Lowest Warm Weather Stove Temps?

It's been about 5 hours, outside temp is at 55. Stove is still at 1 turn from closed and going strong, 180 stack temp, 3 on the manometer. Temp upstairs is 72. This is perfect living temp for the wife and perfect underwear temp for me. We'll see where it is tomorrow morning and how long it lasts thru the day. Either way, it'll cost $3 for the whole experiment. I love cheap coal!!!

Like most of us I felt the need to play around with the stove here about two weeks ago when the mornings were in the mid 40's and days in the 70's. Being new to a hopper fed stove I guess I shouldn't have filled the hopper up full ( just couldent resist seeing how much the hopper could hold and how it worked). Well I think it is a bit warm out still for the stove, throttled back to a stove temp of about 350 and flue gas at 160 the house was sweltering. We had to open all of the windows upstairs and run the air conditioner in my room as the stove is rite under it. I may have been able to throttle it back more as I have great draft but the wife said enough is enough put it out. My chimney is all of 30' tall from where the stove pipe enters into it not to the basement and it runs through the house. I may have to disable the back grates this winter to knock it down to 70k btu -vs- 90k btu, I guess time and a little trial and error will tell me what to do.
Just wondering, am I the only one doing the cold weather dance trying to summon old jack frost himself. I must be doing it wrong all I keep getting are days in the 60's and 70's.

SemperFi wrote:I may have to disable the back grates this winter to knock it down to 70k btu -vs- 90k btu, I guess time and a little trial and error will tell me what to do.
Just wondering, am I the only one doing the cold weather dance trying to summon old jack frost himself. I must be doing it wrong all I keep getting are days in the 60's and 70's.

You'll be amazed how all that heat will be needed when the cold weather really hits. Once temps get down much below freezing, you'll be cranking that stove for all it's worth.........& going through about twice as much coal as when temps are more moderate. (you'll find a drop of just 10*-15* will make you almost double your stove's heat output)
You need one complete winter to see how to operate your stove & estimate how much total coal you'll need.

Devil, I hope I do not need to crank the stove up for all its worth. I just replaced an older vermont castings batch fired stove with around 50k btu with a 90k btu stove. I used to fire the heck out of the old stove in the dead of winter and still run some fuel oil in the furnace. Im hoping that the 90k stove will heat the house all on its own. The fuel oil furnace only fired when it was in the single digits out. With the old stove I would burn allmost 3.5 ton a year running it all out. I dont know if I will need all 40k extra btu or run it at 70k and hope it will heat the house all on its own. If I have to run it all out at 90k it only takes about 5 minuts to put the bolts back in the grate mechanism to make it 90k btu. I assume I will up the coal consumption by a ton or so but I will still be saving without having to burn oil at all (I hope). Allready have 4.5 ton in the garage ready to go.
By the way anybody that limits the output of there stove by disabling the back grate make sure you use graphite on the bolts if you hope to get them in or out in the future. Leave the bolts in, just leave the linkage out or the taped holes may corrode on you. Keystoker has a super simple linkage to work with.

Outside temp....68
hottest part of furnace.....202
flue collar....147
duct temp....84 - 88
wondows open with fan
distibution fan runs 4 mins. on 10 or 12 mins. off
25#s every 12 hrs.
wife STILL rolling her eyes..
DON

It's still going at 175. It's been over 24 hours and the coal is just over half gone now. House is at 75 and all the windows and doors are open.

My Hitzer 50-93 registered 125 deg. about 1 ft. above the stove with a magnetic thermometer on the flue pipe. Outside temp was in the 50's when i started it but the temps went up from there and ended up inthe 70's by the time the fire went out about 36 hrs later. I filled it up so there was only about 2 inches of coal in the bottom of the hopper. The living room was in the low to mid 80's for 2 days with it turned all the way down. We opened about 8 windowstats to help things out. My wife was rolling her eyes and shaking her head at me. She came down with a really bad cold the day before I lit the stove. Miraculously, she was almost totally cured 2 days later after the constant sauna.

Here in Utah the temperature is still getting in the low eighties (about 10 degrees above normal) and my air conditioner is still kicking on.
I have found that I don't need to light fires (speaking of hand fed stoves not boilers etc.) until high temperatures stay below 65 degrees with clear sky (a little warmer than that if days are cloudy) and low temperatures are 40 degrees or lower. If you need to open windows then I would save my fuel as there will be plenty of cold days to come. I know it's tempting to want to light fires almost anytime though.
My wife actually suggested lighting a fire a couple weeks ago (and I considered it) when we had a cold front go through so at least my wife isn't shaking her head or rolling her eyes...yet. High temp was 63 and low was 46 with 0.67 of rain on the day she wanted a fire. (I'm a weather buff).

Brett

I couldn't wait to light it. It was the first time I actually put a decent amount of coal in it. I wanted to learn the process and also adjust the air and temp settings-besides I was feeling a bit nippy that morning.
BTW, the black dog in my avatar won't be needing that sweater any more. She has an underactive thyroid that makes her start shivering as soon as it gets a little bit cold.

av8r wrote:My magnetic thermometer says it's just under 200 on the front of the stove above the door. My Fluke 561 IR thermometer says it's actually about 170 or so. Idling as low as I dare without killing the fire.

BTW...I pointed the IR thingy at the fire...pretty neat watching the temps drop from the fire as I worked my way down the grate. 900 plus just before the blue ladies....hotter just above them, but this thing only goes to 1000 or so...

hey av8r ..where ja get that laser thermo ?

I'm back I have been reading this froum for a couple years and it's great.

The guy above talked about disabling a grate on his stove to slow down his usage I have found a way to do it and it works very good my stove keystoker 70 I think has been running for 2 months this way.
I have added a piece of half inch plate cut to the inside size of my fire box and raised it up off the grates with steel so the grates still shake.

In the middle of the plate I cut a 6 inch hole and placed about an 8 inch tall piece of 6 inch cast iron pipe over the hole .

start fire in reactor and coal and thats it

Warmed up and the sun came out, the sun room was cookin, and the house was 78° , my wife had to shed some cloths, unfortunatly so did my mother-in-law . The problem is that my old vigilant is so tight now that it runs too efficiently! Going to have to learn a new low temp strategy. Tried just shaking with no slicing to leave a thicker layer of fine ash on the grates, seems to be working, but will have to refine my technique. Oh well guess it is not a bad problem to have.