Base Burner Stoves

How thick could it(refactory lining) have been since the holes are very close to the edge of the bottom. Was this added to protect the firepot only or to do that and put more heat into the coal?

One exemple of what was offered for a few $ more = $1.65
Liners protect the fire pot and help to keep the heat inside of the fire pot to get the best and complete coal burning. 1/2" to 1" is good.
Just clic 2x for a better look

It is kind of sad that the development of coal stoves seems to have gone backwards while everything else has gone forward. I wonder why new stove companies do not copy the old proven designs. There certainly can not be any patents still in force if there ever were any to begin with. Why build a larger surface area rectangular fire box when round and deep the proven design or why noy preheat the combustion airwhen a proven design? it does not make a bunch of sense in the end. Is it just people buying new stoves just do not know the difference or just trying to convert a woodstove into a coal stove?

ddahlgren wrote:It is kind of sad that the development of coal stoves seems to have gone backwards while everything else has gone forward. I wonder why new stove companies do not copy the old proven designs. There certainly can not be any patents still in force if there ever were any to begin with. Why build a larger surface area rectangular fire box when round and deep the proven design or why noy preheat the combustion airwhen a proven design? it does not make a bunch of sense in the end. Is it just people buying new stoves just do not know the difference or just trying to convert a woodstove into a coal stove?

My guess would be cost point. We had loads of foundrys back then and cast tons of iron. Nowadays it's cheaper and easier to weld plate steel.

ddahlgren wrote:

SteveZee wrote:Nikonmom, You stove is as I thought, and oak stove with back pipe. I can see this because there is no ring above the fire pot that a base burner would have. None the less, it's a fine stove and will be a great heater for you if restored and firepot lined with refractory.

Were the firepots lined when the stove was new and deteriorated now and gone or is the lining an update of sorts.

They were generally put in as "bricks". They would be cast in a mold to fit the circular pot size. They were about an inch thick and I'd imagine that over the years they broke or fell out. It's easy enough t replace or make a liner though. One member made molds and cast the original bricks for a Crystal Crawford! Came out really nice too.

SteveZee wrote:

ddahlgren wrote:It is kind of sad that the development of coal stoves seems to have gone backwards while everything else has gone forward. I wonder why new stove companies do not copy the old proven designs. There certainly can not be any patents still in force if there ever were any to begin with. Why build a larger surface area rectangular fire box when round and deep the proven design or why noy preheat the combustion airwhen a proven design? it does not make a bunch of sense in the end. Is it just people buying new stoves just do not know the difference or just trying to convert a woodstove into a coal stove?

My guess would be cost point. We had loads of foundrys back then and cast tons of iron. Nowadays it's cheaper and easier to weld plate steel.

No doubt a ton of EPA regs for foundrys now. I used to have one a mile away and still have one that casts bronze across town but a small custom operation for restoring old yachts.

Post deleted.

this is a very descriptive and informative diagram. Look closely and you'll see, in terms of efficiency, perhaps the emperor has no clothes ? No offense to anyone who owns or restores this distinct, collectible antique stoves. Don't misunderstand me, I like the stoves.

Look closely at the baseburner design, then compare to the basic rules of thumb for ducting stove gases, from a coal stove manual below:

Limit the amount of connector pipe.
Position the stove as close to the flue as possible, 8 ft. or less.
No more than two 90° elbow fittings should be used.
Any horizontal connector pipe should have at least 1/4 in. of rise per foot in length.

I can see at least (3) 90 degree angles, and a 180 degree loop, in the baseburner passages. If the last vertical upward run had to turn 90 degrees to go into a horizontal wall flue pipe, then that's (4) 90 degree bends. There is one vertical downward run, and 2 horizontal runs, with no rise at all, or negative rise, it goes straight down, instead of up. These stoves are held up as the model of efficiency, when in fact, they are anything but efficient at exhausting the spent coal gases. Proof of this is, the stove temperatures typically go DOWN when the baseburner ducts are opened.

