Coalpail.com Forum

Hello ye good people at the NEPA forum,

some of you might remember last year´s thread about "Exotic Beauties" and all my ramblings about overly tight German environmental legislation...
One year has passed, I found another shop close to the Black Forest (approx 3 hrs. drive) named OHA http://www.antik-oha.de/de/oefen/. They specialized in restoring stoves of all kinds PLUS they organize for all the needed technical testing to be done before you buy (best of all: that´s already included in their relatively moderate pricing). So you´re basically on the safe side and have the written guarantee that you´ll get your money back in case the stove should fail to get the certificate ... no risk of obtaining a very expensive decorative item! Just to clarify: a stove must run at least 73% (thermal) efficient and may only create a certain amount of pollutants in order to get permission to operate it. So the stoves have to undergo individual tests at the Technical Control Board and these alone will cost something like €800.
To cut the somewhat lenghty story short: went there, had a very long, informative and detailled tour of all the stoves they have in stock, "fell in love" with a green enamelled stove with moderate nickle trimming and decorative art nouveau ornaments, called the Better Half and bought it straight away (pics as soon as it´s delivered). The stove still had to undergo restoration (new firebricks & new nickle on the doors & draft controls) and was supposed to be delivered late Oct/ early Nov. Got a phone call yesterday: the re-nickeling went faster than expected - delivery next Thursday. Needless to say: feels like the week before Christmas when I still was a child
Big benefit: it cost €2.500, that´s about as much as a new cast iron stove of good quality (Morsoe or Jotul) would cost! Same price, perfect design plus a product that has already withstood 98 years of use without significant defects - what else could I ask for?!

My Better Half was easily convinced as we had some money left from refurbishing the kitchen and a little investment payed off well... plus all the insecurity we´re going through with our monetary system and the wide-spread fear of inflation... so we thought we´d better spend the money we have on useful items instead of hording it in the bank and sit watching as inflation consumes it And a stove (plus several tons of coal in the basement) might prove to be very useful if we should really run into hyperinflation, collapse of the € or whatever. And if the total crisis can be avoided: even better! The pyromaniac in me will have a stove to mess around with, we´ll be able to cut on heating expenses PLUS I kept my job & savings - a win-win situation!

The stove itself is a FELIX 221 multifuel direct draft stove, cast in 1914. Produced by Ludwigshütte foundry in Marburg, Germany. They were in business from the 1860´s to the 1930´s, when they were gobbled up by Buderus.
The stove stands approx 4ft 8 tall, has a footprint of 16X13 inches, it is rated 8KW (27.3K btu) and weighs about 260-280lbs. The firebox is approx 12inches deep and 8.5x7 wide. The setup is pretty much like a Yotul 507 with its 3 doors. The stove has a extended smoke box on top of the area where the fuel is burned, so the exhaust travels to the back under the first hotplate, then up around the warming box that is built around the hotplate. It is then directed to the front of the stove by a baffle plate, travels under a second hotplate and exits in the back of the stove. The second hot plate can be covered with a decorative cast iron dome to lessen the heat output. The grates will most likely not convince you - simple shaking mechanism like a Petit Godin, no prismatic grates like in a Glenwood.

Pics will follow next week, attached is the advertisement for the significantly smaller 1920´s version without the extended smoke box. But the art nouveau decoration is about the same... Very thrilled about the level of efficiency the Technical Control Board measured! The document will be shiped with the stove, all I know is that it must obviously have passed the required minimum of 73%....
Mark

All sounds good fb--looking fwd to more pix:)

I like it. the built in heat shield. the dampner. its handsome. would make a nice mate for Gretel,my 507
are there any available in the classifieds over there,.? I have close friends that live on the edge of the black forrest whose son is coming to visit

Poconoeagle wrote:I like it. the built in heat shield. the dampner. its handsome. would make a nice mate for Gretel,my 507
are there any available in the classifieds over there,.? I have close friends that live on the edge of the black forrest whose son is coming to visit

I have never seen a Felix 94 in reality, but you can find many stoves of equal design on ebay Germany and a forum named kalaydo.de because the 2010 federal clean air legislation made it practically illegal to operate antique stoves unless you are able to prove the efficiency with a certificate... so many, many people are now trying to get rid of their antiques because they don´t want to invest €800 for the certificate and they would literally throw stoves at you for €50-200 or so... so if you like the design and know someone over here who could organize the shipping to the US - look for WOTAN, CORA, ORANIER or WALKÜRE stoves. They came in all sorts of designs, some with mica windows, some with nickle trimming and were produced from the 1890s up to WWII. very solid, simple stoves.
The couple that runs OHA heats a space of 700sq ft with just one WOTAN...
But what would you do with a 4th stove?!

wow. thanks for all the info!.
I always have room for another stove you have more than a few pairs of shoes, right
those compact stoves can really put out some heat!

