Jotul , can't keep it lit for more than 4 hours

I have a Jotul 466 which I got 2nd hand from my brother...I just had a masonry chimney installed for it. I can get a real good burn but after a few hours, I cannot keep it lit. I cannot figure out how to adjust the damper, nowhere in the manual does it say how to adjust it, there is no operating instructions, just a basic manual with a parts list which I got from Jotul. I do have a barometric damper on the pipe.
Any ideas?

PoconoPassaro wrote:I have a Jotul 466 which I got 2nd hand from my brother...I just had a masonry chimney installed for it. I can get a real good burn but after a few hours, I cannot keep it lit. I cannot figure out how to adjust the damper, nowhere in the manual does it say how to adjust it, there is no operating instructions, just a basic manual with a parts list which I got from Jotul. I do have a barometric damper on the pipe.
Any ideas?

Check the heat exchanger on the back to see if it is clean.

Check to see if the thermostat damper is partially open. You might have to raise the setting.

Be sure the grate is not clogged with ash.

If you have draft and the thermostat is supplying air and the grate is clear of ash it will burn.

We finally have our stove up an running..
We too found that you have to poke the ash and have been successful keeping it going
NOW THE DOWNFALL...We are getting ONLY 4 hours burntime until we have to poke the ash. Seems like such a hassle waking up in the middle of the night so we can be semi-warm in the am.
I picked up a couple bags of coal again today and was speaking to the guy there and he said we should have no problem getting 10 hours from it. The coal burns red hot but we are not getting the warmth we should.
We have cleaned out the air vents and adjusted them, removed the grates numerous times, tried to adjust the damper and are just at wits end!
ANY THOUGHTS?

Poking the ash should be minimal and probably only along the front edge. The bulk of clearing the grate of ash is with a flat poker inserted through the three slots in the front of the stove and moved from side to side and gradually deeper until you feel the resistance of solid coal. You should then see a glow reflected in the ash pan from the grate above.

There are two clean out plates on the lower back of the large heat exchanger on the back. Remove these plates and vacuum out the fly ash.

I feel sure your grates are ash bound. With everything cleaned out and a fresh fire lower the thermostat setting once the fire is well established and it should go for 10 hours or more at a low setting. Make changes to the thermostat in small increments so you gradually get a feel for the setting you want for the desired heat output. Coal responds slowly. At this point try for a moderate fire. After 8 hours give it a shake. If the fire only lasts four hours either you are firing it too high or not shaking or more properly riddling or slicing the grate.

We just did a full cleanout and refired it. We added a little coal and are slowly adding till fully red on bottom. We will attempt to back down the control knob. We can keep it burning but have to "knife" it every 3-4 hours to keep it burning. The heat exchanger is clean. I do not know what you mean by firing it too hot. We have building up alot of clinkers & dont know why.
Thanks for your help Franco B!

PoconoPassaro wrote:We just did a full cleanout and refired it. We added a little coal and are slowly adding till fully red on bottom. We will attempt to back down the control knob. We can keep it burning but have to "knife" it every 3-4 hours to keep it burning. The heat exchanger is clean. I do not know what you mean by firing it too hot. We have building up alot of clinkers & dont know why.
Thanks for your help Franco B!

Clinkers can mean too hot a fire if they really are clinkers and not just unburned coal. Clinkers are pieces of slag melted together and are hard, sometimes with shiny spots. Continue filling until hopper is at least half full. Firing too hot means the air control is open too far or if the ash pan door is not sealing well air will get in from there. Close a dollar bill at various spots in the ash pan door and see if there is resistance when you try to pull it out. Look at the flap in the back of the stove that regulates in conjunction with the thermostat the air getting into the fire. Turn the thermostat dial and see that it opens and closes. You should be pouring some coal into the upper hopper door on top of the stove at this point. Once the fire is going good you can add large amounts. Once things look good you can fill the hopper to the top.

Fill the hopper right to the top. That helps it flow out of the hopper to replenish what has burnt. When you have the fire going good turn the air way down so it starts to die. Then turn it up a little at a time to get the heat you want. If you start with a raging fire and turn it down a little at a time you end up with a high air flow and a lot of heat going up the chimney for the same amount of heat to the room. By starting with almost no air you end up with just as much heat from the stove and less up the chimney. As Franco said, you are getting clinkers because the fire is too hot. Again, restricting the air lets you get the heat you need from the cooler fire because less heat is going up the chimney. You may get clinkers when you push your stove to the max, but if you get clinkers all the time it is a sign that you are over firing it or your stove is too small for the job.

Bruce

For information and parts for a Surdiac coal stove try myersfurniturepa.com and click on the Surdiac coal stove accessories link.

