Ready to throw coal trol out the window

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gitrdonecoal
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Post by gitrdonecoal » Tue. Nov. 12, 2019 1:39 pm

I recently bought a hitzer 710 slightly used that came with a coal trol t stat. The sucker pumps out heat and love it. The coal trol I’m about fed up with. I have problems keeping the t stat consistent. At first I had the min set for 7 and max for 40. Had the fire go out a few times. With my max set at 40 it had a cfr of 76! I was informed my max was way high, and to set it between 25 or 30. So I set it for 26. Last Saturday we we came home the house was 79 degrees when the temp is set for 69. And the fire went out. Sunday I re lot it 3 times and finally got it going good. Wife said she was cold, so I said what the heck, no biggie. Last night before I left for work I set the temp from 69 to 70. All is good. Came home from work this morning, great. Consistent heat, was showing a cfr of I believe 30. I just woke up to a 74 degree house, cfr of 60 and me getting angry. I dropped the temp back down to 69 and lowered the max from 26 to 25. The cfr is slowly lowering. What in the heck is going on? I thought these things were a set it and forget it and would keep my house + - a 1/2 a degree. About fed up. Please someone help.


 
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Rob R.
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Post by Rob R. » Tue. Nov. 12, 2019 2:15 pm

I suggest you call the Coaltrol guys and ask for recommended settings.

 
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gitrdonecoal
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Post by gitrdonecoal » Tue. Nov. 12, 2019 2:17 pm

I’ve tried a bunch of times and no answer. I’ll leave a message and she what happens

 
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Rob R.
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Post by Rob R. » Tue. Nov. 12, 2019 2:24 pm

gitrdonecoal wrote:
Tue. Nov. 12, 2019 2:17 pm
I’ve tried a bunch of times and no answer. I’ll leave a message and she what happens
(315) 299-3589
[email protected]

I would leave a message and send them an email.

 
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2001Sierra
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Post by 2001Sierra » Tue. Nov. 12, 2019 2:39 pm

If your max is set at 40 then what you were seeing with cfr 76 which is actually FR, is it was feeding at 76% of max. Depending on which Coal-trol you have the time is set at either 100 seconds per cycle or I believe now the newer ones are on a 120 second cycle. So when there is a call for heat the FR will advance to 40 over a period of time, but your thermostat will read the ratio as a percent of 100 of that cycle you are reading. There are advanced settings I would not suggest messing with that can affect the ramp up and ramp down times. I believe your base line for min max is 10 and 75. I have my max set down to 60 on my Keystoker 90.

 
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Post by tsb » Tue. Nov. 12, 2019 2:46 pm

Contact Hitzer and get the factory settings.

 
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gitrdonecoal
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Post by gitrdonecoal » Tue. Nov. 12, 2019 2:47 pm

2001Sierra wrote:
Tue. Nov. 12, 2019 2:39 pm
If your max is set at 40 then what you were seeing with cfr 76 which is actually FR, is it was feeding at 76% of max. Depending on which Coal-trol you have the time is set at either 100 seconds per cycle or I believe now the newer ones are on a 120 second cycle. So when there is a call for heat the FR will advance to 40 over a period of time, but your thermostat will read the ratio as a percent of 100 of that cycle you are reading. There are advanced settings I would not suggest messing with that can affect the ramp up and ramp down times. I believe your base line for min max is 10 and 75. I have my max set down to 60 on my Keystoker 90.
I left a message with the guys. Hopefully they can help. I do understand if I have it set to 40 max and it reads 76 it’s 76 percent of 40, or if it’s max 25 it’s 76 percent of 25. What i can’t wrap my head around is if the stat is set to 69 degrees why would it go to 79 degrees and just keep pumping coal? Or this morning it went up to 74 with it going at 60 percent still. In my eyes it should have called for less of a demand a while before it even got to 74


 
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gitrdonecoal
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Post by gitrdonecoal » Tue. Nov. 12, 2019 3:22 pm

Just talked to hitzer. Great guy I talked to. He finds it very weird and almost hard to believe that at set at max 25 I’m also pushing coals off the grate at 60 percent. He said his factory set out the door is 30 max. I’m going to tone it down to 20 max for now until I get more light shined on the situation. When I called him I realized the entire unit went out dead. I was about to go crazy. My plenum switch was set way low and kicked the unit off. If it’s not one thing it’s ten lol

 
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2001Sierra
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Post by 2001Sierra » Tue. Nov. 12, 2019 8:55 pm

OOPS I thought you had a Keystoker 90, I read from your Avatar. Is the feed stroke adjustable on that unit?

