Shenandoah Wood Coal Stove Poor Output

 
brian315
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Post by brian315 » Fri. Dec. 18, 2009 6:52 pm

The divider has a slight break bent into it so that the door tightly seals against it and is about as good a seal as your going to get.

 
brian315
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Post by brian315 » Fri. Dec. 18, 2009 6:58 pm

Better luck tonight, let fire die today while at work, came home cut up a hardwood pallet and cooked her to coals layered some nut on there like usual and ill be dammed if the magic heat sitting on stove didnt stay on, hmmm says I? Got out the bacharac combustion test kit, hooked up mano and shes pulling a steady .04 with stove temps around 350, flue temp is dam hot but the air is moving nicely. Thats with about 25 or 30 lbs of nut in it at the moment, I'm just going to keep building until heat drops off or the dam thing is full.It's pretty dam cold out the draft is pulling nice, oh and I have the manual damper wide open.

 
brian315
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Post by brian315 » Fri. Dec. 18, 2009 8:22 pm

Ok now I'm scratching my head, things were going good, had an active hot fire going, building it slowly, stove putting out decent heat, temps around 400 on top of stove, not great but far better than previous results, adding a layer at a time, not a bunch and snuffing it out, watched temp fall off each layer then build back up to around 400, the coal bed is about 4 or 5 inches deep 20 inch diameter and looking good, last layer dam near kills it, still have the previous bed going but temps are down to 200 on stove, draft still at .04 but its just a dead fire no real heat. :?:


 
Pete69
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Post by Pete69 » Fri. Dec. 18, 2009 9:31 pm

That is the advantage of having separate load and ash doors. After loading, depending on how much coal I load I leave the ash door wide open to let the full blast of draft up through the coal bed, for up to 10 minutes if needed, to get the fresh coal lit good. If I had to rely on the air inlet it might take up to an hour or more to revive the fire after loading.
Looks like you're pulling good draft, on the low side but ok. I still have a bad feeling you are pulling draft past the coal bed, in front of, or behind your divider.
The deeper the coal bed gets, the more resistance there will be for the air trying to move up through the coal bed. The greater the resistance gets, the more likely it is that air will move to a path of less Resistance, if there is even a small gap between the door and the divider at any point.
4 or 5 inches is not deep enough. Ideally you need to build a 8 or 9 inch bed for good heat output.

 
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oliver power
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Post by oliver power » Fri. Dec. 18, 2009 11:10 pm

Pete69 wrote:That is the advantage of having separate load and ash doors. After loading, depending on how much coal I load I leave the ash door wide open to let the full blast of draft up through the coal bed, for up to 10 minutes if needed, to get the fresh coal lit good. If I had to rely on the air inlet it might take up to an hour or more to revive the fire after loading.
Looks like you're pulling good draft, on the low side but ok. I still have a bad feeling you are pulling draft past the coal bed, in front of, or behind your divider.
The deeper the coal bed gets, the more resistance there will be for the air trying to move up through the coal bed. The greater the resistance gets, the more likely it is that air will move to a path of less Resistance, if there is even a small gap between the door and the divider at any point.
4 or 5 inches is not deep enough. Ideally you need to build a 8 or 9 inch bed for good heat output.
Again, I agree with everything Pete69 said. Pete, you save me a lot of thinking/typing.

 
brian315
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Post by brian315 » Sun. Dec. 20, 2009 10:34 am

Ok now I'm making progress, put new seal in door yesterday, adjusted door for the best seal I could obtain, shook it down added coal and used shopvac blowing into ash compartment to get her really burning, stove temps up to 600 and then played with inlet damper to throttle it back to 450 or so, all the while with manual damper wide open, I watched my mano and draft varied from .03 - .04, now I'll hone my stove tending skills to get more burntime and overnight burn.

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