Smoke coming up through hopper & out by feeder plate

Protrucker · Post by **Protrucker** » Sun. Apr. 19, 2020 2:12 pm

I have a Leisure Line Pocono that's always been a great stove, but it's starting to have problems. We've been getting a really bad rancid smell upstairs lately & today when I was checking things over I noticed smoke coming up past the coal hopper. Looking closer, I realized that it was coming out past the pusher plate & up through the hopper.
I emptied the hopper & vacuumed everything up including the stovepipes. I've never seen so many fines in the hopper before!
Could the excessive abundance of fines be the problem?
The fire over the burner is burning as good as it ever did.

My first thought was that I may need to replace a gasket, but I'm not sure that's the problem. What are your thoughts?

Post by **Rob R.** » Sun. Apr. 19, 2020 3:31 pm

You are on the right track.

If your coal has a lot of fines, the holes in the grate can start to get plugged..which forces the air to go else where. I would vacuum the area under the grate, and make sure the holes are clear. If everything else looks good, restart the fire and watch it close. If all looks good once up to temperature, I would check the over-fire draft as well.

Protrucker · Post by **Protrucker** » Sun. Apr. 19, 2020 6:40 pm

Ok, I'm sure that I took care of the problem.
My Pocono is the back vent model & the horizontal pipe going out from the stove was more than half way plugged with fly ash. That really surprises me because I can usually get through an entire heating season without that much buildup. I had already cleaned that pipe about 7-8 weeks ago too.
I did a thorough cleaning of all pipes & checked the chimney. Then I ran a drill bit into every hole in the burner.
I fired it back up & it's working like normal. It's probably going to take a while to get that smell out of the house though.

I swear, this coal seems to be the dirtiest I've ever gotten from Lehigh Anthracite. Anybody else notice that this year?

Oh, I almost forgot.... Thanks Rob R., for the response & advice.

nepacoal · Post by **nepacoal** » Sun. Apr. 19, 2020 7:13 pm

My Lehigh buck also seemed to have a lot of fines and even some barley sized chips this year. I traded emails with Matt at Lehigh and he said it was not typical and any issues had been corrected. I got my load on May 23rd last year. Still burns great, just more small pieces this year.

Post by **Rob R.** » Sun. Apr. 19, 2020 9:05 pm

Protrucker wrote: ↑
Sun. Apr. 19, 2020 6:40 pm
Ok, I'm sure that I took care of the problem.
My Pocono is the back vent model & the horizontal pipe going out from the stove was more than half way plugged with fly ash. That really surprises me because I can usually get through an entire heating season without that much buildup. I had already cleaned that pipe about 7-8 weeks ago too.
I did a thorough cleaning of all pipes & checked the chimney. Then I ran a drill bit into every hole in the burner.
I fired it back up & it's working like normal. It's probably going to take a while to get that smell out of the house though.

I swear, this coal seems to be the dirtiest I've ever gotten from Lehigh Anthracite. Anybody else notice that this year?

Oh, I almost forgot.... Thanks Rob R., for the response & advice.

Did you pickup the coal at Lehigh? If so, did you get it straight out of the sizing plant, or out of the yard?

Protrucker · Post by **Protrucker** » Sun. Apr. 19, 2020 9:56 pm

I did pick it up at Lehigh, at the yard on the right, above the scale house. I made two trips to get a total of seven tons, just before Labor day before they went to winter pricing.

xackley · Post by **xackley** » Sun. Apr. 19, 2020 10:34 pm

As the outside air warms, and the stove idles at low temperatures, the smoke doesn't have a lot of incentive to go up the chimney. Having the horizontal flue pipes load up caught me a few years ago, I saw it at the digital CO meter before it alarmed.
I now have Tees instead of elbows, so I can just pop the cap and vacuum without need to shut the stove down.
Don

Protrucker · Post by **Protrucker** » Mon. Apr. 20, 2020 5:45 pm

I clean the bottom horizontal pipe by pulling the ash pan out. A couple years ago I replaced the elbow into the top pipe with a Tee, to be able to clean it like you do.
I was just so taken by surprise, how fast that bottom pipe filled up this time. I'm going to make it a habbit to check it every time I change ash pans from now on.

The stove has been burning fine now.

Post by **Rob R.** » Mon. Apr. 20, 2020 7:05 pm

Protrucker wrote: ↑
Sun. Apr. 19, 2020 9:56 pm
I did pick it up at Lehigh, at the yard on the right, above the scale house. I made two trips to get a total of seven tons, just before Labor day before they went to winter pricing.

Next time ask to get your coal from the sizing plant rather than the stockpile.

nepacoal · Post by **nepacoal** » Mon. Apr. 20, 2020 7:21 pm

My 7 tons came right out of the breaker last year... They must have been having issues at the time because it was full of fines and small chips... The year before it was perfectly sized with hardly any fines. I'm hoping last year was an anomaly.

WNY · Post by **WNY** » Mon. Apr. 20, 2020 8:31 pm

Thorough cleaning and possible gasket is usually needed if you start getting that smell, also, with warmer temps, it doesn't draft as much, so, you might have to turn the idle up a bit. If you running a coaltrol, increase the min a couple points, I've had that happen to my Hyfire when it gets up to 50-60 outside. I do have a draft gauge and it was barely above .01 until I got it a bit warmer on idle, it went up to .03 and smell went away.

Smoke coming up through hopper & out by feeder plate

Attachments