New member intro and a few questions.

Hello everyone. My name is Bill. Im from Connecticut. I just registered today as I have acquired a coal stove last week. The stove I got was my parents old stove that they no longer use. I grew up tending to this stove but haven't used it in close to 20 years. so I don't remember much beyond the basics of dumping the ash and shoveling in the fresh coal.

I did a bit or looking online for a good coal forum to join and you guys really seem to have it together. Thanks for the great site. I will put a few stats up and an signature once this first post is done to see what shows up as default. I am active on several forums, so I know the general etiquette very well.

First question is about this particular forum's etiquette. Some forums get all gung ho about searching past threads for info that has been repeated many times. Whereas others request that new threads be started as to not dig up old topics. What is the best plan of attack for this forum?

Hurricane Sandy turned my house's furnace into scrap metal. (long story) So due to my living situation and financial ability, the coal stove is now my primary source of heat for the house. Hopefully just for this season. The wife and I plan on buying a new house next summer.

My stove is a Locke Warm Morning 628E

Its been running for exactly 1 week now. I feel I have been tending to it properly as far as doing ash and new fuel. I had given me good heat for the first part of last week, keeping the house between 70* and 75*. However the past few days the stove has been gradually getting cooler. This morning the house was about 60* When I opened the door to look at the fire, there was a low to moderate amount of coal and a lot of ash to shake. The fire was pretty pitiful. Its been that was for the past couple days.

I nursed it back to health over the course of a couple hours and now its good and hot again. From what Ive read on the forum here, their isn't much to do in the way of care besides shaking the ash twice a day and adding the coal after. Am I missing anything?

I suspect There may be an issue with my air flow. And the steps to take. Ive pretty much made it up based on how I think it should be, Im probably wrong. I do not have a barometric dampener in the pipe. Just a flap dampener (sorry if my lingo is off. I'm still learning) I leave the flapper closed all the time except for then I have the top door open for looking or adding coal. The top door vent is always closed and the ash door vent I usually keep cracked about a ...Im an idiot with judging angles. Ill just post a pic...


My house is ancient and very drafty so I was told I don't need a barometric dampener. But I still feel my coal is burning too fast.

Can someone shed some light on whether Im doing something wrong?

We will not (for the most part) force you to go back and read blurbs from years past. I know how annoying and frustrating that can be.

You mentioned that your house is drafty, but if your chimney is similarly drafty and uneven in its draw from day to day, hour to hour, then I'm in with the camp that believes a barometric damper can be of assistance in balancing out draft and thereby the burn. Others are in the camp that a manual pipe damper (what I believe you are calling a flap damper) is the way to go, and still others are in the camp which says don't bother with either.

The way to know if your chimney draw is sufficient, erratic, or steady, etc... is to install a low cost manometer. The Dwyer model 25 is most popular with those on this forum. You can get them at a decent price from 'Cole Parmer' online.

As I don't own and have never (yet) operated a hand fired stove, this is about all I can chime in on here. Stay tuned for others to help you. Several forum members are also using and enjoying the heat they get form this stove.

Hi godesshunter, welcome to the forum.
If your stove burned ""very well"" for a few days then slow down , it seems to be an ash accumulation on the grate and maybe all around it, depending on the fire pot style. Some fire pots models acumulate a lot of ash/dust all around so that make an insulation barrier keeping the heat inside of the stove.
Try to poke the bottom of the grate after the shaking and see if you get a lot more ash down in the pan.
If possible for you, send some more photos showing the stove's set up, grate...could help for help

nortcan wrote:If possible for you, send some more photos showing the stove's set up, grate...could help for help

I can certainly sent more pics. Ill try to get a couple of the grate. It may be difficult while burning but I'll try. Thanks.

You have to at least get a stove thermometer so you can monitor stack and stove temps to get an idea of the best way to run the stove. Once you do that then what it burns depends on your house and its heat loss.

Looking at the picture the air inlet looks pretty wide to me and would indicate a pretty hot burn. Open the manual pipe damper and adjust the air inlet accordingly. Get a feel for that and then proceed to try other things like closing the pipe damper.

*godesshunter* Welcome to the forum.

You are doing pretty well with that stove for being away from it for 20 years, I'd say.

I think you even answered your own question.

Ash...a little too much remaining after each shakedown and it all catches up eventually and you know now what will happen.

As far as burning too much coal...MPD (flapper) keep doing what you're doing...maybe when fire's started well reduce the ash door air a little to slow the burn and exit of heat.

You are loading the coal all the way up to the top of the refractory, aren't you?

Warm mornings are great stoves and here is links to PDFs other forum members have posted in the past that have helped me with my WM stove .

Btw what coal are you burning? Bituminous or anthracite?

http://nepacrossroads.com/download/file.php?id=16099

http://nepacrossroads.com/download/file.php?id=30193

I'm not sure what the coal capacity is on the 628E but I'm going to guess at 100lbs?

If so your stove should get over 12 hours of burn time with ease. I can get that in my 414a which is a 40lbs model. Do you have good draft in the chimney?

If you are using anthracite you need a 3/16 to 1/4 " rod to poke up through the grate to up shake down that ash . You can't just shake it down and leave it. Also run a poker through coal from the top to just up any clinkers that may be clumped up and then shake down and repeat if need be.

If you are using bituminous the. You will defiantly want to poke it from the top and then shake down but the bituminous is an easier shake down and you shouldn't have to poke through the bottom of the grate. I have bee able to run the stove a long time this way but no matter what you do these stoves will build up ash in the flue corners and choke the stove out slowly and you will get lower and lower burn times.

Take that 3/16" rod and put a 1.5" 90 degree bend in it and when you poke through the bottom of the grate try to get those flue corners and you will see how much more ash comes out when you do it and you will know exactly what I mean .

