Really temperamental stove/draft !!

here IS the problem you have a large exterior masonry chimney; you will get powerfull downdrafts, poor drafting. exterior chimneys are a terrible, terrible thing. unfortunatly i'm sure a few people will be along in a bit to tell me about how well their exterior chimney has been working for them, and yes there are always exceptions, and depending on your setup there could be a million reasons why it functions, however, take that same chimney and put it in the interior of your house and noone would even try saying an exterior chimney is ok ever again.

whenever i see a chimney that is encountering problems 99.999995% of the time it's an exterior masonry chimney, and you may be able to reduce the problems, but you're fighting a battle you will never win.

Dallas wrote:Russo's recommendations are to burn nut, however I've been burning pea.

I would go with nut, the pea is a little to small in most hand fired units.

Did a short movie of the stove burn this afternoon. The first part is with it dampened off, the second part after the draft had been on for 30 seconds or so. It has burned pretty good today, even though it's been windy. Just click on it for "Live Coal Action".

[Link Removed]

I'll take a stabb at this draft problem. For starters , an inside chimney would be warmer , giving the draft a head start. Your chimney is outside , and that's what we are dealing with. The flue gasses of coal are nowhere near as hot as wood. For this reason , the draft won't be as strong. One thing that will help is an open chimney cap (no screen). Just a hat over the top of flue , so that low atmospheric preasure won't hold/push your draft down. Secondly , as others have mentioned , it sounds like your basement is tight. They are correct by saying you need to add outside air. Here's something that has not been mentioned. Your furnace , cloths dryer , or any other appliance which consumes air (even a stronger draft) , may actually be drawing on what little draft you have in your coal stove chimney. In other words , pulling on the draft just enough that your fire goes into what you describe as , a "Coma". A stronger pull on the chimney draft would bring smoke and fumes into the house. Would recommend detectors.

Well, actually it's been working pretty good, even with the mild weather, the baro will flutter a little even with a slow burn. I think, one of the things, which may have happened, during the "coma" stage, it was mild and I think the ashes had a chance to get tighter (more compacted). Since then, in addition to shaking the fire down, I've been loosening it up with the poker. Seems to help eliminate the "coma" situation". Another possibility is, that I might have left it get "beyond", before reloading it (too late).

My Harman is running with an outside chimney, when I first started with coal I was blaming all my burning issues on the exterior chimney. Do a search with the words "cold chimney", and look over the thread. I almost spent $1800 to have an insulated liner installed.

In the beginning I was running it without a baro damper, so I was heating the chimney up even more than I am now, but I thought the chimney was an issue at the time.

The only problem that the exterior chimney is causing for me is the initial start-up. I have to build a substantial wood fire w/ charcoal to warm the chimney and get a good draft going. Also, the baro damper helps keep the warm air flowing up the chimney. During extremely cold weather I feel the chimney does have an effect on the stove, more coal may be required to keep the temps up.

With the help of others on this forum I realized that the quality of the coal has much more of an effect on the performance of the stove than any other factor.

You do need to have good make-up air coming in somewhere as well. In this drafty old house it is not that much of a problem, but the clothes dryer is the biggest offender when the house is closed up in the cold weather. On cold days after the dryer is running for a while I can feel a temperature drop in the room where the dryer is. Imagine the air infusion needed when the coal burner is running, the woodstove is burning with the doors open and the screen in, the dryer is running and the oil-fired water heater starts up!

Well, here's the latest ....

The stove has been burning fine! I've not had any problems with down drafts, stove going out or even sluggish operation. I've been taking this whole stove thing cautiously, due to the problems I had initially. At first, I had my doubts about whether the problems could be corrected or not.

Since the stove is doing so good, I've moved on to the next phase, that being, "getting the heat out of that room and into the rest of the house". With a decent burn, it averages about 90* down there. I've done a video, of the progress , as of yesterday. What I've decided to do, is get a "twin window fan" and install it in an enclosure, below the vent cutouts. I've ordered a Honeywell, which has different speeds, thermostat, etc.. I think, one other thing which I'll probably end up doing, will be to install a cold air return duct from the first floor to near the basement floor, at the far end of the house. I took heat samplings at different areas, at the floor and that is one of the coldest areas. What I have , which I find to be really handy, while trying to get some kind of feel for the temps, is an infra-red thermometer (PE-2). Pretty reliable and inexpensive. http://www.tempgun.com/main.html

OK ... I've got one "return" installed at the end of the house furthest from the coal stove. I think, this will make quite a difference. Measuring the floor temps surrounding the return register in the living room floor, they seem to be much closer to those of the rest of the floor. .. before they were 10* cooler! It's still running pretty warm in the stove room. I hope the fan helps that situation.

