Where Is Our Heat Going?

 
Pocono Newbies
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Post by Pocono Newbies » Sat. Nov. 06, 2010 4:26 pm

titleist1 wrote:Another thread recently had similar symptoms and the last post indicated a very dirty combustion fan was the cause. Maybe this is a similar scenario.

Leisure Line Owners ?
Okay, thanks for the link. Another thing to check.

 
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Post by Hot Rocks » Sun. Nov. 07, 2010 6:56 am

Last year when you had your stove tied into your duct work, you said 2nd floor was to warm. Did you have both burners running at that time?

 
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Post by Bity454 » Sun. Nov. 07, 2010 8:29 am

Had the same problem on my used pioneer max feed of 30 would send hot coals off of grate. I found my combustion fan blades had almost 1/4 build up on them, took blower off a blew it out with compresses air, can now run a max feed of 50
With 1 inch of ash at the end of the grate, at least doubled the heat off of the stove covection and forced air.

 
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Post by Pocono Newbies » Sun. Nov. 07, 2010 8:48 am

Hot Rocks wrote:Last year when you had your stove tied into your duct work, you said 2nd floor was to warm. Did you have both burners running at that time?
No, only one burner. We mostly ran only one burner, until it went into the teens, then had to light burner 2. When temps went back up into the 20s, we shut down burner 2 and ran one burner again. It was very hot upstairs with one burner, and when burner 2 was lit, beyond sweltering!

I think we've got some answers now. A suggestion about the convection fan being dirty was checked out. My husband had thoroughly cleaned the stove, including the convection fan before startup this year, and since the stove is only running now about a week, that's not it.

Either he or his electrician friend had blower #2 plugged in, so both blowers were running, with only one burner lit. I unplugged the 2nd blower on the side not running yesterday, and it has helped. Air from the vents is now coming out at around 71-73 degrees, depending on location (the farthest away from stove has air of 71, closer to the stove has air of 73).

My husband will be changing the spot where the stove is tied into our existing ductwork, as the current location is allowing the heat to flow straight upstairs, where it is coming OUT of our return registers at 101 degrees. However, since the ductwork and vents for upstairs are closed, the 2nd floor is now the same temp as the first floor, even with the hot air coming out of the returns up there. He had tried an alternate "fix" for this issue, but it's not fully doing the job.

Lastly, it definitely seems as if our Coal-Trol is malfunctioning. Aside from the stove not maintaining a night setting of 69 degrees any longer (it used to last year, with only one burner running during normal cold days), but instead allowing the temperature to drop to 67, which also shows a low FR or zero FR, yesterday I increased the DAY setting ONLY temperature from 70 up to 71 by using the UP arrow. As I understand it, this increase is temporary, and once the next DAY cycle arrives, it will revert to the actual temperature set for DAY, which is 70 (and that's what it used to do). Our daytime cycle began at 6:15 this morning, but the DAY setting on the Coal-Trol is still D 71. It has not returned to 70, which is what we had the daytime temp set for.

EDIT: I just realized that when using up arrow from the round robin display, the temp should have displayed as O 71, not D 71. I just tried the down arrow from the RR display, and it displayed as O 70.

Also, I noticed that last night, at 8 PM when it changes to the night setting, the Coal-Trol display showed N 70, which means that that setting increased by 1 degree up from 69, which is the temperature that we have set for nighttime. However, I absolutely did NOT raise the NIGHT setting during the daytime yesterday, I only raised the DAY setting by 1 degree. I am 100% certain of this.

I think once these issues are addressed, we should be good to go.
Last edited by Pocono Newbies on Sun. Nov. 07, 2010 1:27 pm, edited 2 times in total.


 
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Post by Pocono Newbies » Sun. Nov. 07, 2010 10:17 am

UPDATE: I noticed that while scrolling thru advanced menu on Coal-trol, when I got to CFM on the menu, our stove shut off. When I scrolled to the next menu item, it came back on. Aside from scrolling thru the menu, nothing else was done. Is this supposed to happen -- having the stove shut off?

Also noticed that while our furnace fan was running on high and being controlled by the Coal-Trol, (fan speed set by the proper DIP switch on the circuit board), when the stove came back on our furnace fan is back to running on low speed. It was running on high before this, and we had good airflow. We can tell it's back to low speed, simply because there's very little air flow from our vents on low fan speed. Now we hope that the circuit board in the furnace was not damaged.

