US Stove Hot Blast Furnace Problems

First off I'm a newbie to this forum and I have to tell you I think it rocks. I bought a Hot Blast furnace last October with thoughts of burning coal and wood if i needed. Went right out and bought 10 bags of nut and thought i was ready to go. Read the manual and thought I had it all figured out. Got it fired up and had a nice fire going, lots of heat, burned all night. Life is good. Next morning, nice bed of coals so I loaded'er up and headed of to work, well you guessed it, fire was all most out when I got home. Bummer!! Re-read the manual and tried again with just about as much luck. Searched US stove web site and came to the conclusion that I needed the draft induction kit. Bought it, hooked it up and had probably less luck maintaining a fire. I'm really frustrated at this point and had resolved to burning wood. Talked to some old timers who grew up burning coal, not many left around here, still no luck. I would try to burn coal on the weekend when I could try to firgure out what was happening. Still no luck, just a whole lot of frustration!! Then I started surfing and found this great site!!! Might you know, everything I was doing was almost completely wrong!! Every tip I got from here worked. Now I keep the load door damper closed and have mounted the draft inducer to the ash door. I have shortened up the fire box and am following the tips on shaking and reloading. Now that the weather has turned cold here in the Souther Tier of New York we'll see how she does. Tonight I picked up some stove coal to mix with the nut and I'll try that. It's supposed to be in the teens with a brisk wind. Thanks for all the tips and may your coal bin always be full!!!-tim

P.S. This site should be mandtory reading with every new coal stove or furnace!!

drhntr855 wrote:Tonight I picked up some stove coal to mix with the nut and I'll try that.

That will kick it up a notch or two.

drhntr855

What model Hot Blast? I've got the 1557. How did you mount the combustion blower to the ash door?

Don

Hi Don,
I have a 1537 and I used the adapter that screws into the back of the stove as a template and drilled 2 holes in the ash door and mounted the fan right to the door. Not the way I wanted to, but it works. I really wanted to make an adapter but after I looked at it I thought it would be ok. I also added a 3 speed fan control and mounted that to the side so I could control the amount of air being pushed in. It worked well this morning, I turned it up high, let it burn for 10 minutes or so, added a load, let it burn for another 10, shook it, rodded under the grate, let it burn another 10, topped it off and let it burn another 10. I shut off the fan, closed the draft on the side about 3/4. We'll see how it is when I get home. I've been a little conserative on putting the air to it until I really figure out what I'm doing. This morning I let it rip, brought up the temp in the house 6 or 7 degrees in an hour. The plan for tonight will be turn fan on high, load'er up see what happens and shut it down for the night. Hopefully it will all work out.

Could you post a pic of just the blower on the ash door.

How did you make out with stove coal? I've found that it burns alot better than the nut coal. These US Stove products are not the best for burning anthracite, but they work. I just starting to get the hang of it. I've been able to keep a fire going for several days now and somewhat control the output. I've found if I monitor the draft and stack temp I can keep from making a fatal mistake that kills the fire.

Don

Yes I will post some pictures for you. I need to tidy up the wiring and I'll post them. Hopefully she'll still be burning when I get home. It had a good load of stove in, so we'll see shortly.

tim

All was well when I got home, had a nice bed of coal still burning. Turned fan on high for about 5 minutes, sprinkled a little nut on top, let it get going for another 5, shook the ashes until I had some embers just starting to fall, then loaded it up with stove. Burning really nice right now.

Don, I'll have to post the pictures from work tomorrow.

tim [/img]

Let's see if I can post these pictures this morning.

Nice job! You've got my wheels are turning here.

Have you considered putting a thermostat on your combustion fan? From the way it sounds now, you have to turn it on manually.

I've seen 24 volt to 110 volt ac relays on Granger's site, but I don't know if that’s all you would need to hook a 110 device to a regular digital thermostat. Has anyone out there done anything like that?

If the blower was bought as a kit, them the thermostat and the relay should come with it, Mine did. I think the only problem with the setup is the potential to melt the grates, or severly overfire the stove. I would say that this could cause some potential problems. I had problems burning anthracite, until I filled my firebox full of nut coal. I removed my bottom ash pan damper, and adjusted the bolt so it will open 6 and 1/4 turns. never had to have it out that far, but it gives me more room for play. If I burn coal, I will just close my damper on my forced draft. Im sure the recovery is good for the heat though. Also when the fan isn't on, what are you doing to keep the air from coming into the fan blower when its not operating?

A Honeywell R845A will do exactly that. It has DPST contacts so it can control two independent circuits. It's normally used to control zone pumps in a hydronic heating system, but the relay doesn't care, it can control any load within it ratings. It includes an internal 24 VAC transformer and will work with any room or switch contact thermostat.

Yance

Hi All,

Yes every thing came with the kit. I can thermostatically control the combustion fan. I added a 3 speed fan control also so I can control that a little better. I'm not real trusting of letting the thermostat control things yet. Maybe this weekend when I can do that and see exactly what is going on. I don't want to over fire things. I've been pretty conserative about running the combustion fan wide out. I only turn it to high when I'm loading it up and then shut it off completely and cntrol the draft with the little door on the fan. I'm still learning and the stove coal seems to work much better. I had tried to close off half of the fire box as some have suggested. I think it is a good idea but I'm not sure that closing off the back and having all of the heat in the front works so well. The fan control and the fans are in the back. I had lots of heat up front but not enough in the back to make the fan work even if I turned the control all the way down. I'm running a full fire box now. Probably if you closed of the front it work work better but then there would be loading issues probably. This is the coal college so I'll continue to learn!!!

here are a couple pictures of my set up.

here's how you can control the draft.

That is a very nice looking stove. Nice work.

How well does the slider slow down your burn? I wonder if adding a damper instead of that slider could help shutdown the air when it’s not wanted. A range hood damper opens when a the fan blows and closes when the fan shuts down. I wonder if modifying a damper could slow your burn down until your fan blows. You’d just keep it opened enough to keep the fire going.

Are you watching the draft on your stove yet with a meter? How about stack temperatures. Watching these both really help you stay efficient. I know I can run mine low, burning with -0.03 draft and 200 stack temp. I’d have mine running low until it would call for heat. Just like a stoker. The nice part is, if your power goes out you just loose your fans. You can just burn hard and maybe open your basement door.

Let us know how it goes this weekend running on thermostat.