Burning coals being dumped into ash pan

Someone posted about their fire burning too far back, we seem to have the opposite issue. The fire on our Hyfire II seems to burn too far forward. We end up with some burning coal being dumped into the ash bin even though when first lit it's further back. The Hyfire was installed in place of a wood burner and when we were using the wood stove, we were told that we were overdrafting because we have such a tall flue. Could this also be why the position of our coal fire is so far forward? I tried doing a forum search on this but was unable to come up with anything, so I apologize if this was addressed before.

Also, on average, how often would the ash pan on the Hyfire II need to be emptied? So far, ours needs to be emptied every 2-3 days. By the 3rd day, it is very full, and this is with only running one burner and without winter cold weather yet. I'm thinking this is too much and we also feel that we're going thru more coal than we thought we should be using, given that its still not really cold out. The Coal Trol is set at 69 for 6:15 a.m. and at 8 pm it's set back to 67, and the temp is being maintained well. The stove is in the basement and the Coal Trol is upstairs next to our other thermostat for our forced air heat.

Thanks for any help!

No, it is a CoalTrol Setting,

Also you have to have your Baro Damper setup correctly too with a draft gauge. if not, that will make it suck more heat out of your stove.

If it's too far forward on the grate and burning coals are falling off, go into the CoalTrol Setup and reduce your MAX a few points. If at 40, turn down the 38 and keep an eye on it. If it continues when running FR99 (Feed Rate), keep reducing it a couple points until you stop pushing hot coals off the end.

If you use the setback feature, don't go more than a couple degrees, it will overshoot trying to catch up, you can also just set it at a certain temp and leave it alone. Looks like that is okay for your settings.

Ash - every 2-3 days is really good to empty the ash pan, when it gets really cold, you may do it every 24 hours or so depending on how hard you run your stove and 2 burners.

I also have a Hyfire II in my basement with Coaltrol thermostat on 1st floor. I am in Easton, PA and my stove has been running pretty much on idle for the past few weeks. (do you have a hot air jacket on the Hyfire II?)

Is it possible that most of the heat from your stove is going elsewhere? What I mean is are there other parts of the house that are much warmer than the room with the thermostat. Maybe the stove is working hard to get that 69 degree air to your thermostat? Just seems like something is amiss if you are burning full grate with the outside temps we have now.
My current settings Min 6, Max 40, Hlf=2, FR27

My home is a large(3200 sqft) drafty 1890's home. Only have heat vents on first floor with most of the heat being directed to the room we spend most of our time in, which happens to be the room above the stove and also where the coaltrol thermostat is located. We have been pegged on 70 degrees for weeks with only a very small fire on the grate. Other rooms on first floor are cooler(65ish).
I have 3 vents off the hot air jacket on the Hyfire.

How are you ducting the heat upstairs?

the FR will changed based on demand, mine on idle , no call for heat (since it's warm outside) my FR is 0 right now and it's just running off the MIN setting .

It the MAX setting you need to check.

-OR- your Thermostat is ALWAYS calling for heat and your stove cannot satisfy it, If you set it at 72 and your room is only 68-70 all the time, then you will always be calling for heat and will have a lot on your burn plate and could max out to try and satisfy your request for heat. I leave mine around 68-69 and it runs pretty good there, anything higher when it really cold and it will just run full blast without ever satisfying the thermostat.

You may have to turn down your thermostat to get it to satisfy it quicker, move the thermostat closer, get more heat into the room with a bigger duct, etc.....

Here is the procedure for setting the min and max:
Enter setup by pressing the menu button
toggle until you see Min and the number
Let the stove burn for about an hour on min verify an inch or so of burning coals
Adjust number up or down to achieve around an inch
toggle to then next item which is max
Let the stove burn for an hour or so
If there is a concern for too much heat on the stove body you can exit into the main menu and speed up the fan on FSM
adjust the max up or down to achieve and inch of ash on the end of the grate and all the rest burning coals
Once this has stabilized at an inch you can return to the normal menu and run your stove.

The main thing is that you have too high a feed rate if hot coals are dropping off the grate into the ash pan. As has already been suggested, there are many variables with the distribution of heat and maintaining the room temp at an acceptable level.

Hi, the Coal Trol is located in an area that is about the same temp as the rest of the house and is not located in any drafts. It's located next to the thermostat for our forced air furnace, which is where the HVAC people placed it when the house was built in 2004. The stove reaches 69 with no problem then idles down and maintains. Usually, we have about a 1-1/2 inch band burning. But when the stove is working to bring the house up from the 67 degree night setting to the 69 degree daytime setting it does burn full grate and that's when burning coal gets pushed into the ash pan.