Poconoeagle wrote:wow. thanks for all the info!.
I always have room for another stove you have more than a few pairs of shoes, right
those compact stoves can really put out some heat!

now that we happen to be online at the same time, could I ask you a question? When lighting the jotul, do you let a single layer of coal catch well, before you fill it all the way up or do you work your way up in several layers? Am a bit cautious about puffbacks or smothering the fire when filling up too soon... must admit: I am a total greenhorn with coal, we used to have these huge tiled stoves for burning wood, when I was a kid - but I never used coal before!

Start your fire with wood or charcoal and surround it with a couple scoops of coal. Once it's going well with the stove wide open and ripping along (15-20 min or so) then start to add more coal. I would try a couple more scoops and when you're sure it's going well, with nice blue flames, (anthracite) then fill it up and close the primarys down to whatever temp you want. Have a look at the "sticky" thread up on top of the hand fired page. There is a good number of pages and techniques you can use. (How to start and hand fired stove) Congrates on your "new" stove. It's looks like a nice one. I too heat my 2500sq ft with two 100yr old stoves.

SteveZee wrote:Start your fire with wood or charcoal and surround it with a couple scoops of coal. Once it's going well with the stove wide open and ripping along (15-20 min or so) then start to add more coal. I would try a couple more scoops and when you're sure it's going well, with nice blue flames, (anthracite) then fill it up and close the primarys down to whatever temp you want. Have a look at the "sticky" thread up on top of the hand fired page. There is a good number of pages and techniques you can use. (How to start and hand fired stove) Congrates on your "new" stove. It's looks like a nice one. I too heat my 2500sq ft with two 100yr old stoves.

Thanks for your kind words, I´ve already taken a closer look at the thread you mentioned, was just wondering if the depp & narrow firebox of stoves like the Jotul 507 & mine required a different approach
Reckon I´ll just do the good old trial & error method as soon as the stove is hooked up...

firebug wrote:

SteveZee wrote:Start your fire with wood or charcoal and surround it with a couple scoops of coal. Once it's going well with the stove wide open and ripping along (15-20 min or so) then start to add more coal. I would try a couple more scoops and when you're sure it's going well, with nice blue flames, (anthracite) then fill it up and close the primarys down to whatever temp you want. Have a look at the "sticky" thread up on top of the hand fired page. There is a good number of pages and techniques you can use. (How to start and hand fired stove) Congrates on your "new" stove. It's looks like a nice one. I too heat my 2500sq ft with two 100yr old stoves.

Thanks for your kind words, I´ve already taken a closer look at the thread you mentioned, was just wondering if the depp & narrow firebox of stoves like the Jotul 507 & mine required a different approach
Reckon I´ll just do the good old trial & error method as soon as the stove is hooked up...

Use the method I have described of starting a fire in a Base Burner. It's just like the videos. I'm glad you finally got a stove. I know you are excited about it. Please keep us informed as to how you are getting along with it.

I certainly will.... until one of you starts to wonder why you´ve let that nerdy German guy onto the forum and who encuraged him to share his thoughts & questions in the first place

Very nice stove firebug.
Hope to see the one soon. You said it's a direct draft stove but with all the exit paths you described, it looks like a sort of very indirect draft having a long gasses path
Anyways direct or indirect draft, base burner..., as long as the result is good: keep as much heat as possible in the house instead of to the chimney.
Don't worry, you can be on the forum for a very long time with a so nice stove

@ poconoeagle:
have some pics of Wotan, Cora and Oranier stoves, will post them for you to see what I mean (I know you guys like pics!)

@ nortcan:
The last pic in line shows FELIX´s big impressive sister BERTA. My stove is about half in width and only 1.44m tall - wouldn´t know where to fit a monster like BERTA. (don´t be irritated: the stove may look like tiles, it´s cast iron.. just the enamel that´s made to resemble the look of tiles) Hope that gives you a better impression of what I am talking about... maybe the most "indirect" direct draft stove one can think of

wow! very cool! thank you

that berta sure looks neat

Classy looking rigs! The first looks allot like a Warm Morning design.

Thanks to share. Very nice work of Art Enamel on cast iron is so neat and very easy to clean the dust out.
You have so many models of stoves in Europa, bien chanceux et profitez-en Nous attendons la suite pour votre poele avec impatience.
Salutations du Québec.