Pot Belly User With Some Questions

Hi my name is Bob and Im a Coalaholic. well my stove its more like a 1/2 pot belly or laundry stove - I think its called. Whats a reasonable stack temp over the manual damper??? How far down from the stove top should I fill coal to ?? When I filled it partially - about 1/3 I got the bottom ring partially red after running it for 20 mins or so. Does not happen when it more full whats the physics behind that? The blue flame is our hottest dance partner right and thats what we should be controlling for ---not glowing yellow - correct.? What temp melts cast iron , getting things red is probably stressing the stove - right? can a cast iron stove just crack open or melt. If a windy night is expected I should lock this down to almost no draft right, cause it will pull air with only a manual damper. with wind does it help to have the damper 75% or so closed? Does pea coal have more of a tendancy to clog up a batch of coal than nut, how best to avoid clinkers??? would it make sense to mix coal say 75% nut with 25% pea? any belly boys out there, thanks

Specifics are hard to nail down with this type of stove because they're not air tight. I would install a barometric damper to better control the stove, especially when it's windy. Some people use both a manual and baro damper at the same time so it's a matter of preference.

Living here in Utah, anthracite coal (assuming that's what you use) isn't available so others on this forum will be able to help with it's use in this stove.

It's not unusual for potbelly type stoves to turn a dark beet red color on the lower part of the stove where the coal is burning because they aren't lined with firebrick. Cast iron can crack but I've never heard of one melting or cracking wide open spilling hot coal out.

BTW, The only time I've heard of cast iron stoves breaking is when they were used in rail cars and when there were wrecks the stoves would get broken spreading hot coals starting fires in the wreckage. Pretty scary.

thanks for your response... thats a bit reassuring regarding the color of the stove and melting / cracking issue. God having one of these babies moving on rails must have been gut wrenching. I think the beet red color must be caused by partially and unevenly loading it and getting that amount too hot too fast I guess. thanks

I owned a PotBelly and when in a dark room the pot would "glow" as there is no basket or firebrick. It looked cool. Like in the movies and cartoons. But touching it for just a second can give a serious burn so no kids near it. Or put up a fence around it. Make sure it doesn't have any cracks in it. The biggest problems with it was you couldn't slow it down just by the lower air control or manual pipe damper. I had to put pea coal on top of the nut to get long cooler burns. But a barometric damper can help as well. I use to open the loading door but I wouldn't recommend that. You get the idea though.
Takes quite a bit of heat to melt the cast iron. I wouldn't worry about that. You would never want the stove that hot. It would burn you to get near it.

They're o.k. but far cry from my $1800 Harman Mark III that puts out 90,000 BTU's and grate system. Air tight.