COLD IN NH, heh, another newb to coal stoves with questions

Hello all, 25 years old, and GF and I moved in with my bud who bought a house. They have 2 coal stoves that came with the house. Researching on here, and hearth.com, We have a Surdiac Gotha 513 (or 713, but does not look like the bigger one) and an Efel little tiny thing in our breezeway. The Surdiac has a few broken panes of glass in front, and the hopper looks like it is disfigured from over firing). I guess we are learning on the Efel for now, keeping our shoes nice and warm/dry.

Anyways, We are having trouble with the Efel, The one time we got it to fire for a long time, it burned up an entire hopper of nut coal in 8 or 9 hours, and went out before we woke up! The rest of the time, we get it going for an hour or two, but it goes out. We have a damper, but not the RTS or whatever the good one is called, but I guess we need to get a cap on the chimney, as there is nothing on top as of now.

Should this small Efel be burning pea, or nut coal? I thought pea coal was clogging the grates, as I had one hell of a time shaking it. I'll take any advice/criticism anyone will hand out.

Most hand fired units do better on nut, the smaller sizes do block up the grate and it is harder to feed air to the fire as the spaces between the coal is much smaller.

Here are some tips to start and maintain your fire.

http://www.homewarmth.com/pdffiles/coalburningtips.pdf

Once going, make sure you fill it up to the top of the firebrick. In warmer weather, you will need to service it about every 12 hours. When it gets colder about every 8 maybe.

A coal fire is nothing like wood, its a little tricky. But once you get it, you will love it.

Does the Efel have a hopper that loads thru a hatch on the top and do the grates shake side to side or is it a set of interlocking teeth type .

coalstoves wrote:Does the Efel have a hopper that loads thru a hatch on the top and do the grates shake side to side or is it a set of interlocking teeth type .

Sorry for the delay what with the holidays and all, It is a hatch that opens from the top to load the hopper. and it is one grate on the bottom that moves from side to side.

It seems that the coal fire tends to die out if we have the damper on the Efel lower than 75%. I played with an infrared thermometer, and pointed at the best glowing piece on top of the bed was 1100 deg F. sides of the stove were low 300's and the top was 280, I'm guessing because the hopper was full, blocking the heat. That was a bit of fun.

I still thought with all the talk on here about overfiring, that the stove would really be going at 75% "throttle". There was not much of a difference in output between 75% and full open. That might be where the chimney comes into play. I have tomorrow off, and will certainly stop at the hardware and stove stores 'round these parts...

As a general rule the hopper type stoves with shaker grates use Pea Coal, Get your starter fire going and fill the hopper to the very top, the reason it was hard to shake was probably unburned coal don’t shake till the fire burns up out of the bed and is moving to the hopper if you know what I mean . Run the hand damper wide open till ya got a nice hot firebed then set it ta 2 o'clock and work from there . Turn the thermostat up to about three check the flap that the thermostat controls and be sure it is open at least an inch then work from there once your confident it's burning .
Coal fires do not like to be fussed with or poked and they hate people opening and closing the door all the time they like time to get rolling and prefer privacy remember

Something we wait for with impatient attention always seems to take forever.