 
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Post by Pocono Newbies » Sun. Nov. 07, 2010 1:24 pm

The stove is supposed to"shut off" when you hit the CFM display on the screen.

However, my husband checked out the furnace fan, checked the DIP switch, put it back into the original position, turned the furnace on, let it run a bit with the fan on low speed, then put the switch back to the high speed setting, and nothing happened. The fan continued to run on the low speed, so apparently something happened with the circuit board during the temporary "shut down."

 
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Post by freetown fred » Sun. Nov. 07, 2010 3:13 pm

I would hit whatever re-set buttons I could find,or just shut it all down--let it sit for 1/2 hr & start from scratch useing the suggestions you've gotten--I wonder if it could be confused with all changes being put into it--I know I am ;)

 
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Post by Pocono Newbies » Sun. Nov. 07, 2010 3:29 pm

LOL! The stove is idling now, and we're just going to wait until it begins to ramp up again and the FR goes back up. SFT is set at 15. We'll see when the fan kicks on again, if it comes on high or low. Really wasn't a lot of changes though -- the module now controls the fan, Max was raised for about 2 days at Neil's from Coal-trol suggestion, and yesterday I raised the daytime temp from 70 to 71. I figure the only thing that could've confused it was when the stove was "shut down" while simply scrolling thru the menu, when CFM appeared on the display. It turns the FR down to 1 when you get to that display, by design, and so since FR went down, the furnace fan shut off and it won't run on high any more. So we'll wait and see what happens.


 
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freetown fred
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Post by freetown fred » Sun. Nov. 07, 2010 3:32 pm

no matter what--give Paul a call tomorrow :)

 
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Post by Pocono Newbies » Tue. Nov. 09, 2010 6:06 am

Couldn't call the coal trol guys, didn't have the time since I'm getting things in order before surgery on my shoulder tomorrow (things that require two good arms, or at least not having one in a sling), so I'll probably have to wait until after the surgery to call. TO BE CONTINUED... :) uhmmm, when I can type, that is, LOL!

 
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freetown fred
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Post by freetown fred » Tue. Nov. 09, 2010 6:56 am

Good luck with that surgery,I think you might be over amping on post surgery mobility issues,farmer up the road had his done & was up on the old John Deere haying a couple weeks later--yep,with sling--then again,my sister outside of Chicago,had hers done & didn't do anything for a couple mos.& still has trouble getting her arm behind her back--seems to me that rotator cuff surgery is becoming as rampant as triple by-passes in Fla-- anyhoooow,take care of yourself :)

 
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Post by Pocono Newbies » Sun. Feb. 13, 2011 7:15 am

Well I finally have about 90% use of my arm, still going for therapy though. This is taking awhile due to an extremely large tear, but now I can type, no problem! :) Still can't get the arm behind my back, though, and I can only lift 2 lbs! :o

We never did get our furnace fan to run on high again with the Coaltrol, and with the weather that turned so cold so soon, we just left things as they were. The furnace fan still runs, and still comes on with the Coaltrol on the low setting, but not high. High speed does still work with our furnace, however. We decided not to muck around with it anymore, before something happens and it won't work with the furnace!

The funny thing is that with having to run the Hyfire 2 with both burners, even in the warmer weather (20s-30s) that we only needed one burner for during the last heating season, we've used less coal. From startup in November, and even with the brutal cold we've had for extended periods, we've only burned a bit over 3-1/2 tons so far, and heated 2700 sq. ft. with it to 70-71 degrees. Coaltrol is set at 70. 1100 sq. ft. of that is our uninsulated basement, which has been a toasty 75 to 72 (furthest from the stove).

I did start another thread with pics of our coal ash, which does NOT look like it did last year. This year it has little blue stone rocks in it, and white, yellow, and rust colored flakes. Overall, the color looks almost like wet and dry sawdust mixed together, with dark rocks. In spite of this (we think our coal this year was full of junk, probably acounting for having to run both burners to keep the house warm in 20s-30s) we still used less coal. Last year, our ash was light gray and had some klinkers. We're currently getting our coal in Stroudsburg but we're looking for another supplier. Our neighbor has switched to a supplier in Saylorsburg, off Rt. 33. Any other suggestions, anyone?

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