Today I finally broke down and punched a hole through the cinder block wall for a fresh air source for the stove.

It's outside, under the deck. I put some screen over the inlet to keep out bears and things. I included a ball valve in the 2" PVC pipe, "just in case" (probably not needed). I don't feel any big rush of cold air coming down the pipe, however the fire seems to be burning better (not lazy), unless it's just my imagination. ??

I hope this is the last facet of "set-up". I finally received the Honeywell, Twin window fan ($25.00 plus shipping), made an enclosure, got it installed and primed the enclosure. ..it may never get painted. The enclosure is on a slight incline. I was going to mount the fan "behind" the enclosure, however "on the face" of it, seemed to work out better. It seems to work good. I haven't had a chance to really evaluate the "thermostat feature", however that's just "icing on the cake".

Hello Dallas, the duct you have coming out of the ceiling and ending a few feet above the floor, have you either extented the duct to behind your stove or hooked it up to the inlet of the distribution fan on your stove??

I think if you add some positive 'pull' on the duct from the distribution fan you will realize more heat from your setup. Part of this would be from reheating the air from upstairs which should be warmer than the air off the floor behind your stove, and the other increase would be to have the circulation loop complete from your stove's heat outlet to the return duct from upstairs.

Do you have access to more of the rigid duct, or some flexible duct and maybe one of the flanges to mount on the inlet of your fan?? I'm pretty sure you would find this modification worthwhile.

Greg L

No, the cold air return pipe is ?? 40' away on the other end of the house. Things are working pretty good, although the stove room can get toasty! I may add a fan to the cold air return to pull from the first floor.

Just to humor Greg, somewhat, I made a quick mod. to the system.

I was thinking about a "little help" on the cold air return. ... box, fan, couple to pipe.

I had an old humidifier sitting in the basement, being used as a "catch all" shelf, so to speak. I cleaned it up a little, added a duct take off with some aluminum duct tape to the back, over the intake, attached it via flex duct to the cold air return pipe, plugged it in and I was up and running in 15 minutes. (The humidifier acted as the "box and the fan", plus allowing easy adaption of the duct take off and 6" flex duct.)

Initially the temperature at the cold air return decreased, probably pulling cold air from far, far away. After 45 minutes, the mid room temperature has gained 1* from 74* to 75* (outside is at 39*) . It's pretty obvious that I now have a whole new situation to fine tune.

It may not be beautiful, but it was pretty easy to use as a test.

On TV's "Ask this Old House" they got a letter from a woman with a back drafting problem on a gas fired hot water heater and a wood fire place chimney. Richard T went up on the roof and looked at the chimney exits. Then he told her the first chimney is too big for the Hot Water Heater and needed a Liner, then he told her that the tops of all three exits were the same height allowing wood smoke to spill via back draft down the Furnace and Hot Water Heater chimneys. He installed the Liner and put a clay extension on the Furnace exit to get it highter than the Fireplace exit located in between the other two chimneys.

My only experience with Manual Dampers is that there are two kinds; a solid plate one for wood fires where you never close it totally off except in the spring and an old fashioned coal type where it has holes in the middle and isn't the same size as the pipe. Lehmans and the other Amish supply store carry them and explain this.

On a windy day when I am building a wood fire upstairs on an inside chimney, I open the window on the windy side of the house to force air up.

When the house gets too hot upstairs or downstairs, I open a window for an hour or two. The "Black Hole" phenomom. Then in the next day or two snow comes crashing off the steep tin roof. This tells me that no matter what, that heat rises!

I have two inside chimneys and an outside brick chimney with siding around it and it draws real good! I suspicion under the siding might be an insulation of some type though.

Out in the garage where my old fashioned oil stove is there is a baro which took me time to figure out but I now know from others that it prevents over drafting. Which is what I set it to do initially.

Jeff