Hand Fired Stove Lights OK, but Doesn't Get That Hot

Actually...
He burned wood before, so it was setup for wood...
Baro a no-go for wood...
MPD on wood is a creosote catcher...

tom641 wrote:no dampers on the flue pipe. The stove was installed by the fellas that Stoves and Stuff sent here...A few weeks later, my HVAC man connected the whole system to the existing Goodman electric furnace

Stove installers are notoriously ignorant about how to install stoves -- seriously, no joke. Also your HVAC guy, if he does not burn coal, probably does not realize that you need a barometric damper (often called a "draft control") like that used with most oil burners. But he certainly should be able to install one for you if you don't want to tackle it yourself. Check the owners manual to see the recommended setting for the baro. (Some will say to use a manual damper, not an automatic barometric damper. Most on this forum say barometric, not manual.)

tom641 wrote:Looking forward, next 5 days, weather says hits 60 degrees each day. I am wanting to try filling up the firebox, see what this bad boy can do. But probably not in the next five days.

That is a fallacy. Always fill the firebox all the way, in either the coldest or the warmest weather. The fire is controlled by the amount of air allowed through the intake, not by the quantity of coal. On a fresh fill up, I find it best to feed it a lot of air until the coal bed is burning well and there are blue flames. Then, set the controls for the level of heat you really need. So in warmer weather you DO get some excessive heat for a while until the new burn settles down. The wife and the cat never call it excessive, however.

CapeCoaler wrote:MPD on wood is a creosote catcher...

I never had a problem with creosote and my MPD burning wood. The MPD is close enough to the stove that the temp is hot enough not have any creosote deposit on it. The flue gases have to cool down enough to condense the creosote...

Of course, I also almost never had problems with creosote as I burned well seasoned dry hardwoods. But I did have an initial learning curve, and friends that weren't so careful...

dj

rberq wrote:

tom641 wrote:Looking forward, next 5 days, weather says hits 60 degrees each day. I am wanting to try filling up the firebox, see what this bad boy can do. But probably not in the next five days.

That is a fallacy. Always fill the firebox all the way, in either the coldest or the warmest weather. The fire is controlled by the amount of air allowed through the intake, not by the quantity of coal. On a fresh fill up, I find it best to feed it a lot of air until the coal bed is burning well and there are blue flames. Then, set the controls for the level of heat you really need. So in warmer weather you DO get some excessive heat for a while until the new burn settles down. The wife and the cat never call it excessive, however.

This is one of the use'ta'be wood burner now gone to coal mistakes...Forget wood burning!!!... Fill'er up!!!

You never need to gauge your daily amount of fuel with the meteorologist's help again.

I think once you get this all sorted out you will be very happy w/ your unit's performance w/ coal. Sounds like you have a proper chimney and air handling/distribution is smartly designed. Only improvement I see needed is, you should look into is adding a barometric damper to control the draft at a steady calibrated rate (not too much-or too little) which will improve the over all performance of the unit.

Enjoy the heat

tom641 wrote:

CapeCoaler wrote: Question on the electric damper...
does it slowly open/close the air feed damper in small increments...
or is it full open to full close more like an on/off switch..

The electric damper is either full open or full closed. Nothing in between. But it does have an adjustment for how large "full open" is

Tom641 - check your PM's ... in the upper mid-left.

When my wood/coal furnace was installed last year, the heating & cooling folks who did the work (and they did a REALLY nice job at installation!) also left the baro draft damper off. They happily called me to say the job was completed and I could light it off. When I got there and saw the baro damper still in the box, I told them to come out & finish the job, and NOT to charge me for what should have been done. I politely told them to read the rest of the installation manual. They gave me a "my bad" and came out right away. Said a baro draft damper was SOP on oil burners, but they weren't sure about a coal furnace. This was their first coal furnace installation. Get that baro damper in there and make sure there's a supply air line running from outside to somewhere in your furnace room. Coal furnaces like yours (and mine) won't fire well at all unless they get fed large quantities of outside supply air.

Harman does have a customer support line, I've used it 3 times in the past two months. I think they have the same guy working the line every day. From his manner of speaking, I'd bet he's an engineer with them.

Harman Stove Support 800.664.3119

Kielanders wrote:Harman Stove Support 800.664.3119

Thanks for posting that. Maybe Harman has finally decided to become a little more accessible.