We had reduced the min setting to 4 a few weeks ago and max is still at factory setting of 40. So as I understand it, we should lower from 40 to 38 and see if that helps. Think we should we reduce the min setting to 3 to try for a 1 inch burning band?

We don't have a hot air jacket on the stove. My husband is planning on running pipe to our existing duct work (when my unemployment check stretches far enough to spring for the pipe, LOL). Right now the air is heating the house by natural convection. It comes right up the stairs into the living area, we have ceiling fans that help draw the heat up, and we run the fan from our furnace so that the warm air is circulated throughout the house via the return ducts and existing ductwork. Because of the floor plan of the house and the area in the basement where we put the stove, this works really well and the house is an even temperature throughout, in the basement its a bit warmer, but first and second floors are pretty much around 70 degrees. Also, the house is not that large, only 1600 sq. ft., and the basement is 1100 sq. ft. in addition to the 1600.

Thanks for the help, and I'm sure we'll be needing more since this is our first year burning coal. So far though, we love it!

WNY wrote:No, it is a CoalTrol Setting,

Also you have to have your Baro Damper setup correctly too with a draft gauge. if not, that will make it suck more heat out of your stove.

If it's too far forward on the grate and burning coals are falling off, go into the CoalTrol Setup and reduce your MAX a few points. If at 40, turn down the 38 and keep an eye on it. If it continues when running FR99 (Feed Rate), keep reducing it a couple points until you stop pushing hot coals off the end.

Hi Dave, my husband set up the baro damper according to the instructions that came with it. What is a draft gauge and where do we get one? Also, can you explain what you mean by this: If it continues when running FR99 (Feed Rate) ? I've just reduced the max setting to 38, so we now have min 4 and max 38, but we're not sure what you meant. We're not really sure what the FR setting is used for.
Duh... guess our newbieness is shining thru, LOL!!! Just got to get thru the learning curve, right???? I think what we really need is for someone to explain more fully what each of the settings are for. The instructions seemed kind of vague.

The FEED Rate is internal to the Coaltrol, its based on how fast the temp gets satisfied. it will vary depending on demand. if you set the temp at 70, but the room temp is 65, it will keep bumping the feed rate up until until it gets closer to the room temp, it may go from 0-99 depending on demand. ON Idle and the room temp and setpoint are equal, the FR can be 0 (Zero).

if you just hit the menu button lightly once, it will go in the FSA (Fan speed auto) and hit it again and should display FR XX.

Don't change the MIN setting, you shouldn't go below 4, that will NOT effect the coal burning off the grate, its for the IDLE burn / time. If you go too low, you could have an outfire, since it may not feed enough on idle to maintain a fire.

the MAX setting will affect the burning coals off the grate when its burning high. I would move it back to around 38 to start and see what happens, if you still have burning coals, move it down to 36.

Once you get it setup, you shouldn't have to mess with it much. In the Top of the CoalTrol section on here has the V3 Features that explains the settings.
V3 firmware features

if you go to a min of 3 it WILL go out i tried it on my HYFIRE II

morrisfamily3098 wrote:if you go to a min of 3 it WILL go out i tried it on my HYFIRE II

Not always. It depends on many things. I run my min at 3 with no problems.

Got it at min 4, max 38. We also decided to try leaving it set for 69 round the clock. I think we may have been burning more coal bringing the temp back up to 69 from the 67 night setting, since I noticed that it was working hard and burning full grate for quite awhile after the thermostat reached 69 degrees. Last night was the first night we tried not setting temp back and it seemed to work out really well. The house is 69 all over and the stove is just burning about 1-1/2 inch band on idle, FR is at 0.

Sounds good! Looks like you have it dialed in and enjoy it!!

There is also a setting for HLF (Heat Loss Factor in the Advanced Setup) that helps it recover faster. maybe switch it to 1 as a last resort. But, its working now, don't mess with it. !!

WNY wrote:Sounds good! Looks like you have it dialed in and enjoy it!!

There is also a setting for HLF (Heat Loss Factor in the Advanced Setup) that helps it recover faster. maybe switch it to 1 as a last resort. But, its working now, don't mess with it. !!

HLF, eh? See, just learned another new thing!

My husband got the necessary pipe and tied the stove into our existing ductwork yesterday. Wow, awesome is all I can say, its working great so far and I love not having to worry about how much propane we're using. I certainly won't miss the dread felt when they were refilling our tank. We'll get one delivery this year to top off the tank and it won't be much since we only used the propane for the BBQ and to run our whole house generator for a day! With the square footage of our house and the Hyfire II, we won't have to use the propane for heating at all. We saved quite a bit with our woodburner last year but I'm sure it'll be even more with the coal without the mess and inconvenience.

If it's heating and responding fine, they you shouldn't have to make any other adjustments....sounds like you are getting close!! Enjoy the Heat!