Seasonal Strike Out . (Success!)

 
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EasyRay
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Location: Central Connecticut
Hand Fed Coal Stove: Harman TLC 2000
Coal Size/Type: Pea,Nut or Stove

Post by EasyRay » Wed. Oct. 23, 2013 10:15 am

My Harman TLC 2000 has adjustable air on each side and is rated the same 72,000 BTU as the Mark two. By the way, Harman has discontinued the Mark two and kept the TLC 2000.

 
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SMITTY
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Location: West-Central Mass
Stoker Coal Boiler: EFM 520 Highboy
Coal Size/Type: Rice / Blaschak anthracite
Other Heating: Oil fired Burnham boiler

Post by SMITTY » Wed. Oct. 23, 2013 10:45 am

My manometer attachment fitting that goes into the stovepipe gets completely blocked with flyash and crud (creosote from burning wood in fall). Need to jam a small nail thru there to clean it out. Gets packed pretty tight. Might be something to look at if your mano is reading zero.

I just overfilled mine. Damn thing was reading way too low with the adjustment screwed all the way in. So I added some fluid ... a bit too much, it turns out. Now I read .03" with the adjuster screwed all the way out. :x Always something around here ... :mad:

 
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Bootstrap
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Post by Bootstrap » Wed. Oct. 23, 2013 11:07 am

I use charcoal to start my fire. Messing around with wood is a pain. Get a bag of charcoal, not the matchlite crap. I use a chimney starter for my charcoal inside the coal stove. After charcoal is going, I dump it in the stove.(you could use lighter fluid on the charcoal in the stove, I used to do that just fine). Then I build up my coal 2 inches at a time leaving the ash pan door open so it rages.

Using this method, from the time I say "lets light the stove" till the time I can go up stairs is no longer than 30 minutes.

 
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EasyRay
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Location: Central Connecticut
Hand Fed Coal Stove: Harman TLC 2000
Coal Size/Type: Pea,Nut or Stove

Post by EasyRay » Wed. Oct. 23, 2013 11:22 am

I use the Cowboy charcoal and a little lamp oil. Works great! Much better than match light. ;)


 
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mmcoal
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Location: Northern NJ
Hand Fed Coal Stove: Hitzer 50-93
Coal Size/Type: nut

Post by mmcoal » Wed. Oct. 23, 2013 11:25 am

I started my stove back up yesterday which is my second attempt with the coal and it seems to be going great now. I also used regular charcoal, but since I don't think I could safely dump a chimney starter full of charcoal in my Hitzer with the hopper and all, I just placed some crumpled up newspaper on the shaker grates and then some charcoal on top of the crumpled up newspaper.

 
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joeq
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Hand Fed Coal Stove: G111, Southard Robertson

Post by joeq » Wed. Oct. 23, 2013 11:28 am

Good tip Smitty.(Wow, more posts this morning, B4 I got this one up) . Similar to what I've just learned. Temps this morn. were hi 30s, so I figured I'ld give it another shot. Re-zeroed my manometer (as suggested), and checked my hose connections. Dwyers instructions are "very" vague, and didn't make much sense to me. I detached the hose at the stovepipe, and blew across the top, (not into it), and it read in one direction. Did the same to the other hose, and it reversed the reading. So I "assumed" I had it hooked correctly by that test.
Next step, try to relight. Crumpled up newspaper, Fresh scraps of dry construction pine, some chestnut, a wax brick, and a partridge in a pear tree.(sorry...couldn't resist. ;) ) A little flame to the paper, and we were off and running. "Wrong". Smoke, no draft, wouldn't burn for crap. Worse than yesterday. (Hang in there. It gets better). Cleaned out the messy grates and tried again. (After opening doors and windows, and hiding the smoke alarms.) Figured I'ld go outside to my cleanout tee, and put a fan under it to blow air up the pipe to maybe help get a flow going. Once I removed the cover, (which faces downward), a couple pounds of "ASH" fell to the ground! I reached up inside, and pulled out MORE piles of ash! I couldn't believe it! This is the second time, I tripped myself up with a clogged pipe. The 1st time was when I did initial fire-up,(a couple seasons ago) and forgot to remove the pink insulation in it, :oops: to keep air from going into the house, while I was installing the stove. Last spring, when I cleaned out my stove, and vacuumed out the heat exchanger, I never thought after only one season of burning, that much ash would collect in the horizontal pipe, which is less than 4' long to the cleanout.

