How to Run a Base Heater

I have just set up a base burner in the house in the living room. It is an Oakwood #6 that I bought from Meatball and I love it. Now, I would like a primer on how to run it the best way. I have an MPD and no baro. The stove has an underfire draft. a check draft, the base burn mode switch. no oveerfire draft, and some kind of pull thingie down in the ashpit to the back. I have been running it with the underfire draft closed once all is up and the volatiles are burning, base burner mode, and the MPD about closed. Yesterday I started using the check draft and that slowed things down. I was at 125 above the MPD and 500 on the stove body. Now it is colder I will run it a little more agressively. What is the thingey in the back of the ashpit? also anysuggestions and help will be appreciated. Oh yah, it looks like a great big lava lamp with the lights out, just wafting blue flames through the isingglass windows. Very little ash and no clinkers. Shake down once a day during the prvious warm weather. Couldn't be happier but I need to learn the stove so you pros out there with these old stoves chime in and share the knowledge. Thanks, Mike

Mike,
Congrates on a fine stove and great buy. The "pull thingy" in the back of the ash pit (opens and closes vents) is the check damper. When you open that, it acts like baro damper and bi passes air out the back pipe. You don't need a baro damper on that stove, just MPD in the stove pipe. The burner mode is the damper in the collar between the back pipe and stove barrel.
Anyways it sounds like your on top of it. Just keep an eye on the shaking.
Sometimes after several days of burning, the ash can hang up a bit and not all fall down. You shake and shake and not much falls down. Take a poker and tap down the middle of the bed from the loading door and check round the edges too. I can always tell with mine when I don't get a good full ash pan for a 24 hr period, that it needs a little poke.

If the pull thing is the check damper then what is the slide at the base of the back base burner pipe between it and the stove body? Jeff /Meatball said the pull thing was some kind of an emergency shutdown.

I just got my flashlight out and the pull thing opens a little slide in the back of the ash pit which would let the under air bypass the fire pit and go out the chimney, I guess. So it would seem that I have 2 controls to by pass draft on the fire. Does that sound reasonable?

coalturkey wrote:If the pull thing is the check damper then what is the slide at the base of the back base burner pipe between it and the stove body? Jeff /Meatball said the pull thing was some kind of an emergency shutdown.

Can we see a picture of what you are talking about? I am almost certain that what you are talking about between the back pipe and the stove body is the check damper. Some of these stoves have a damper to recirculate a portion of the exhaust gas back into the fire to make sure it gets burned.
If we can see what you are talking about then we can figure it out which damper does what.

coalturkey wrote:I just got my flashlight out and the pull thing opens a little slide in the back of the ash pit which would let the under air bypass the fire pit and go out the chimney, I guess. So it would seem that I have 2 controls to by pass draft on the fire. Does that sound reasonable?

Maybe, but; I have never seen a stove with two check dampers. It doesn't mean that because I have never seen it that it doesn't exist.

By the way, do not put a barometric damper on a Base Heater or a Base Burner. It isn't necessary and it will hurt the performance of the stove. Your base heater needs a stronger draft than a standard direct draft stove. You have a lot more methods of controlling the draft on your stove than the average bear has.

There, that should show what I am trying to explain. The slide in the ashpit would vent into the bypass pipe, I guess. Should be clear as mud.

Now I'm intrigued. They both look like check dampers, but: I can't understand why there would be two of them. Each one is there for a reason, no doubt. You should try both of them and see what happens. Try both of them at the same time and see what happens. Let us know what happens.

I agree it's quite odd to have two but thats what it looks like to me. The first one is like the check damper on my Herald. That second one maybe just gives you more by-pass? They are both internal versions of a barometeric damper before they ever had baro's. On my stove the slide opens 3 vents. So maybe on your it's just a little extra to compensate for the single vent in back of the ash pit? They should cool the stove down when open and I also use mine on windy days. Last night it was howling and I came down at about 12 midnight to check the stove. It was ripping at about 600 degrees so I pulled the slide and went back up. This morning when I came down the stove was cruising at 400 and it was still quite blustery. It works quite well.

PS: Your stove looks great! I love that the shaker arm for the grates comes through a slide plate that closes off that slot. Thats very cool and give you better low temp control due to air tightness. Looks like a well designed stove!

I talked to Emery this morning and he said that the thing in the ashpit is a check damper also to be used on real windy nights so it looks like you hit it right on the head. Thanks

The check damper in the ash pit will bypass air from going through the coal bed and limit temperature of the burning coal. The one on the back will limit draft overall.

franco b wrote:The check damper in the ash pit will bypass air from going through the coal bed and limit temperature of the burning coal. The one on the back will limit draft overall.

That makes complete sense to me. Another interesting detail about the Oakland Base Heater is that it doesn't have an adjustable draft for secondary air. The loading door has a line of holes drilled into it to provide a limited yet constant stream of secondary air. Having the air come in under the window this way, might do a lot to keep the windows cleaner for a longer period of time. Anyway, this seems to be an extrodinary stove.

You're right William. The mica windows haven't needed cleaning yet. I'm getting an infrared temp gage so I can check out the temps at various places and fine tune. The only hting that I think would make it better is if I bushed the door pins so that the doors closed tighter it would eliminate a lot of the gratuitous air intake.

coalturkey wrote:You're right William. The mica windows haven't needed cleaning yet. I'm getting an infrared temp gage so I can check out the temps at various places and fine tune. The only hting that I think would make it better is if I bushed the door pins so that the doors closed tighter it would eliminate a lot of the gratuitous air intake.

The doors are made to fit perfectly tight. The hinge pins may be worn or bent a little the wrong way. You can probably bend the hinge pins to where the doors will close tightly. Be careful a little tiny bend will change how the door hangs. There should be absolutely no play in the doors or the primary damper in the bottom door. If the spring on the damper slide is no longer tight an easy and quick remedy is to get a 3/8" lock washer and cut a notch just big enough to fit around the sliding pin. That will pull the damper tight until you can replace the spring at a later date. Again be very carefull if you experiment with the hinge pins. Don't break one.

Allright William, now to the next level. The procedure I am using is to shake down, fill the stove, crack the top door to get air onto the volatile gases to burn off, open the MPD all the way and wait for the stove to come up to temp. When the stove hits about 450 to 500 I put it in base heater mode and now what do I do with the 2 check drafts and the MPD?