Stove With Coal-Trol Won't Shut Off?

Mike E · Post by **Mike E** » Sun. Dec. 30, 2007 4:25 pm

Hello!

I'm new to coal, not to mention the coal-trol devise. I installed my stove over the course of the past few days, and just wired the coal trol up last night. today is my very first time lighting the stove. The stove itself is a Keystoker 90K, and the coal trol was an orig equip piece sent from the factory. I had a bit of an issue getting the fire started, but now she's going well.. in fact, too well. The thermo doesn't seem to have any control over the thing! I have the thermo set for 70 and now she's well over that at 79 and climbing. In fact, when I first turned the stove on in my finished, but unheated otherwise basement, it was 58 degrees down there. I pushed the "down" button to override the 0 setting to bring it up to just 65 degrees (the paint was burning in off the stove for it's first run and the stink was killing me...) but she just kept climbing. I'm very close to just unplugging the thing now and shutting it down. Unfortunately, I'm having a party for new years here tomorrow and it sure would be nice to have heat in the basement where the party will be! Can anyone advise? I can't call the factory right now because it's sunday... Any ideas?

Mike

xackley · Post by **xackley** » Sun. Dec. 30, 2007 4:55 pm

I do not have a keystoker so this should be taken with a grain.

I believe the keystoker has a separate combustion fan, and stoker motor.
Make sure that the stoker motor is not receiving constant power. Might be plugged into the wrong outlet. It should be turning off and on.
There is a test mode on the Thermostat, hold the Menu button down over 5 seconds, the display will say Feed, Press the menu button again and it will cycle the motors.
--------------
Press down Menu until the word Setup appears.

Check the Min, you might need to reduce the number
If the Setup menu has a T Brn option I think it should be N, If you have a seperate combustion and stoker motor it is not a Tri-Burner.

Mike E · Post by **Mike E** » Sun. Dec. 30, 2007 5:20 pm

OK, maybe I'm way off base and this thing is working fine. I'm still at a loss here, as the temp is way over what it should be... but I did notice just now (hmm..) that the convection blower isn't blowing, so it must realize that the thermo is not calling for heat.. so that's good. Also, I see that the stoker motor is intermittent.. just pushing fuel every now and then, and not constantly. So, that's also good. But I was under the impression (and where did I get this from, I'm not sure) that the combustion fan would turn off when not generating heat, and that the only motor that *always* runs would be the exhaust fan, no? Should the combustion fan always be going? I thought the coal would retain enough heat to glow for a while without the combustion fan and stoker going, in effect, just going dormant.. but maybe that's not the case? So, now I'm just perplexed as to why my thermo is set at 70 and the room is 80 degrees. The min/max settings? So much coal going off in there that the small room is just overwhelmed with heat? I suppose it's possible.

BTW, I did the test function and all the motors fire sequentially as they should. I think it's right.

Mike

WNY · Post by **WNY** » Sun. Dec. 30, 2007 5:23 pm

Also, when first firing it will burn quite a bit until you get ashes on the end of the grate, are you pushing coals off the end? if so, something needs adjusted, the feed rate needs turned down.

like he said, make sure you have the the things plugged correctly to the combustion, stoker, convection, etc....do the self tests and see if everything cycles as indicated.

av8r · Post by **av8r** » Sun. Dec. 30, 2007 5:28 pm

What does the "D" temp setting and "N" temp setting say on the tstat display?

How much ash do you have at the end of the grate (in inches)?

When you cycle through the setup menu, what do the min and max numbers say on the tstat?

xackley · Post by **xackley** » Sun. Dec. 30, 2007 5:30 pm

Go to the setup mode.
Press the menu button until it says FR
FR should be ZERO if the room temp is 10* over.
And there should be about 1 inch of red on the grate.

Edit: and yes as AV8r said, post all the stuff on the setup menu.

Matthaus · Post by **Matthaus** » Sun. Dec. 30, 2007 7:56 pm

Mike E wrote: that the convection blower isn't blowing, so it must realize that the thermo is not calling for heat.. so that's good. Also, I see that the stoker motor is intermittent.. just pushing fuel every now and then, and not constantly. So, that's also good.

Yes, this mean that the unit says I'm going to idle at whatever feed setting was set and run until Tstat calls for heat, stoker will run at the min setting (a min of 5 equals 5 seconds on for every 100 seconds if FR is 0).

But I was under the impression (and where did I get this from, I'm not sure) that the combustion fan would turn off when not generating heat, and that the only motor that *always* runs would be the exhaust fan, no? Should the combustion fan always be going?

The design of the Coal-Trol calls for combustion fan running 24/7, convection fan runs when heat is needed. Keystoker normal mode is to shut off the combustion fan when the stoker is not running.