So here I am, (Not only burning coal, but burning some vacation time this week), it's about 11:30AM, the temp outside is almost 50. Oh yeah, and bye the way, my manometer, which still wasn't reading, I reversed the hose connections, and now it's reading correctly. My draft was up around .1, so I closed down my MPD, and with it almost 90% shut, the draft came down to about .05. After about an hour and a half, my stove is burning bright, with a full hopper of Stockton coal. So I modified the thread title to something a little more positive. Live and learn. Ash will collect in your pipes, more than I thought anyway.

 
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EasyRay
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Hand Fed Coal Stove: Harman TLC 2000
Coal Size/Type: Pea,Nut or Stove

Post by EasyRay » Wed. Oct. 23, 2013 11:58 am

Wow, that seems like a lot of ash for one season. I have two lengths of horizontal pipe off my stove to the inside wall of the chimney and at the end of the season it only accumulates maybe ¼ inch of ash at the very bottom of the pipe and a little dust around the rest of the pipe.
I remove the pipe at the end of every season and clean it because the stove is in the basement and the pipe probably would not be usable for the next season.

 
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Bootstrap
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Post by Bootstrap » Wed. Oct. 23, 2013 12:32 pm

mmcoal wrote:I started my stove back up yesterday which is my second attempt with the coal and it seems to be going great now. I also used regular charcoal, but since I don't think I could safely dump a chimney starter full of charcoal in my Hitzer with the hopper and all, I just placed some crumpled up newspaper on the shaker grates and then some charcoal on top of the crumpled up newspaper.
I cant do it with the hopper in it. If I want to use the chimney starter on my charcoal, I remove the hopper. Once I have a couple inches of coal going I open the top and drop the hopper in(easily). So long as thats the only door open, no fumes really come out.


 
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SMITTY
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Stoker Coal Boiler: EFM 520 Highboy
Coal Size/Type: Rice / Blaschak anthracite
Other Heating: Oil fired Burnham boiler

Post by SMITTY » Wed. Oct. 23, 2013 12:37 pm

I used to have half my outlet of the Harman blocked with flyash after burning around 5 tons per season. Now, I have almost ZERO flyash.

Only thing I changed, was shaking with the ash door CLOSED, and the air intake screwed almost shut. Cuts the airflow down and allows the flyash to settle in the firebox, instead of in the pipe and chimney. ;)

 
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joeq
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Post by joeq » Wed. Oct. 23, 2013 12:59 pm

SMITTY wrote:I used to have half my outlet of the Harman blocked with flyash after burning around 5 tons per season. Now, I have almost ZERO flyash.

Only thing I changed, was shaking with the ash door CLOSED, and the air intake screwed almost shut. Cuts the airflow down and allows the flyash to settle in the firebox, instead of in the pipe and chimney. ;)
Sounds like another good tip Smitty. I'll have to take that into consideration, next time I'm scraping and cleaning. Thanx. P.S. Maybe the accumulated ash was from the previous season also, which only burned 1/2 the winter. So it could be an accumulation of 1 and a 1/2 seasons.

 
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joeq
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Post by joeq » Wed. Oct. 23, 2013 11:25 pm

I see what you mean Smitty. My grates don't shake, I've got a "shearing knife" that I scrape the grates with, and when I do this, I notice a bunch of ash dust being sucked up by the draft. I have a bad habit of doing this with the ashpan door open, cause I like to see how much the grates are clogged, and when they open as I'm scraping the grates clean. The only way I can tell is the ash pan is in a "dark shadow," (my mothers favorite soap of the 70s), and then an orange glow, when the grates are cleaned off. I'll have to wing it next time, and see if there's less dust being raised with the door shut, while scraping.

 
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SMITTY
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Stoker Coal Boiler: EFM 520 Highboy
Coal Size/Type: Rice / Blaschak anthracite
Other Heating: Oil fired Burnham boiler

Post by SMITTY » Wed. Oct. 23, 2013 11:30 pm

I hear ya - it's tough to resist the urge to see what's happening in there while your shaking, or in your case slicing. After this one change in my routine, I was shocked to see the inside of the pipe completely bare at the end of a 5+ ton season. I had burned half that much before and seen 2" deep in the back where the exhaust (I'm a mechanic - that's what I call it. :D ) outlet is.

 
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joeq
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Post by joeq » Wed. Oct. 23, 2013 11:36 pm

SMITTY wrote:. I had burned half that much before and seen 2" deep in the back where the exhaust (I'm a mechanic - that's what I call it. :D ) outlet is.
Understand the terminology completely Smitty. I'm one too. :) (Out for the nite)

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