Since when is a HEATING STOVE temp going DOWN, a sign of efficiency ? If the stove is colder, the room will also be colder. Not warmer.

The stove temps go down, because the draft is cut a noticeable amount, when the baseburner passages are opened. All those bends and curves have detrimental effects on stove drafting. The extra cast iron has a heat sink effect.

If it was truly more efficient, when the baseburner passages were opened, the stove would maintain the same temp while heating more surface area, or get even hotter, on the same load of coal and same draft intake setting. Getting cooler only shows, the draft fell off, and dropped the stove and flue temps. What heats better, a hot stove, or cooler stove, if all other settings are the same ?

Opening up the baseburner vents and the stove dropping in temp, is a sign of DECREASED EFFICIENCY, not increased efficiency. The stove is putting out less heat with the same draft opening. The main draft intake to the fire, would have to be opened further, to increase draft and get the stove back up to the temp. it was at, before the baseburner passages were opened. Requiring more air and draft to be added, to get back to the same temp, is not efficiency. That's inefficiency. The baseburner design requires burning the stove with more draft to get back to the same temp. level, because it then has more cast iron to heat up.

It probably doesn't heat any better than an Oak stove set the same draft, with an MPD closed.

And it couldn't hold a candle to today's modern, fan forced air, internally baffled, 100,000+ BTU monsters.

The baseburner design was cutting edge, for its time, when there was no widespread electricity or fans to put into a coal stove. Saying these stoves are the most efficient design today, is naïve and misleading. They aren't. Rather, they are a finely crafted, aesthetically pleasing stove, from a bygone era- a fine relic of the past. I hate to say this, because I really admire these old stoves, but the design is a gimmick by today's standards.

If someone suggested you run the stovepipe out of your stove, then straight down at a 90 degree angle, then at another 90 degree angle into a horizontal 180 degree loop, then straight up again at a 90 degree angle, would you do it ? Most likely you'd think the guy saying that was nuts. Any stove company that made such a thing today, would be laughed out of the market. Any installer who tried to put stovepipe in a home like that today, would probably be fined or sued for breaking code laws.

I've seen one stove with a downward angled stovepipe, that then connected to the vertical wall flue pipe. To date that is the lousiest burning stove I've ever seen, it won't hold a coal fire, and barely holds a wood fire. It smokes into the house on a regular basis. It belongs to a relative, and when we come home from that house, we have to wash all our clothes, because the clothing and coats smell like wood smoke in a bad way.

Hot air prefers to rise, not go downward and horizontal in bends like a pretzel. Elsewhere on this board, there is a post by someone who tried a baseburner with wood, and it kept backdrafting smoke into the house. That is understandable considering the bends in the stove passages. If a stove can't burn wood, it sure as heck won't burn coal. Wood is actually easier to burn, and will burn with less draft- it has a lower ignition temperature.

How many people do you know, who have been actually heating their homes for the past, say, 20 years with a baseburner every winter, locked into baseburner mode ? I don't know a single one. But I do see a lot of them for sale, at dubious prices. There's quite a few sitting in corners not connected to pipes and not working, but all chromed up, with electric lights in the firebox windows.

What's that say ?

I'm sure many of these stoves work well, but only if they are connected to some wicked draft to overcome the slowdown created by the baseburner passage bends in the design. If the design is just heating more metal but the stove temp is going down, that's less heat in the house and room, not more heat.

omg

i'm pretty sure that 'efficiency' the way you are looking at it would be measured by the difference between the stove temp and the exhaust temp. when run in baseburner mode the delta between these temps is larger indicating more heat from the exhaust is being absorbed by the extra steel and radiated out into the room rather than being wasted and sent up the chimney.

the reason flue pipe is not recommended to take the multiple 90's and up and down path is you cannot adjust the flue pipe draft path to a direct mode when the chimney is cold or draft is weak.

