Looking for Some Guidance

Hello, just wanna say that I've found alot of useful information so far on these forums. This is my first year burning coal. I've got an old cook stove that burns coal and wood. Now I'm looking for so
E guidance here to get the best heat output from this stove as I can. Just got it started last week and still working out some bugs. The stove has a manual damper and I've installed a baro also. When I start it up with wood I can get a pretty good draft going, about .05 and can get the stack temp to around 250 and the stove around 400 to 450. When I eventually get the box loaded up to the top with coal I start losing draft, usually down to .02. Now if I Lear the draft door at the bottom open all the way the stove will stay around 250 to 300 and stack temp at 100-125. Basically it just seems to be idling along. Now I just order the ad-1 draft inducer today to help with the deft problem. Now today being desperate to get some more heat out of it I put a small fan by the draft to to try and put a little more air through the coal and closed the manual damp just a bit. It finally started putting out a decent amount of heat. Now what I'm wondering is when I put on the draft inducer and run it around .05 to .06 will I still get good heat output or will it just take it all up the chimney. Should I just set the draft lower and just keep running the fan into the stove? Also if I ran the draft inducer and closed the manual damper halfway would that keep the heat in the house more?

Also if it helps I have a drafty old house with an old brick and mortar chimney. Basically I got plenty of fuel I'm just trying to get more oxygen to it

More questions than answers for now.... #1 and most important: Do you have a CO detector? If not, stop burning coal NOW. Once you get one (or two) you may go back to experimenting.

You say you added a fan. This is pushing air into the stove? That's a bad thing unless you know for sure that the stove is air tight and the draft is removing all gasses. It's possible....even likely...that you are pushing air in and CO out into the house. Old cook stoves are not famous for being air tight, in fact, their reputation is just the opposite. The draft inducer sucks air out, it does not push air in.

I think a lot of your problem lies in the stove itself. If you are determined to use it, I'd see about making it tighter. Get some stove cement and start plugging leaks. You see, coal demands that you have good control of the air. If you have leaks before the fire it will tend to overheat. If you have leaks after the fire it will tend to not run well at all. I think that you are witnessing leaks after the fire causing a din fire and that causes less draft, which causes a dim fire. The circle of no return.

If you are having draft problems, cover the barro with a piece of foil. This will force all the air to come from under the fire and that's what makes a coal stove hot. Once you get your draft figured out you can uncover the barro but for now it's counterproductive. Fred''s right - make sure that stove is air tight. Hold a candle near all the joints while the stove is drawing well, if there is a leak the flame will be drawn toward it. You say you also have a manual damper, what's it doing? Do you have a manometer? That's essential for figuring out problems with your draft. They are worth their weight in gold but actually are inexpensive at around $30; maybe you can borrow one from somewhere.

There are many things that could be affecting your draft, this is just a beginning. What's your chimney like? What type of coal are you using? How is the ash cleared? Can you send any pictures - we love pictures. Hang in there, it's still early on a Saturday but the answers will be flowing soon. Lisa

I got 2 co detectors, one on the first floor and one on the second. The fan I have right now is pushing air into the stove, one a pretty low speed. No co problems as of right now and can smell and sulfur coming from it. Also have a manometer to monitor the the draft placed before the baro. The chimney comes up from the basement and a rough guess would be 30 feet. I'm burning anthracite right now and the ash is cleared from the bottom of the firebox with shaker grates. The top is pretty sealed, I have two pretty small cracks in it that I gotta seal up. I'll work on some pictures.

Also I'm possible looking at a Franco belge 10.275 that I could pick up for about 75 bucks. Wondering if I should just buy it and haul out the old stove

Welcome to the FORUM. Hopefully franco b will give you some feed back on the FB you're thinking about--in my opinion, he is the franco beige man whatever route you take--post pix with your questions--real helpful for people sharing suggestions. Later my friend

Do you have your stove set so the fire goes around the oven, under it, and then up into the chimney? That could slow your draft down some too. There is likely a rod somewhere that controls that, unless its missing. You don't want it going around the oven until its burning good. And there may be a built in manual damper near where the stove pipe hooks up, part of the stove actually. Make sure thats open if it exists as it could be stuck partly closed.

When I fixed up mine I lined it with firebrick and actually lowed my grates a couple inches. I covered the front part of the grate with firebrick too for wood burning and then it would hold coals for 6 hours when burning wood.

Most the old cookstoves were made to heat a room and too cook with and werent made to heat a home. Some will though.

It's a pretty good size firebox. Sides are all lined with firebrick. I can keep it going for about eight hours without reloading. There is about a 3 inch gap between the top of the firebrick and the stovetop. Everything basically comes right out of the firebox, shoots to the right about 8 inches then up the pipe.

It sounds like you are doing things safely and very close to correct. Good! I am a bit leery about the fan pushing air into the stove, but as long as the draft removes 100% of the smoke, I'm OK with it. That being said..... you say it will go about 8 hours. During that 8 hours is it doing the job? That is, is it heating you as you want? I'm going to guess that 8 hours might be about as long as you'd expect to get from an old cook stove. To get longer I think you'll need to work at air control. I might see about a smoke test.... With the stove cold, take 6 or 7 sheets of newspaper, gently spritz them with water to slightly dampen them. Not much, just a little. Crumple the paper into the stove & light it. Once it get's going nice & smokey somehow cap the stove pipe & see just exactly where smoke leaks out. Or.... with a cold stove, somehow hook up a vacuum cleaner and use a candle to see where air is being sucked in. Or, take the stove outside and use a real smoke bomb from a heating supply house to find leaks. Any and all leaks sealed up will keep heat in the house rather than letting it go up the chimney.

A Franco Belge is a pretty good stove, but they are well known for needing a shake every 8 hours or so. They hold plenty of coal, but it's tricky to get them to go 12 hours without at least one quick shake.

You start to have trouble when the fire box is loaded but not when the bed of coal is thinner. I assume you are burning nut coal. A switch to stove coal will help it breath easier. Are you sure you are clearing out the ash sufficiently? Is the stove in direct draft or do you have it set for the flue gasses to go around the oven?

I think you should find out why this stove is acting the way it is before thinking about replacement.

In a drafty old house a Franco Belge might not be large enough. The fire box capacity is not large in these stoves.

First off I can tell you without even seeing that if you need to keep the ash/draft door open to get the coal to burn properly, you have a problem. We need to see your set up in pictures. The firebox, grates etc.... Before I "converted" my Glenwood cookstove to coal from wood, it acted the same way. The air from below must have NO other way around the firebox but straight up through the coal bed. If there are any other paths of lesser resistance, the air will go round the coal bed and bypass, thus you need all this extra air to maintain a fire. Once the firebox (and grates) are correct and the air has no way but up through the coal, you'll find that it requires very little air once started, to maintain a hot controllable fire. Lets see the pix first off.

Well problem solved... Got a good deal on a Russo #2 cw. With the stove running around 300 it keeps the whole house around 77. I can load it twice a day and still have a really good size fire going when I load it again. Only takes 20 minutes to shake, reload and get it back up to 300. I'm hooked on coal now! Gonna save myself a ton of money the this winter. By the time spring comes the stove and all the coal I get will pay for itself and still have some extra money in my pocket

Glad to see you have the coal burning under control. It takes a little time to get use to. The Russo is a nice solid stove. Burn safe and enjoy the heat from that stove.