Econo Stove Blower Problems

MORE PROBLEMS!!!!

Had the house on the generator tonight and fired up the coal stove, everything seemed fine except for the blower again. I stopped using it and when the power came back on I fired it up again and I have no fan now, it just hums. I set the speed to 99 and again, it just hums. I plug it directly into an extension cord it goes full blast.

Something is wrong with the coal trol AGAIN.

I think based on what you are doing with the generator you are inducing the problem, best bet is to speak with the folks at Automation Correct. I don't believe the speed controller in the Coal-trol likes the power put out by your generator. What does the waveform look like now, you mentioned that you were going to fix the poser (yeah I believe you have a faker in place of a real generator ), but I don't notice any posts explaining what you did.

The title of your post is "more problems" sounds to me like the same problem. I don't think it is fair to blame the Coal-Trol for the problem based on what you have described. But then again I could be wrong.

Keep us posted on your your next steps.

I've found if the gen set doesn't say Yamaha, Honda or another big-cash brand, the power is far from "clean" & can cause all kinds of problems.

I had an off-the-boat-from-china model that I paid $325 for spankin' new. Luckily it only fried my ceiling fans light ballast, & a First-Alert motion detector socket I had. If I didn't balance both output legs with equal current draw, the other leg would surge up & over 135VAC! I can't even imagine what the waveform on that thing would have looked like!

Bamboo waveform?

If I understood one of Yanche's valuable explanations correctly on bad waveforms, the frequency reverberations that cause motors to hum could possibly cause them to stop completely at a certain speed. The way he explained it was that the motor is trying to run at 2 speed at the same time, making a hum (this is on a one-speed motor). I would think if the motor was slowed enough, it would just be fighting itself & be motionless.

I think Leisure Line needs to disclose this fact to the customer before they purchase a unit with coal trol. Every other item in my house (hot water heater, TVs, refridgerator, computers, lights, photovoltaic sensors, fan motors, AC units, motion detectors, timers, monitor heater) everything in the house except the coal trol.

So do we call it a bad generator because it failed at doing one device in the home (the coal trol)?

I plugged the blower fan back into the coal trol this morning and it is now working fine again- until the next power outage when the coal trol gets confused!

When you had the "humming" motor did you try using manual fan speed mode to force the motor to run at high speed? It's possible the speed control and timing circuits got out of phase while using the power from the generator. This could lead to the humming at lower speeds, but forcing the convection fan speed to a mid to higher level value with FSM mode should have cleaned up the humming. You can also try changing your CFM setting to its maximum value (can't recall offhand if it is 40 or 50), which would force the fan to run at a higher minimum speed and possibly avoid any resync issues when switched back to utility power.

Thanks for the help.

I did in fact manually adjust the fan speed and nothing happened, the fan didnt move, just hummed.

I didnt get into the CFM adjustment because its always fine on utility power, and the feed rate was at 99 during all of my problems.

Johnshan wrote:I think Leisure Line needs to disclose this fact to the customer before they purchase a unit with coal trol... snip... I plugged the blower fan back into the coal trol this morning and it is now working fine again- until the next power outage when the coal trol gets confused!

What fact are you thinking we should state? FRom all the data collected so far I don't see that we have enough factual information to draw conclusions from. Also I'm thinking that we should have a little more than a sum total of one instance of an issue before declaring that there is a problem affecting all stove owners. Having said that we want to get to the bottom of this and help you determine exactly what is happening here. So far it seems clearly related to power transfer to the generator

As suggested by Paul, there may be a workaround here, the simplest being that the fan should be plugged into an outlet when your power fails. I'm not sure the Coal-Trol is confused, it really doesn't like your generator! But all kidding aside, I understand your frustration, you purchased a back up power source that has been working fine on everything else except the stove.

On a related note, you mentioned that your feed rate is at 99, I cannot think of any situation where the stove would be running at that feed rate in this weather.

Please tell us more, I'm guessing that there is something else going on here that would cause the stove to be so far behind in it's heating duties. Please describe the situations where you transfer power to generator, and what else you are doing and what the stove is doing before, during and after the power transfer.

Thanks for your patience, we will keep working till we understand this fully.

On a related note, you mentioned that your feed rate is at 99, I cannot think of any situation where the stove would be running at that feed rate in this weather.

Matt, I have an older coal-trol unit and with mine when I set the "ignition " in the menu to "M" If I lose power for more than 3.5 minutes my stove shuts down and will not come back on even if power is restored (so I don't empty the hopper into the ash pan). That being said, just this past weekend I wanted to be sure my "ignition" was set properly so the stove would shut down if it lost power. I proceeded with the test and it worked fine but when I reset the stove after the test it went to a feed rate of 99. I caught it and turned on the "min" feed so the house did not over temp and left it for several hours while the coal-trol came back down. I don't know if this helps but it may be something that happens when power is lost.

It was about 30 degrees last night, when I came home my house was 58 degrees +/-, I started the stove and set it to 72 degrees, the feed rate ramped up to 99 to try to get the house up to temp.

I had a heck of a time lighting the stove as well, so I have a feeling that all the fan motors are running at a reduced rate. What concerns me the most is that once utility power came back, the coal trol still wouldnt work correctly, it took until this morning to get it back to a normal state (able to plug the blower fan into the coaltrol).


By the way- thank you for the help.

Johnshan wrote:It was about 30 degrees last night, when I came home my house was 58 degrees +/-, I started the stove and set it to 72 degrees, the feed rate ramped up to 99 to try to get the house up to temp. snip..

Johnsahan, as I told cmperry, I would recommend letting the stove catch up more slowly. I have better luck with all coal stoves when I keep the set point no more than 2* above the room temp, no matter what type of controls it has. l keep working on this, sooner or later we will get it all figured out!

gambler wrote:snip..I don't know if this helps but it may be something that happens when power is lost.

Thanks Rick, I'll do a little checking to see how repeatable that is, then I'll add it to the Coal-Trol tutorial and video I'm working on.

Are there any soultions out there for the coal trol on a generator issue or am I stuck?

Johnshan wrote:Are there any soultions out there for the coal trol on a generator issue or am I stuck?

How often do you lose power? Is it an auto transfer? Are you OK with a manual solution requiring human intervention to isolate the fan circuit on power loss?

I'm sure with all the brain power on this forum we will be able to come up with something to solve this!

Johnshan wrote:Are there any soultions out there for the coal trol on a generator issue or am I stuck?

My two cents, get a Pure sinewave generater, or a UPS. The Coaltrol and stove will both thank you for it

We lose power a lot. I am on a manual transfer switch. A pure sine wave generator would cost more then the stove did, and the ups is also very expensive. If I had the money I would buy the UPS system.