Offically Shut Down

I shut down for the year. When you need all windows and doors open and it still dosnt change the temp in the house I guess it is time to shut down and do a good clean out.

Me, too, though I'm not sure if it's for the year or not. Looking at temps in the 80s next week, but I usually burn for a lot longer into the year than this. We may still get some cool (I doubt cold) weather.

I'm always amazed at how quiet the house is when I shut down. Unfortunately, that noise will soon get replaced with a dehumidifier.

Just shut down my stoker, I may have rushed it a little being that I'm in the Pocono's but if need be I can always start it up again.

You guys in PA must have warmed up fast. We are warm at my place but not enough to turn the Channing III off yet. Did hit a high of 60 yesterday, but down to 49 today. Last year it was going until April 15th.

Haven't shut er down yet, the koker still spits out some heat at night (temps have been in the upper 30s/low 40s) and I want to wait to see how the beginning of April looks. But it is nice to just burn about 1/2 bag of blackshak a day. The coal trol has my stove "sipping", on average, a little less than 1 pound of coal per hour.

Question for you Wynrob or any other Koker users out there,

I see you are running a Koker. I'm looking at moving this way too. I've got a couple questions that I'm hoping you might answer for me. Are you ducting your Koker into your hot air furnace's cold air return duct? If you are, that's the setup I'm going with. How well does this work for you? Do you use the hot air furnace to circulate the hot air coming off your Koker? Just wondering how this hot air gets distributed through out the house since the Koker is on its own thermastat.

Do you use the Hot water coil option in your Koker too?

Thanks!
Xpress23

For the easy question, no I didn't get the water coil with it.

I can't answer your other question exactly since I am not using my propane furnace's blower at all. What I did is just duct the koker's heat (using round ductwork off of round holes keystoker cut into the top of the heat jacket for me) into my existing trunk lines that carried the furnace's warm air. In order to do this, I strategically placed dampers in my trunk lines to keep the coal heated air from back flowing through my cold air returns. Then I ran two separate cold air returns from my existing return trunk lines to the koker's convection blower (one to each side of it). So, I am using the factory supplied Dayton blower to distribute all my coal heated air. The blower is rated at 1,500 cfm (similar to a gas forced air furnace), but I don't think I am getting quite the air pressure as with the propane furnace, but I am satisfied with its performance. One thing I may change over the summer is put a plenum over the koker and run rectangular ducts to my trunk lines. This may give me more "oomph" in air flow, I am currently using one 10" and two 8" ducts running from the koker to my existing ducts. FYI, I am not a plumber/HVAC guy so I just kind of put this together off the top of my head with hopes that it would work, which it did for the most part.

The schematic below pretty much shows what I did. It is NOT drawn to scale!!!

xpress23 wrote:Question for you Wynrob or any other Koker users out there,

I see you are running a Koker. I'm looking at moving this way too. I've got a couple questions that I'm hoping you might answer for me. Are you ducting your Koker into your hot air furnace's cold air return duct? If you are, that's the setup I'm going with. How well does this work for you? Do you use the hot air furnace to circulate the hot air coming off your Koker? Just wondering how this hot air gets distributed through out the house since the Koker is on its own thermastat.

Do you use the Hot water coil option in your Koker too?

Thanks!
Xpress23

Xpress23, I am pretty much doing the same thing with my koker as Wnyrob is doing with his. I put a hard removeable "block" though just after my old oil furnace so the cold air stays on the koker track as well as one inline damper to prevent backup when I am using the Oil furnace (have not used the oil furnace in 3 years now though!)

You will love the Koker, any questions feel free to ask.....oh make sure you know it will fit into your basement.

I measured and checked and researched and at delivery day 4 years ago it was a tight fit down the stairs and I was sweating as the delivery guy was about to give up...I actually had to take off the combustion blower to squeeze in and convince him it ould work!

Not quite there yet. I was down for 2 days while we had temps in the 60's in an effort to save coal. Wednesday night the temp dropped 30+ degrees in a few hours, so the house was 60 by morning. By the time I finished working on the Blazer fuel pump it was 22:00. Tried to start the stove, but being tired & already aggravated, that didn't go so well. Fired it up again Thursday morning. Slow to catch with .015" draft.

Looks like tonight will be the last night I'll need it for a while again. Forecasting 70-75° all of next week!

I like the setup you guys are using and bypassing the propane/electric/gas hot air furnace. Is the 1500 cfm blower is suffecient for distributing the koker's hot air through out the entire house? What size house are you heating with your koker and this kind of setup. I'd be looking at heating a 2 strory 2000 sq. ft. home with this setup. I would be including the hot water coil to my stove too. It can't hurt, since the stove is running anyway, I might as well heat some water too.

Thanks or the info.!
Xpress23

My house is 1,700 sf. It is basically a ranch with a 20 x 20 family room that sits on the back of the house off the kitchen and is six steps higher than the original house. Like I said, my propane furnace had a little better air flow but it was also positioned about 20 feet closer to the back of the house than the koker is. I positioned the koker where it is due to an existing chimney at the front of the house.

My gut feeling about your house is that you may get better air flow since a lot of the flow will be vertical (2 stories). I am assuming you probably have less of a horizontal footprint (maybe a 30 x 30 or so, if it is a square shaped house) than my house. My koker has to pretty much push its heated air through the entire length of the house in order to heat the family room (roughly 50' to 60' worth of duct).

A HVAC guy may be able to answer you more reliably.

2000 sf two story stone house and basement....my koker keeps it at 75 degrees on the first floor and about 5 degrees cooler on the 2nd floor just using the 1500 cfm koker blower.

Let the hopper empty out this morning and let my Pocono burn out. Cut the switch, but I know we will have more cold weather. At the moment, here in Groton, NY the out door temperature reads 78 degrees and 75 inside. Unbelievable!

This weekend, I decided to really put the coal trol to the idle test. I set the thermostat so that it was displaying my MIN setting of 3, which forces the stoker to run, indefinitely, at this minimum setting regardless of what the house temp is dong. My draft maintained itself, dropping to about .01-.015, and I was able to stretch a 40 lb bag of coal out over 3 days (72 hours). It is amazing how such a big, bulky, heat generating machine can just purr along at almost .5 lbs per hour (with an ADEQUATE draft of course).

After today (75°!!) I was tempted to remove the coils & start the cleanout ritual .... but knowing New England weather .... it'll be 80 this week, and 15° & snowing the next. Gonna wait till April, at least.