 
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gitrdonecoal
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Post by gitrdonecoal » Tue. Nov. 12, 2019 9:45 pm

I now have the hitzer 710. I don’t believe it’s adjustable

 
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gitrdonecoal
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Post by gitrdonecoal » Wed. Nov. 13, 2019 6:12 am

Just got home from work. Stat is set for 69 degrees. House is currently 75. I walked in and feed was 70 percent. 5 minutes later it did indeed drop to 60 percent, but still I’m dumbfounded as to why it feels to go insanely warm before dropping feed percent. I will e mail coal trol when I wake up

 
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Post by pvolcko » Fri. Nov. 15, 2019 12:51 pm

Hello Gitrdonecoal,

Please email us at [email protected] and we'll try to help you out.

If you have the thermostat sitting on a shelf or couch or something like that, get it mounted to a wall in the correct orientation. There are a pair of air holes on the top and bottom in the area of the temperature sensor that need to be up and down and not obstructed, in order to get the temperature sensed correctly and air flowing over the sensor correctly. If you want to temporarily mount it, that's fine, but the thermostat has to be properly oriented and not have anything blocking those two holes.

Your stove may be oversized for the space being heated or the stoker mechanism may be way outside the norm and pushing much more coal at settings than normal. Dial in a true MAX setting for your specific stoker unit.

1) Set your temperature setpoint lower than normal, like 60 or 55. (you will be overshooting during this process)
2) Go to SETUP and the MAX screen and set it to 30. Leave it on that screen and burning for 30-40 minutes (open a window if it gets too hot during this process).
3) Observe the fire on the stoker grate. If you're pushing burning coals off the end, dial back MAX 5 points. If there is more than an inch of ash before the edge of the grate, incrase MAX by 2. Wait another 15 minutes. Repeat this until you get about 1 inch of ash before the edge of the grate and no burning coals going into the pan.
4) Exit the SETUP menu and return your temperature setpoint to where you want it. Leave a window open until the temperature comes down to around your setpoint. Then give the unit a couple hours to stabilize.

Write down that MAX setting in your user manual, it is your stove's true MAX.

If this value is lower than you've been using, give that value a try to see if you continue having overshooting. If you do (or if it was larger than you've been using), go into MAX and lower it a few points (up to half if you have significant overshoots). Give that a try, then adjust by 2-3 points at a time (up if no overshoot and it feels overly sluggish, down if still overshooting). As we get more consistently cold days, deeper into the heating season, you may find you can increase that MAX setting and not get overshoots, but will have to dial it back again toward the Spring.

Having good air circulation is also important to avoid overshooting. If the stove is in one room, the thermostat in another (or in a corner that doesn't get good circulation of room air to it) getting that heated air spread around will help avoid overshooting.

Hope these ideas help. Please get in touch with us at [email protected] or 315-299-3589 to discuss further.

 
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Post by bksaun » Wed. Nov. 20, 2019 12:25 pm

don't give up on it, several years ago I ran one on my Alaska stoker, took me a bit to get it dialed in but when I finally wrapped my head around its operation, it worked flawlessly.

 
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Post by lincolnmania » Wed. Nov. 20, 2019 2:14 pm

i have been running a coal trol since 2007. they are great once you get them set up!

 
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StanT
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Post by StanT » Wed. Dec. 25, 2019 9:01 am

If the thermostat was close to the stove it would work better, I have mine 16 ft away and have the same deal. So what I do when it gets cold I up the min to offset the time the heat reaches the thermostat.
My min is from 5 to 12 depending on the outside temp and max is 40.
Works better for me.
Merry Christmas, Stant


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