Need Help - Hot Coals Falling and Gaskets

Hi all, I need some help.

I've already sent an e-mail to LL, but my impatience is kicking in. I wanted to hear/read what you all think. I have two issues, one big, one small. Here goes.

1) This year with in the last month or so, started dumping hot coals off the grate. This has never happened in the 6 years with the stove. I contacted my dealer, who said he believes the coal is too wet/frozen this year, and might be the issue. The Blaschak coal is very wet this year, but i'm not convinced. I've adjusted the max down from 40 to 30, and it's still doing it, like I never even adjust the thing. All the fans are working, I draft between .04 and .07 depending on the burn. I have been overshooting it seems more this year. The stove/coaltrol is set at 67 during the late night and day. At 3:30pm, its set to go up to 69. By 7pm, the house is at 71, and the stove is still crankin' away. It eventually calms down, but it takes hours. Questions, thoughts, etc, anything is appreciated.

2) I need to replace my upper door gasket. I have the gasket, what is the recommended adhesive? What is the recommended procedure, other than, remove gasket, clean old adhesive and gasket out, and install new?

Again, thanks for your time. All in all the stove has been great, this is the first year I've had any sort of what I would consider major issues. I'm up in Michigan, and at the end of December, we had alot of bad weather and power outages, I'm wondering if a transient cooked my stove control board. I don't want to randomly replace parts.

take care,
Scott

If it's too wet, the water can go down the burn plate and cause problems burning. You should try and get the water out of the bags if possible, dump the bags in to buckets or something and let them drain.

Keep adjusting your MAX down a couple points at time until you have about 1" of ash at full burn, let it settle out for an hour or so, I assume your FR is 99 when you are pushing the hot coals off, if only a few, thats ok, if it pushing the entire end of hot coals, your max should come down a bit. Every stove/stoker motor is unique, and usually needs dialed-in for your application. It's overshooting when it tries to come up to temp, most us leave it at a certain temp or only adjust 1 degree at a time. Coal stoves will do that if it doesn't satisfy it quickly enough, it will keep raising the feed rate and blowers to raise the temp then, yes, it will get cranking sometimes and overshoot. Mine will do that if you change temps too fast to if the outside temp drops quickly and it has to catch up.

The gasket is not that hard, pretty much what you said. They make a gasket cement (liquid, runny I think by Rutland?) and needs to lay flat for a while or you can use a good hi temp RTV, I have used the Copper Seal RTV on mine.

I'm seeing something similar with the feed. Do you notice that the flames are not as high as they have been in the past? Could be that your combustion air isn't running at a high enough volume to thoroughly burn the coal before pushing it off the grate. Check your combustion fan intake and fan blades for dust/dirt. Check the grate air holes for debris clogs.

If the coal is really wet or a lot of fines that will also slow down the fire. The gasket the back of the grate missing will also do this,

Just remember the coal troll is not a device manufactured by LL.

Setting the feed at a constant rate cures a lot of these issues, the stove burns at the same rate resulting in an easily predicted length of coal o coal along the length of the grate, gets colder outside...boost up the rate and convection fans a bit ...warmer out, bang both settings down.

Kind of like a wood stove, constant heat. I'm also suspecting that having the convection fans running at a constant present speed imposes less wear and tear on the motors.

The suggestion of cleaning all the squirrel cage metal fins is good.....take a high intensity light to each fin, you'll see compressed dust caked on the fins, clean these off with a sharp instrument with vac near by. This is especially important for the combustion blower.
this year has been very cold, it seems auto control on the Coal Trol is difficult due more heat loss, drafts, etc.

Hi,

Thanks for the replies.

1) Coal is wet this year, really wet. I've been bucket drying but haven't noticed much of a difference. What I need is to get my coal right after the heating season and let it dry in my garage all summer.
2) Flames are fine, same height.
3) I just the stove down last week end and did a full maintenance. Cleaned and oiled the power vent, cleaned and oiled all motors, replaced the door gasket, removed the combustion motor and cleaned the junk out from under the grate, which I had did last year, so it wasn't bad at all. The only issue now is, I haven't hit a 99 FR so, It's hard to tell.
4) I also adjusted the high/low temp to with in a degree of each other so there is less of a chance of over/under shooting.
5) The combustion fan was seriously filled with dust, so this is very clean now, and also now, a bit louder.

Thanks again for all the help.

Scott