Need help understanding manometer

.....sounds like your riding the learning curve and on your way, if I told you what to try it is merely a suggestion. It has taken me a yr. and 1\2 for my stove to teach me how to run her and it gets easier every day and some weeks no 2 days are alike. Last yr. I started with 'nut and ended with stove coal, big difference for my stove. I think my stove is simular to a harman mark 1 big sq. 16x10x9 fire box and a convection blower in the rear. My stove likes to be poked every other day, in the corners the most and after a hard night all over. My stove likes to be livened up in the a.m., loaded and then shaken, 10 minutes on the kitchen stove timer and closed down for 6-10 hrs. The best suggestion I got was to keep a log and note what works and what not, and keep notes on the outside temp etc. Good luck and welcome to the forum, keep posting the only wrong thing is not too ask, safety first! Mike.

I have a little variation of shaking down, similar to how Titleist1 does his:

I do the same with opening the door for a bit - just a little bit (Blaschak I'm burning is hard to extinguish, so I don't have to be as careful as with Kimmel's I had years ago) ...

I shake until I start to feel a little resistance ...

Then I pile a layer on to get some weight pushing down ...

Then I poke thru that layer, all around, concentrating on the areas that have more ash ...

Then give a final shake until red embers fall, and the pan is relatively evenly lit up red from the grates above.


Which reminds me ... I need to go do this now! Had the thing cranked last night.