Btw welcome and happy heating

You need to post pictures of your set-up. From your words and the photo you posted, I'm not sure what you are referring to as the "flap dampener". The photo looks like it's on the stove. A MPD - maunal pipe damper - is in the chimney pipe, not the stove. It would be useful for us to know if you have one and if you are using it.

Welcome to the forum.

dj

There doesn't seem to be a multi-quote button so Ill just answer the best I can to each response.

First off...Thanks everyone for the replies! I do have a stove thermometer. At first I kept it on the stack but the temp was always very low so I moved it to the side of the stove body itself. Seems to be better but still never gets above the halfway mark in the "safe zone" The temp is high now because Ive left the damper/flapper open most of the day.

As far as coal, Ive been using anthracite nugget. That's the only option at the local hardware store Ive been getting it from. At least that's what it says on the bag. No idea what "bituminous" is or means. What coal should I be using? I was also given the option of "pea" My father said I could use that too be he used to use nugget so I stuck with that.

The poker rod thing is an option to look into. I didn't see that anywhere when looking up how to operate the stove tho. Perhaps I took the "set it and forget it" method too literally. And I don't remember ever having to use that years ago.

How long should I be able to run the stove before I need to let it die and do a total ash cleaning? It's going to be a pain if its a once-a-week thing.

pics of my setup: Please excuse the tile backdrop. I defiantly failed when putting that in the wall. Will be fixing soon.







The "flapper" I refer to is in the grey pipe just before the elbow. What the proper name of that?

The term is manual damper. Your stove I believe is the middle size which holds 60 pounds of coal.

Your clearances to the back wall are much too close. You need at least 18 inches and that is assuming you have sheet metal or tile spaced out one inch from the wall behind it.

franco b wrote:Your clearances to the back wall are much too close. You need at least 18 inches and that is assuming you have sheet metal or tile spaced out one inch from the wall behind it.

Maybe you could get a piece of cement board behind it for temporary..

In my old house where I burned wood, I used 4' x 8' sheets of this fire rated wallboard stuff (stood away from my existing walls by the requisite 1 inch using spacers I cut from thin wall aluminum pipe). I covered it with glued on face bricks (bricks that are only about 1/4" thick) and it looked pretty good.

Here is the lik to the fire rated wallboard:

http://www.homasote.com/products/NCFR-Homasote.aspx

And here is an example of face bricks:

http://www.redlandbrick.com/thinbrick.asp

home despot or low sss has dura-rock or hardi board 3x5 sheets 11 bucks

godesshunter wrote:There doesn't seem to be a multi-quote button so Ill just answer the best I can to each response.

First off...Thanks everyone for the replies! I do have a stove thermometer. At first I kept it on the stack but the temp was always very low so I moved it to the side of the stove body itself. Seems to be better but still never gets above the halfway mark in the "safe zone" The temp is high now because Ive left the damper/flapper open most of the day.

That damper is being shown in the photos as fully closed. Unless you have a lot of draft in your chimney, that is probably more closed than you'd want. It does depend upon how much draft your chimney has, and the specific damper. Some dampers have larger holes in them than others, some have no holes. Can't know without opening the pipe. I do run my stove in that position often, but I have a lot of draft with my chimney and my damper has medium sized holes in it...

godesshunter wrote:As far as coal, Ive been using anthracite nugget. That's the only option at the local hardware store Ive been getting it from. At least that's what it says on the bag. No idea what "bituminous" is or means. What coal should I be using? I was also given the option of "pea" My father said I could use that too be he used to use nugget so I stuck with that.

Others will know your stove better than I do, but I seem to recall that you are good with what you are burning...

godesshunter wrote:How long should I be able to run the stove before I need to let it die and do a total ash cleaning? It's going to be a pain if its a once-a-week thing.

I never need to let my stove die to clean it. But I run a different kind of stove. I would think you should be able to figure out how to clean out the ash so that you don't have to let the stove go out. There are others here that run this specific stove, they will have more experience with your specific stove.

godesshunter wrote:pics of my setup: Please excuse the tile backdrop. I defiantly failed when putting that in the wall. Will be fixing soon.

You definitely need to get fire-proofing up behind that stove as others here have said.

godesshunter wrote:The "flapper" I refer to is in the grey pipe just before the elbow. What the proper name of that?

That's your MPD. Make adjustments to this damper to help control how hot the stove runs. The more open you run this damper, the hotter the stove will run, the more heat also goes up the chimney. You find a balance between how open that damper is and much heat you are getting. It can take some time to figure out and it varies from stove to stove and installation to installation. But if the stove was running hot enough before and is now not hot enough, then ash build up is the most likely reason. But you can compensate some by running the damper open more to get more airflow through the stove but these particular stoves I believe have a problem with ash build up. Smokeyja has probably given you some good pointers, I didn't look into his links...

Good luck, and let us know how you make out.

dj

There seems to be a lot of concern about my back drop. I do intend on fixing it. The home depot fireboard is a good suggestion. I wasn't too concerned about it though because the backdrop is barely warm to the touch. The white shelf under the window is actually the outside ground level. The entire back wall of my house is under ground and remains cold all winter. Im looking into alternatives anyway. I don't like the tile there. They absorb and retain a lot more heat than the wall itself does.

As for the damper, I put it in myself. It was kind of a guess as to where exactly to put it. This is the one I put in.



I defiantly looked at those links. I forgot to thank Smokeyja for providing them. Thank you!

The instructions say to keep the ash door vent closed. Im sure they know what they are talking about, but I just got nervous about choking the fire out. The last thing I want to do is deal with a dead stove full of unburned coal.

Im just really trying to find a happy medium between a hot fire and good fuel economy. It seems the way to go is to play with the manual damper till I find the sweet spot.