Disappointed With Coal

Is that a old WR? Old friend had one (wr175) with Isle of Man stickers on it.

mkline wrote:

Waiting for pictures of motorcycle being rebuilt [/quote]
Hehe .
Mike[/quote]

I owned a Citation for 15 years and used it to burn wood and coal. The stove needed a slight modification when changing from wood to coal.

On mine there was an air gap between the removable cast iron plate of the coal bed and the front of the stove. When burning coal I found that the stove was much more efficient when you block the incoming air from coming out of this gap and going over the top of the coal bed.

Below are two pictures, the first picture is of my old stove showing the air gap used for burning wood, the second is showing the air gap blocked with a piece of door gasket for burning coal.

I would purposely not make the gasket so that it blocked all the air because you need some air to burn off the gas and prevent gas explosions after stoking.

Outstanding post dll. A picture tell a thousand words. Is that 3/4 gasket?? looks it.

Seal all that front plate. I got about the same problems with my VigII, and when I replaced the front horizontal grates, the stove was like an other stove. I even could get the fire pot (chamber) smaller and have more heat than before.
The shaking is also the key to a lot of problems when burning anthracite. You may have to scilce the ash, sometimes just shaking doesn't get the fine ash fall down in the pan so you can't get the heat out of the load.

After I modified the baffle I started another fire today. This time I got a good fire going with blue ladies across the whole coal bed. Then I slowly closed the MPD all the way shut. It still has the holes in the middle to let some air out. I still have the ashpan vents open all the way. Come back a couple hours later. Its throwing pretty good heat. So it looks like the MPD does work, just need to close it way more than I was. Thanks guys.

Try closing the ash door vents about half way for a start

And don't forget: the combustion air MUST come from under the grates only then up in the ash bed,the coal bed and finally the anthracite bed. The comb. air shouldn't by-pass that path. Air is lazy and go the easiest route.
Ash dood open??? You'r shure you don't have a choked ash bed?

I didn't see this post until now or I would have contributed sooner.

I agree with others that have suggested you have air bypassing the coal bed. Dll's modification to add a rope gasket along the front is critical. Also I found other gaps in the corners that I stuffed with insulation. You want to force the air to pass through the coal bed.

I did not replace my door gaskets because they looked to be in good shape. As others have suggested, if you have air leaking around the load door, it will reduce the air being drawn up through the coal bed. Something to check out.

See my post on the Citation, pages 2 and 3 have details and pictures that show where I sealed off air gaps:

Refurbishing a Salvo Citation

I find that I often need to slice down into the coal from above to free up ash that does not want to drop from shaking alone. That will allow more air to move through the coal. The front grate has 3 holes intended for the poker to slice into the coal above the grates. I chose to plug these with rope because they spill ash. I poke from the top instead.

When loading coal, I do it in stages so that new coal will get hot and start burning without taking the stove temp too low. In the morning I will load in 2-3 separate layers over a 30 minutes period. I have the ash door open during reload to get that new coal fired up. If I load all at once, the stove will continue to burn, but it may take hours to come back up to the temp that I want. I much prefer to have it at the desired temp so that I can set the air vents correctly for the day and leave the house.

To prevent blow back from unburned gases, when I load fresh coal, I initially leave the center area of red coals exposed to burn the gases. I have never had a blow back, although I always open the door slowly just to be sure before I get my body in the line of fire. After the initial re-load has gotten established, then I add coal to the center. If there are blue flames somewhere over the bed, then the gases are burning.

If I left my ash door open with an established fire the stove would hit 700 F (not recommended) within 1/2 hour, so it is not normal for you to need to do so. My vents are usually open about 1/4 to 1/3. The stove top temp runs between 300-450 F unless I am idling in warm weather.

I have both a MPD and a Barro, and I believe they give me proper draft control, but I have gotten good heat without them and so I do not believe that is the biggest issue. I think the air bypassing the coal bed is much more likely the number 1 problem.

Once you have the stove putting out solid heat, you can leverage it with the fan and built in heat exchanger. The fan will push out some nice heat, but you need to solve the fundamental issues first.

My Citation can heat our ancient 1100 ft2 house although it labors on windy bitter cold days. While I want you to succeed with this stove, you are trying to heat a large space with a modest output stove. I'm sure if you keep tweaking it, you will get good heat, and then you can decide if you enjoy playing with coal. I hate to see the Citation get a bad rep, but it might not be the right stove for your house.

My learning curve was shortened tremendously by reading this forum. This stove is working for me, but only because I had such great advice from fellow burners.

I just noticed that your avatar says Harman Mark III. I wonder if you switched stoves already..?