D.S. Basement #4

I think you shake too much...
Every 12 works for me...
If you are sucking down that much coal...
the foundation is sucking up mucho heat...
Pull the stove off the wall by a 24"-36" section of pipe...
rear heat shield...
Unlike the sides the rear has no shield...
lots of heat goes into that stone wall...
2" foam 4'x8' sheet on wall behind stove covered to code with a tripple layer heat shield will...
Put more heat into the house...

It should always be filled to the top right from the get go as other have said. It's your wood burning getting in the way again with the less means less. With coal you initially build up to a full pot and hopper and it then stays that way for the heating season. You want less heat you turn your thermo door down/closed, more open it up. Think of it like a tank of gas in your car. You go easy on the throttle, you go further/less heat, you open it up you go faster/hotter for less time but you are always putting a full tank in every day. I would shake and fill on a 12 hr schedule twice a day.

Well as any person asking for advice, I have applied it. I shook down the stove this morning at 6 a.m and didn't mess with it until 6:45 p.m. It was still burning nicely and took the new coal well.

Here was my procedure for shaking down.
1. I made sure the hopper was filled.
2. I opened the bottom door and shook until I noticed some small red coals falling into the ash try.
3. I closed the door and watched the stove start to ignite the new coal.

I do believe I wasn't letting the coal burn the whole way to a dust/powder.

Let me know if I need to change anything about my process.

OH BY THE WAY - THE IDEA OF BURNING WOOD EVER AGAIN IS OUT OF MY THOUGHT PROCESS. Why did I deal with all that work and mess......... did i mention the work and mess......

Sounds like you're getting a good handle on it. The key when shaking down is to make sure you have a good glow from above reflecting into the ash pan. You may drop a little bit of glowing coals or not but as long as you have that orange glow from above lighting the ash pan when you're done shaking, you are good to go.

I have a smaller version of your stove. Sometimes ash will build up along the sides of the firebox and won't easily fall through the grates when you shake. So watch for that -- if you have a glow across all the grates when you look in from the bottom, you are OK. If not you may have to poke up through the grates from the bottom to help clear the edges and especially the corners. Or you may have to use a long rod and poke down from the top every day or two to clear the ash. Be careful about the top-down poking, if you disturb the coal bed too much you can kill the fire.

For poking up from the bottom -- somebody on the forum a few years ago recommended the metal rod from a paint roller. Bend the end at a right angle a couple inches long to stick up through the grates. Also bend the rod near the plastic handle to give better ergonomics. Works great!

And like others said, try not to let the hopper go entirely empty. The keeps the firebox always full up like it should be.

rberq wrote:I have a smaller version of your stove.

Rberq or anyone else..... Do you have a rough idea how much coal I should be burning on a daily basis? 30 - 50lbs at this Temp? 25 degrees at night?

Just curious.

Everybody's situation is different based on space size, how hot you run, circulation and where you live. I budget 50lbs a day for my house from Oct through end of April. Some day I use less, some days more but at the end of the year, I generally have used my bin up or close to it. You'll now better after a season of heating.

I have been thinking the same thing. I believe I use about 50lbs in 24hrs. I use a coal pale that holds 20-30lbs and I shake and load every 12-14hrs. I would never want to mess with a non hopper again!!!

Below are two pictures of the Ash tray after I shook it down from a 12 hr. burn. The temp. was around 225 the whole time. I am trying to get an idea if these are the type of ashes I should be seeing during shake down. One picture is taken with a camera flash and the other without. The larger pieces you see are around the size of a quarter.

Looks like normal ash to me.

AlmostThere wrote:OH BY THE WAY - THE IDEA OF BURNING WOOD EVER AGAIN IS OUT OF MY THOUGHT PROCESS. Why did I deal with all that work and mess......... did i mention the work and mess......

I burnt wood for 3 days. Then I bought 300 pounds of hard nut coal and brought it home in a plastic bin with my mini van After a few days of coal, I threw the wood back out in the yard. Ain't touched it since

lsayre wrote:Looks like normal ash to me.

Yup, looks like what mine looks like too.

me toooo

Mine has a little more red in it