Help! House filled with CO

Facts :
Keystoker 105 that I have had for 3.5 years
Manometer is hooked up 24/7 draft maintained
Stove is in basement of 2 story cape cod, air goes up chimney
Feeder mechanism redone at coal shop last year (as preventive maintenance)
Gaskets are ~2 years old on doors and seem fine
Condensation in hopper dripping off hopper lid inside hopper

Issue:
4 days ago I noticed I could smell the stove in the house. Everything appeared normal. 2 days ago even though thermostat is calling for heat and stove was at full burn, the entire grate was not full of flame. Instead of ~6 inches of burning coal I only had 2. Draft was still good and it was -8 out so I figured it might need an adjustment so I turned the feed rod 4 turns clockwise to feed more coal at full burn, it fed maybe 1 more inch of flaming coal.

I turn heat down as we go to bed.. so at midnight it turned down. At 2 am, while we were sleeping, detector in hallway started going off yelling "CO alert". I grabbed the digital detector that is in our bedroom (usually reads zero) and walked into the hallway. Reading was 70. I walked down in the basement and reading was 80. I got closer to coal stove and it was approaching 100. I opened all windows and put fans in the windows getting fresh air into the house ASAP. Meter down to zero on both floors. Of course I unplugged the stove. I now have my electric heat going.

Only thing I have been doing different is I left my 3 ton of coal outside and it froze. I brought 1.5 ton down the other day and its still kinda has frozen chunks every other bag. The lid in my hopper has water dripping off the inside of it.

Tonight I am tearing it apart and vacuuming everything out. Suggestions appreciated. Scared the $hit out of us. I think we owe our lives to a few aaa batteries. After this, I'm ordering wired, interconnected, detectors that also alert my phone wherever I am.

Stovepipe is probably loaded with ash and needs a cleanout.

coaledsweat wrote: ↑

Fri. Feb. 01, 2019 10:19 am

Stovepipe is probably loaded with ash and needs a cleanout.

+1, and/or you have a blockage in the throat of the stoker mechanism... Either a rock, chunk of coal or possibly a blockage caused by using frozen coal.

arcticcatmatt wrote: ↑

Fri. Feb. 01, 2019 9:51 am

After this, I'm ordering wired, interconnected, detectors that also alert my phone wherever I am.

Get one with a readout, it should be 0. CO detectors do not go off when they detect any amount of CO. They have thresholds based on the level of CO and time, as the level rises the time narrows before they will go off. Of course it will go off when the level is harmful for any amount of time.

If you have one with readout you can have better understanding of what is going on.

^ I have one with a readout. My post has the readings in it.

Oops my mistake.

Great job having the detectors / monitors!!

I suggest getting a digital monitor and putting it in the basement and make a habit of looking at it and pressing the 'peak' button when reloading. As Richard said lower levels of CO may show up on it before they hit the alarm threshold.

In addition to checking for fly ash in the flue pipes, does the chimney have a cleanout and is it closed? Although this should cause a lower manometer reading, its something to double check. Maybe the frozen coal when melting had a lot more water in it than it appears and caused the CO issue with feeding & burning problems.

I have never bought into the concept of a manometer is your early warning that your pipes are starting to plug up...

If a manometer can read through a 1/4" hole in the pipe wall then it is fair to say it can read through a 1/4" hole through a tunnel full of ash...

I have built CO Detectors that will shut down the stove if threshold level is reached...looked to advance it to phone notice out but haven't implemented such yet...pets are in danger if captive in CO.

A draft measurement over the fire is the only one that counts, especially with a stoker. Positive pressure in the fire chamber will be apparent regardless of hole size. Anywhere else includes speculation that the space between the fire and spot of measurement is clear. I think you will find that coaldsweat is right.

One night this past fall I smelled sulphur when I opened the basement door. When the large motor that drives the feed and large blower ran I could see a trace of smoke and smell it coming through the hopper. The smoke pipe was too full of fly ash.

I believe and other locals have commented that the coal these days makes much more fly ash than years ago.

Mark my vote for an exhaust restriction.

I have a Reading Juanita stoker hot air furnace. The exhaust collar is directly in the middle of the top of the unit. After the first time the CO alarm went off, I found fly ash had settled on top of the inner wall of the combustion chamber . This is the area between the inner wall and the air jacket. It plugged up the collar allowing the CO to build up. Luckily, I can reach the ash build up via the barometric damper and vacuum it out. I do that about once a month during the heating season.
I've noticed more ash building up when the combustion blower was running without a damper. I've since installed a sheet metal damper over the blower intake that covers about 2/3 of the opening to reduce the positive pressure inside the combustion chamber.

Well, did you get it fixed, what was the issue?

I love this type of post where someone says “help! House full of CO” or some other deadly ominous situations and then they don’t follow up. Are we to assume they fixed it or succumbed to the CO? I certainly hope he got it fixed and just been too busy to post again. But man you gotta let us know!!!

Terry Just Nailed It! Unfortunately We see this type of Thread All Too Often!

On a Heavy like this,Please Keep Us In The Loop! We actually give a Damn!

Thanks for the replies. I tore the stove apart and cleaned it, it was pretty bad I attached pictures. This was all spotless 1.5 tons ago.. guess I got a batch of blaschak that produces alot of fly ash. In addition to this, my door handle assembly has been very hard to use and while cleaning out the stove I managed to break it.. on a weekend. Then started the wild goose chase of trying to find one asap.. got new one and got it installed. I got the stove fired back up and all seems to be fine again. It's been running 24 hours now. The handle I got seems to have been pinned backwards so I need to try and fix that.. it closes with the handle in front of the glass so it get hot. $65 for new keystoker handle (pretty steep I'd say). Draft hovers at .02 with barodamp closed. Now that its cleaned out I had hot coal falling off the grate so I had to turn it back down to normal feed rate. The pictures looking in the tube is the pipe going into my brick wall that goes up to chimney. Sorry for the delay, between work and running around for this handle and cleaning it out and testing.. I haven't been on the internet in a couple days. I thought since my story said this happened at 2 am, and I was posting on here at 10 am and stated that I was running electric heat and stove was off, that it was clear we were ok and not dead