Starting my stove

When starting up my stove Pioneer LE it seems to take along time for the Coaltrol Feed Rate to drop. I did an override to drop the temp down below the room temp of 70 degrees, the FR was has taken 30 mins to go from FR 96 to FR 45 and it is 90 degrees in the room according to the Coaltrol box. Is it normal for the temp to get very warm before finally settling out? Just not sure why is takes so long for the FR to drop when the Coaltrol is seeing the room temp is 20 degrees above the override setting.

Thanks

Hello and welcome. I am sure Dave from LL will respond to you and tell you about the details of fine tuning this wonderful stove but he is busy man this time of year so make sure first you study the manual for your coaltrol e.g.

Tips & Tricks

I am not sure which version of the coaltrol you have but just reviewing this example for your stove may solve your problems.

Coal heat is not like oil heat in that you have to anticipate your heating needs a little better and you will see constant referrals to window stats. This means the downsides of cheap energy is that once in a while you learn to bleed off that xs heat by opening the window. As you get better at it in your application you will do that less and less but get used to it as the upsides are overwhelming. Once mother nature decides to do her worst this will be the least of your concerns.

Typical on startup, you can set thermostat ABOVE room temp by like 5-10 degrees and will drop the FR faster, since it will think the temp is satisfied, until it settles out. Then re-adjust as necessary. Coal does take a while for it to settle out and maintain. Its definately not instant.

WNY wrote:Typical on startup, you can set thermostat ABOVE room temp by like 5-10 degrees and will drop the FR faster, since it will think the temp is satisfied, until it settles out. Then re-adjust as necessary. Coal does take a while for it to settle out and maintain. Its definately not instant.

Correction to this , You want to adjust the setpoint 5-10 degrees BELOW room temp to drop the feed rate.

cperkins wrote:When starting up my stove Pioneer LE it seems to take along time for the Coaltrol Feed Rate to drop. I did an override to drop the temp down below the room temp of 70 degrees, the FR was has taken 30 mins to go from FR 96 to FR 45 and it is 90 degrees in the room according to the Coaltrol box. Is it normal for the temp to get very warm before finally settling out? Just not sure why is takes so long for the FR to drop when the Coaltrol is seeing the room temp is 20 degrees above the override setting.

Thanks

Feed Rate is a calculation of error between the setpoint temp and actual room temp over a period of time. So if you had power to the thermostat for a couple hrs and the feedrate was 99 the whole time it will take some time to adjust itself lower. One thing you can do to help is unplug the unit for about 10seconds ten plug it back in and immediately lower the setpoint temp.

I came home and my upstairs was a little cool, down near the stove at the coaltrol which is about 7 feet in front of the stove the temp was 79, which is what the night setting is. I bumped it up to 81 for an override temp and with about 20 mins the coal troll is reading a room temp of 92 and it is still feeding coal. Why did this go from 79 to 92 when all I did was do an override of 2 degrees to get it up to 81.

As was said, coal is a slow process. By you setting your temp up 2 degrees it put the feed rate up to increase the room temp. However since coal is slow to respond, the stove eventually started cranking out the heat. Probably took at leat 20 minutes to get the stove hot. All the while the thermostat is still calling for more heat so it increases the feed some more. Then when the temp got to 81 degrees the stove was really cooking. It takes a while for that heat to dissipate once the feed rate drops. That feed rate got the stove hot which continued to radiate heat from it.

Better thing to do in your situation is to just hold in the menu button until it reads "feed" Then tap the up button to read 10. This will just run the feed rate up for 10 minutes. Wait a bit for the heat to radiate from the stove and if a little more heat is needed, repeat the feed sequence.

These coal stoves respond slowly. They first ramp up the feed to put more coal to the fire. Then the coal has to burn, then it heats up the mass of metal, then the metal radiates into the room. Once a pile of coal starts burning, you just can't put an immediate stop to it like with an oil burner or propane fire.

Be patient, you will get the hang of it.



Rick

Rick 386 wrote:Be patient

It's Coal....this is the word we LIVE by.

I still doesn't make since that if the coal-trop says the room temp is 92 why is the feed rate 99 and continuing to feed coal. Why wouldn't the system say I'm 11 degrees warmer than what the overide setting is set for now drop the feed rate to 0. Now it's been about an hour since the coal-trol dropped the feed rate and my override setting is 81 and the room temp is 77.

In a matter of about 1.5 hours I went from 79 degree room temp, bumped up the override to 81 and the room temp went up to 92, now the override is still at 81 and the room temp is 77.

It seems to be slowly coming back up to to my override setting now the room temp has went up about 2 degrees in the last 10 mins, which is what I would have expected to happen in the first place.


Thanks to all for your responses, the coal stove is definitely different then wood pellets stove

You will get the hang of it. It is proven technology and works well but there is a little learning curve.

One other thing your thermostat is very close to the stove and it seems like you are not getting much convection in the home. So if the thermostat is only 7'away you will see fast temperature changes faster than the stove can respond. Try moving the thermostat and adding a fan to pull some of the heat upstairs. Also have you changed the HLF# by chance?

I have moved the thermostat around to different walls and with the exception of a few times when starting or adjusting the temp using the override it maintains a consistent temp.I was thinking about a fan, this stove is in the same place as my wood pellet stove was and that always did a good job of heating the whole house. I have a raised ranch on a cement slab and the stove heats the down stairs and goes up the stairway warms the dinning and kitchen and gradually cools as goes back to the bedrooms which really works out good, not comfortable sleeping if it was 80 degrees. I was trying the cooler during the day when we are not here and warmer when we get home but I didn't have good luck with that with the wood either. Guess I will just maintain one temp all day and night.

Not sure what the HLF# is.

HLF is in the advanced menu it should be zero . It stands for heat loss factor. One difference is 90,000btu @ 80-85% efficiency vs 45000 btu @50% efficiency with pellets.

I went through the book and do not see how to get into the advanced menu to verify the HLF #, I get into the test, feed.

cperkins wrote:I went through the book and do not see how to get into the advanced menu to verify the HLF #, I get into the test, feed.

Keep holding the menu button till you see R then A , I believe that its about 15 seconds. If you were never there it should not be off 0.