So, now I'm just perplexed as to why my thermo is set at 70 and the room is 80 degrees. The min/max settings? So much coal going off in there that the small room is just overwhelmed with heat? I suppose it's possible.

I think (as WNY said earlier) your mechanical feed rate is too high, back out the screw some and see if the temp comes down, will take a while to have an effect, keep backing it out till you see a change in the right direction. Then you can mess with the min max settings per the Coal-Trol manual once the stove is allowing the room to cool down to set point.

Based on the test mode running the correct motors and from what you have descibed I think everything is correctly plugged in. Not sure if all this came across clearly but a call to the folks at Automation Correct will solve the problem if you can't figure it out on your own (yeah I know is much better to try first, kinda like assembly without reading the directions

)

Keep us posted on how it works out.

Mike E · Post by **Mike E** » Sun. Dec. 30, 2007 8:42 pm

[/quote]
I think (as WNY said earlier) your mechanical feed rate is too high, back out the screw some and see if the temp comes down, will take a while to have an effect, keep backing it out till you see a change in the right direction. Then you can mess with the min max settings per the Coal-Trol manual once the stove is allowing the room to cool down to set point.

Hmm.... I tried to find the mechanical feed screw as described in the manual earlier in the day, and I see where I think it's supposed to be. A long (3" or so) silver machine screw sticking out the back of the pusher bar, as seen from the very back of the stove... but the book also says to only turn this screw by hand, with no tools. I beg to differ, but there doesn't' seem to be *any* way to turn that screw, because there's no knob, detent, flat, hex or phillips head on the end of it anywhere. It actually looks like the end was hacked off with a dremel tool or something. There's just nothing there to turn. I'll have to call the factory tomorrow and see what the scoop is with that.

Mike

Mike E · Post by **Mike E** » Mon. Dec. 31, 2007 10:32 am

Ah, well, that answers that. A call to the company regarding where the feed screw is located on a Keystoker 90? For anyone still following this thread, the Keystoker 90, that comes shipped with the Coal-trol as standard equipment, does NOT have a mechanical feed adjustment screw. It just ain't there. You aren't going to find one. You can search for hours, but you just won't locate it. Ask me how I know.

Mike
Quickly becoming an expert...

av8r · Post by **av8r** » Mon. Dec. 31, 2007 10:48 am

Mike E wrote:Ah, well, that answers that. A call to the company regarding where the feed screw is located on a Keystoker 90? For anyone still following this thread, the Keystoker 90, that comes shipped with the Coal-trol as standard equipment, does NOT have a mechanical feed adjustment screw. It just ain't there. You aren't going to find one. You can search for hours, but you just won't locate it. Ask me how I know.

Mike
Quickly becoming an expert...

Mike:

Were you going to post the data requested by the folks here?

Did you get the room cooled off?

xackley · Post by **xackley** » Mon. Dec. 31, 2007 11:01 am

I suspected that the manual adjustment would be gone, and the documentation hadn;t been updated.

But how are the temperatures and controls today?

gambler · Post by **gambler** » Mon. Dec. 31, 2007 12:03 pm

My thought on this is the large temp difference (58* in basement ) and T-stat set at 70 he had a large temp overshoot. I know that with my coal-trol if you set back the temp more than a couple of degrees you will get a 2-3 temp overshoot when the higher temp is called for. So if he has a 12* difference and depending on where the t-stat is located I would think a 10* overshoot would not be unheard of.

bksaun · Post by **bksaun** » Mon. Dec. 31, 2007 12:23 pm

On my Alaska channing, the coal trol only gets 1* overshoot and that's it.

BK

gambler · Post by **gambler** » Mon. Dec. 31, 2007 1:01 pm

If you look back at some of the coal-trol posts you will see that the overshoot problem when making up a 5 degree or so temp difference is fairly common. If you only get a 1* overshoot that is great, I would not change a thing. But for some of us (me included) I had to do some tweeking to get the overshoot under control. I believe the t-stat placement plays a large part in the overshoot issue.

Mike E · Post by **Mike E** » Tue. Jan. 01, 2008 10:20 am

Mike:

Were you going to post the data requested by the folks here?

Did you get the room cooled off?
-!-----------------

My bad. I've got it set for 8 MIN, 75 MAX (turned down yesterday to try and correct a constant overshoot, and that seems to have helped..), the FR is all over the place.. should I check it at any particular time? I've got the Day and Night set to the same temp to try and narrow down the scope of this thing for the time being. I'd give some more data, but the hopper channeled last night through about 8" of coal and starved the stove for fuel... so, it was colder than normal this morning. IT ran great all yesterday evening, however..

Mike