I don't have a baseburner, and most of my recent coal experience is as a girlie man. However, if the supposed defects of baseburners articulated in coalcracker's rant were legitimate, most coal appliances would need to be taken to the scrapyard.

Downward movement of combustion gases within an appliance is commonly used to foster improved heat exchange, and can be found in numerous units with sound efficiency performance. In the Harman Magnum, for example, the combustion gases need to pass near the floor of the unit before they can move toward the flue. The EFM and Gentleman Janitor boilers with which I am familiar rely on downward movement of combustion gases, as does the old Van Wert furnace (thanks again, Scottscoaled) we left in the basement of our old house to take the chill off after we moved out. If there truly were something wrong with downward movement of combustion gases within an appliance, I'm not sure why so many designers went to such lengths to create that.

Likewise, the idea that there is something inefficient about increasing the surface area available for heat exchange is also a head-scratcher. I understand that Leisure Line has achieved high efficiency readings by matching a comparatively small stoker with a comparatively large heat exchange surface in some of its appliances. AFAIK the "base burner flapper" has a modern analog in the slide brick found in (many) Alaska stoves, which serves the same purpose. And as a former operator of multiple Alaska stoves, I would say it works.

Overall, the rant seems long on unsupported rhetoric and short on actual data. It's ok not to like/want/choose a baseburner, but the criticisms in the rant to me don't make even a coherent case, let alone a persuasive one.

Mike

Pacowy wrote: Overall, the rant seems long on unsupported rhetoric and short on actual data. It's ok not to like/want/choose a baseburner, but the criticisms in the rant to me don't make even a coherent case, let alone a persuasive one.

Mike

Most of what he posts makes no sense. The guy won't even answer a simple question when he is specifically asked. He just digs up another old post and starts the same rant over again.

Hey Mr cc, here too in Qc we do what we want to do
Hope your stove pipe keeps you warm!

"...................Limit the amount of connector pipe.
Position the stove as close to the flue as possible, 8 ft. or less.
No more than two 90° elbow fittings should be used.
Any horizontal connector pipe should have at least 1/4 in. of rise per foot in length.

I can see at least (3) 90 degree angles, and a 180 degree loop, in the baseburner passages. If the last vertical upward run had to turn 90 degrees to go into a horizontal wall flue pipe, then that's (4) 90 degree bends. There is one vertical downward run, and 2 horizontal runs, with no rise at all, or negative rise, it goes straight down, instead of up. These stoves are held up as the model of efficiency, when in fact, they are anything but efficient at exhausting the spent coal gases. Proof of this is, the stove temperatures typically go DOWN when the baseburner ducts are opened.

Since when is a HEATING STOVE temp going DOWN, a sign of efficiency ? If the stove is colder, the room will also be colder. Not warmer.

The stove temps go down, because the draft is cut a noticeable amount, when the baseburner passages are opened. All those bends and curves have detrimental effects on stove drafting. The extra cast iron has a heat sink effect.
.............................."

Hog wash !

My kitchen range shouldn't work by what you've said. But it has for 110 years.

Just within the stove, starting at the firebox, in indirect mode, the flue gasses have to take six 90 degree bends and one 180 degree loop. Then add to that, I have two 90 degree elbows in the 8 feet of stove pipe with a 90 degree bend coming out the end of the pipe inside the brick chimney. Slowing the flue gases down TO THE CORRECT POINT makes the stove hotter, not colder. Choking the stove too much is what cools it down. And letting flues gases race through a stove and it's stack WASTES HEAT !

There's shades of gray in stove use that your ignoring in your black and white view. Stop thinking on such a simple level and you'd learn there's more to heat travel and heat transfer than only straight pipes and electric fans.

Paul

Hot air prefers to rise, not go downward and horizontal in bends like a pretzel

The Harman Mark series stoves have an internal baffle which directs gasses horizontally and then downward and then out the collar where the stovepipe is connected. If your comments were correct then the stove would not have this sort of design and the outlet would be at the top of the appliance.