air setting is correct, and there are a few settings in the control that you may need to tweak.
The trouble is, when you hear the stove running in a large showroom with lots of ambient noise, it may SEEM quiet. The constant hum/metallic whine of motors and fans in your living room is another story. Even the single fan on my Harman Mark I drove me nuts after awhile. My impression is that some stokers have much less mass -- lighter sheet steel -- and rely more on lots of (noisy) air movement to extract the heat, compared to low-tech hand-fed stoves. I am quite satisfied with my DS Machine circulator, from a noise perspective, because it has no fan at all. I use a 16-inch pedestal fan blowing over (above) the stove to move warm air, and it is just white noise rather than a metallic hum.