Maximizing Efficiency of Your Hand Fed Appliance

63roundbadge wrote:Wow, I guess the stoves are different! That minuscule coating I have is after 4 years of use, I never scraped before. I do get 1/16 of ash on horizontal surfaces like the tops of the firebrick which I expect.

Yeah man, the vertical sides of the firebox get coated with fly ash. I'm betting its because the sides are cooled by the blowers quite drastically, since mine is a hand fed furnace as opposed to a hand fed stove. The sides of a stove's firebox probably stay much hotter I'm willing to say. This may be the difference.

63roundbadge wrote:Did you ever think of toasting cheese sandwiches between shakings down there?

Actually, I thought it wound be interesting to shove a cookie sheet in there with some bacon on it

Another tweak of efficiency

Recently, I've been watching my baro to get an idea of what the gases off the top off the coal bed are doing. I've noticed that with more secondary air over the fire, the gases burn more stable and the baro will be stable.. With less secondary air over the fire, the gases will flash slowly, with combustion all at once as the right air mixture is achieved with the slower incoming available oxygen. I call these mini-puffs

What I'll do is adjust my secondary air so the mini-puffs can't become mega-puffs hahaha.. At that point, I'm letting in enough oxygen to keep a major puff back from occurring, but at the same time its not too much that I'm allowing an excessive amount of heat up the chimney

Lightning wrote:Recently, I've been watching my baro

I was watching mine this morning set at .03 and going to .05,then I held the baro closed and it went to 1.5 and 2 with the high winds were having,that just shows how the baro is actually saving your heat and helping the effciency also

Dennis wrote:I was watching mine this morning set at .03 and going to .05,then I held the baro closed and it went to 1.5 and 2 with the high winds were having,that just shows how the baro is actually saving your heat and helping the effciency also

Whoa! thats some heavy wind partner!
Good thing the wind doesn't make the draft go the other way, or weed be in deep do do