Trying the Bitty Coal Again

I used to have that happen to me with my wondercoal stove if I loaded a bunch of fresh coal on top of the glowing coke bed. What I learned to do was to pull all the coke to the front of the fire box with a hoe and shovel the fresh coal into a pile in the back of the fire box and taper it down towards the burning coke and then put a little fresh coal on the coke so there will be some flames going to burn off the smoke. There is a good drawing of what I am describing here I pulled this from one of LDPosse's posts http://books.google.com/books?id=S9YDAAAAMBAJ&lpg ... rea&f=true Also don't shake every last bit of ash out of it the ash damps down the fire, normaly I just add coal to my stove without shaking it down I wait till the yellow flames die down a little before I shake tha ashes out.

I changed back over to the Ant coal last night. My bitty coal adventures are over for now, and I probably won't use it again unless I'm forced to. After a puff back that had yellow smoke spilling into the basement, I opted not to finish what I had left. Apparently I loaded too much pea size pieces on and didn't have enough air coming in over the fire. The bigger fist size chunks respond better at loading. I have less than a 100 pounds that I'm gonna heave over the bank. I only burned the bit for about 5 days. Based on what I've read here, its probably not very good quality bit. It would go nuclear the first couple hours and didn't wanna be controlled. After that, it would slowly go cooler and cooler and the wife would have a cold house before I could get at reloading it. From my experience, I've learned that bit is unstable, doesn't produce a consistent predictable heat output and is sooty. I also think my flue pipe narrowed from soot build up since the draft just doesn't seem to be what it used to be - based on the mano readings, oh thats another thing lol - My mano tube clogged with soot, I had to pull it out of the pipe and blow thru it twice because it became unresponsive.. I'm sure a better quality bit would have better results.

Anthracite Definitely has my spoiled I'm sticking to it

I have to get into the firebox and wire bush/chisel off all the soot build up on the sides and the water coils. The water coils have 1/4 - 1/2 inch of build up wrapped around them. I'm sure heat transfer is being inhibited there!! Below are a few pics of the soot. Thats ant coal currently burning..

Thanks for everyone that responded with tips to help!

This evening I shook down the ant fire and thru on 4 scoops. While it simmered I took advantage of having a cool fire box for a moment and scoured the inside and the water coils. I was pleasantly surprised that the soot easily brushed away. There was soot balls on strings an inch long on the roof of it! She's all cleaned up for good heat transfer now

Any soot left should just peel away after burning bit again. The low vol bit from broad top would also have that effect.