First Experience (ever) with Leisure Line Pioneer

Just wanted to report that I had my first ever attempt last night at starting a coal stove, and it off went without a hitch! I think I'm hooked!

Tom from Hearth & Home in the Lehigh Valley installed a beautiful Leisure Line Pioneer top vent stove in my basement of my ranch home a few months ago, and I've been nervously excited to use it ever since. I had 4 tons of rice coal delivered and it was ready to go in the nearby coal bin... all set for the winter.

We used one of the starter bags provided by Tom, and that made it pretty darn easy to start. That combined with the "FEED" option with Coal Trol thermostat, the stove was running at full kilt in 10-15 minutes!

My wife was most certainly skeptical about the whole thing, but loved the heat it produced and I heard the words "I love coal!" a few times. We had the thermostat at 80 down in the basement, which made it about 75 in the far bedroom (our house is small... about 1200 square foot... so this stove is perfect as our only heat source). Compared to our baseboard electric, this is so much better. Right now the stove is sitting on the concrete floor in our unfinished basement, but we have plans to put in a nice hearth and finish the basement this winter. Definitely excited.

Thanks to all the advice / feedback / ideas given on the forums. So far the coal experience has been great!

Congrats!! Great purchase. You will have years of great heat from the LL. And this board has some smart Mo Fo's, can answer anything you want about coal.
I just talked my buddy into buying a LL. Enjoy your stove!

Congrats on getting 'er up & running! I'm sure it'll serve you well. No more huge electric bills!

lundys wrote:We had the thermostat at 80 down in the basement, which made it about 75 in the far bedroom

If you get the time, you can play around with a little duct work and cold air return. This will heat the upstairs even better and use less coal in the process. I had the same results as yours when I first installed my stove. Was approx. 80' in the basement and about 75' upstairs. After installing the duct work, I now keep it at about 70' up and the basement stays at about 68' It doesn't have to be anything fancy. All I did was run one 6" duct from the stove to a floor register near the stove and opened another register at the other end of the house. This made a big difference in the heat transfer.

Jeff

You asked for pictures... here you go! We took some videos too as we commemorated our first ever coal stove lighting. Fun times.

ceccil: thanks for the tip about the duct work. We are actually going to be finishing our basement, and we are trying to avoid having cold air returns and/or duct work to connect the basement to the main living floor to reduce sound/noise between the floors. Otherwise I would do it in a heartbeat. Fortunately our coal stove is right at the bottom of our basement steps, and in the ceiling at the top of the steps is a return for our AC... so we can always turn on the fan to circulate the heat through our duct work. If last night was any indicator though, it was really pretty comfortable all throughout the house, so we might get away without doing that. We'll have to see.

Nice photographs, and congratulations on your new stove, long may she heat!

-- MW

My Husband loves our new Pioneer stove. I on the other hand am not completely happy with it, and only because we had a coal/wood burner that continued to work when the electricity goes out. Now when the electric goes out, we have to start a generator to keep the lesure line stove running.

Don't get me wrong, I love the steady heat it produces, it is also alot cleaner to use than the previous coal/wood burner we replaced. We have an hot air oil furnace too, but it gets cold prior to running. The steady heat from the pioneer is fabulous.

Also, has anyone else experienced trouble with the ash pit gasket? Ours fell off the other day and we only used this stove 1 winter, we purchased this pioneer Aug 2011. I contacted Leisure Line and they are sending me out a new gasket. They are very helpful and informative.