Great burn, no heat, what am I doing wrong?

couple things:

keep the coalbed deep it needs to be as deep as you can physically get it in the stove, adjust the heat output w/air not fuel. you mention that wood seems to give more heat than coal, well, coal produces its heat at the fuel bed, wood produces most of it w/ the flame and gasses, so keep that bed DEEP.

make sure that the sheetmetal blockoff plate in you chimney is sealed w/ hightemp silicone (600*+), any leaks in this area will suck a huge amount of air heated by the stove into the chimney and out of your house.

Installed a Manual damper this morning as it was the cheapest and quickest. Started up stove with wood, got great heat. Started to get excited. Added coal got a great fire going and ran out to feed the chickens. Came back in 45 min later, approx 3" of glowing coals and no heat. Stove damper closed, pipe damper closed, thermostat 1/2 way and no difference. Arrrgh ! Sam

PS.....I will add more coal to the top and seal the *&)(#&$ out of the steel plate and hope for the best.
Sam

Is air being allowed to enter "under" the coal? Coal needs air underneath to burn. Also, it must be able to travel up through the coals relatively easy. Wood doesn't much care where it get it's air from.

I believe that the air is circulating properly. I can have a full hod in there for 8 hours and it is ash when I shake it down. No chunks. Just no heat. Bad coal ? It is a new delivery......Is that even possible ?

It's a very good possibility. Maybe grab a couple of bags from somewhere else, to see how it burns.

Good coal should be bright and shiny, not dull. Even then, I'm not sure it "has to be good coal".

With the problems you are experiencing i would strongly recommend that you have a CO detector. I haven't seen that mentioned. I'd suggest posting a picture of the coal too but its really hard to get a good picture of coal, trust me I've tried numerous times.

The best suggestion as posted above is try a different brand or even two different brands and see if you get any different results.

Affirmative on the CO detector. One is located in the living room already. No problems from that aspect.
I hope that it is not the coal. I have 1.5 tons of it in the bin..... I am on hold with CFM (Vermont Castings)now.
Hoping that they may have some info. I did learn that the internal damper should have 5/16 gasketing.... Samantha

Samantha,
One thing nobody has asked, and maybe you don't know,
but do you have any idea what the temps of the stove are running?

If it's the same vigilant that vc has it's owner's manual on line, they show
a top thermometer, with expected readings from 400 to 700 degrees. That may
give us an indication of how the stove is performing,, then we can go
into moving air around the stove etc. If your stove isn't coming up
to temp, we can look at coal/draft issues.
If the stove is up to temp, then look at location, and airflow around
the stove.

I can check that out later on tonight if it is still lit when I get home. Fingers crossed ! Thank you ! Samantha

With my particular stove .. a Russo C-35, which is supposed to burn Nut, but I'm burning Pea, the biggest problem seems to be "AIR"!

When it goes into a "coma", I can shake it down, but if I don't loosen the fire with a poker (I mean, clear down to the grates), it won't burn (more precisely, "make heat"). It could be because of the Pea vs. Nut. Once I shake it and rattle up the ash and coals, it will burn fine, even without setting the air and draft controls differently.

Sam, I don't think its the coal. You have a good fire going for a week and no heat in a 1200' house? In this weather? what will happen when it gets cold? You have mentioned several times that you have a strong draft. The manual damper will do just about nothing in the prescense of a strong draft. The gas will just increase its speed to make up for the loss of area in the pipe. Wet the tip of your finger and touch the top of the stove. Then do the same to the stovepipe where it enters the chimney (not an insulated part, stovepipe). If they are the same temp, or the pipe is hotter, you need a baro. You may or may not have other problems, but until you know what the draft is and fix its maximum to the right setting, your going to give the heat away to the outdoors.

All beginners should have two thermometers and a draft gauge/manometer, one thermo on the pipe and one for the stovetop (hey coalman, can you get a law passed?). Your stove is always giving you signals on how things are going. You need the tools to read those signals and you and your coal fire will be much happier.

Thanks, coaledsweat, I also wanted to repeat the advice about the baro damper being way more important than a manual damper, but didn't want to get in trouble with the heretics. (I was one, but now I BELIEVE.) I had a similar heat problem last Spring when we first put the stove in. No damper of either type, full stove with a good fire going, but very little heat coming off the stove.

you metion 3 to four inches of fuel bed depth??? if so this is your largest single problem right here. the coal bed needs to be as deep as you can get it, but still you probably have a leaky stove too strong draft and/ or leaking blockoff plate, but make that coalbed deep, sheesh, i have literature from the 1920's that mentions lack of heat and fire tending issues by ny city residents is due primarily from folks not keeping their coal stoves' bed deep enough (in those cases it was usually due to the mistaken belief that a deep bed wastes fuel, actually the oposite is true).

I've been trying to heat a one room garage with a surdair stove for about 3 weeks now and have had no luck in increasing the room temperature more than 10 degrees over the outside temp. I assumed the garage was just too big (22X35) and it had too little insulation (concrete block walls not insulated at all). There is currently a stack heater (Magic Heat) that runs constantly but even when the fire is burning great I seem to get no heat at all and the stove pipe above the stack heater doesn't get much hotter than what you could put your hand on. I've tried all sizes of coal (Pea works best) but now I'll try a damper and see what that does for me. What would be a decent draft setting to start with? I don't have any information on this particular stove.

Mufwapo, if you don't have insulation or a ceiling in the shop, you could plumb your EFM into the shop and still not warm it very much. The heat is all on the ceiling if you have one, or in the garage peak loosing the heat through the roofing. It would make a great ice melter for the roof!!

It sounds like your magic heat is doing a good job to cool the flue pipe down that much.

Greg L

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