I had a surdiac for 10 years. The only attachments I remember was the round dial for the thermostat which controlled draft at the back of the unit and a knob in the front which was connected to the bottom grate. This allowed you to spread the bottom grate while still hot. There was also a small tool for taking klinkers and small rocks out of the grate slots to open up the air paths.

2nd year heating with coal and still having issues. No problem firing it. My issue is keeping it burning without constantly knifing it. We cannot go away for more than a few hours. If we do, house will be cold as well as the stove. I think we have been burning it too hot and I am going to try to close the back air to almost nothing. We would love to get an 8+ hour burn somehow! We used pea last year and this year picked up about 2 tons of nut which I would love to be able to use without constantly tending to it every few hours. Any thoughts?

Not sure what your stove looks like, but my Surdiac 513 has the same issues. My 1st season too burning coal and i guess this design, (altho the factory brochure promotes it differently...promising up to 24 hr burn times) won't go more than 3-4 hrs without attention. Check out some of my posts or threads complaining the same thing, and a few people have chimed in with some advice. I've settled on the fact that if the daytime highs don't go much above freezing, and I'll be around the house all weekend, then I'll fire it fri after work, give it attention till I go to bed around midnite, and plan on getting up at 5-6 am, to clean the grates and get it back running. then repeat the same procedures Sat. nite.

Last night was the very first time since fall of 2011 it burned all night!
Woke up and was dying out so on way out to work, I knifed it and refilled the hopper. Came home at lunchtime to a tepid stove with no red coals! Maybe I didn't knock all of the ash down when i emptied the pan, it (the ash) was very fine and no coal in the pan. I am sure the warmer day we had here in northeast PA had something to do with it dying today. I am going to scoop all of the coal from the hopper tomorrow and relight it unless there is another way to refire the thing without scooping it and starting fresh as that is a job in itself.

PoconoPassaro wrote:I am going to scoop all of the coal from the hopper tomorrow and relight it unless there is another way to refire the thing without scooping it and starting fresh as that is a job in itself.

Empty coal from hopper. Do a good job of slicing coal remaining on grate. Scoop coal to either side making a hollow in center down to grate level. Start some charcoal in that hollow. When lit cover with new coal.

PoconoPassaro

I have a Surdiac 508 which my father had bought over 25 years ago, we installed the stove as per recommended at the time using 5" pipe to connect to an 8" chimney which we covered half the chimney outlet to keep some heat in the chimney. We ran into the same issue with the stove not staying lit over long periods of time. We tried different size coal, we knifed every few hours, all to no avail. Eventually he lost interest in the stove and it sat buried in the basement. This past fall I moved back to NY from Colorado and the house I rented has all electric heat with two fireplaces. I was going to heat with wood but we decided to try the coal thing again and we pulled the old stove out of his basement and brought it over to my house. I have it set up in the basement with a 5" pipe and barometric damper going into a 5" liner in the fireplace chimney. The liner extends 3' past the top of the chimney to give me about a 22' run. I lit the stove in November and have been using Pea coal I bought from Cornwall coal. The stove has been running steady since, I try to poke the ash about every 8 hrs, which seems optimal but it'll go 10 without an issue.
After all that preamble what my point is that I think the stove is happier with the stronger and consistent draft provided by the small diameter liner. I have found that some hand fired stoves ( through talking to other stove owners) require a strong, consistent draft or they will burn funny. That and a good quality coal as I had bought some crappy stuff that required more work to keep the grates clear but still maintained a good burn. I also keep the ash pan empty to keep as much air space beneath the grates as I can.
I hope this helps, not that I really know what I'm doing but whatever I'm doing it seems to be working. Of course it could be my wife that's keeping it going since she pokes it for me while I'm at work. We also don't slice from side to side, we poke straight in, more of an in and out covering a new piece of grate with each poke.

Congratulations Scott, for being that successful. You say your 5" pipe off the back of your stove only heads up the chimney a few feet with a baro damper installed in it? And it'll burn 8-10 hrs without poking or scraping? Sounds pretty exhilarating to me. I've been told by a previous owner of a different Surdiac than mine that the installer said it was "imperative" that he had a baro-damper with his stove, and the owner said he remembers long burn times, but couldn't elaborate on #'s.
I still don't see the damper being my problem, cause the fire runs fine, (as long as the grates are kept clean). I like your comment about "crappy" coal, cause if mine didn't make so much ash, (or so dense?), then maybe it wouldn't "choke" it down so much. The most popular brand in my area is Blaschak anthracite, at $6 a bag. Not sure of other options. I'll have to investigate
Even tho we've had to work keeping this stove running, it has kept my house warmer at a cheaper price than current oil. The winter here in lower New England has been mild so far, but we did run the stove for a few weeks around the holidays,(when it was colder) and because of that, my oil tank level has barely moved.Now the daytime highs are almost 50, I let the stove go out a week or 2 ago, and have heated with oil. My gauge is now beginning to drop.