Crane 404 - Our First Coal Burner

Nice job windy. I like your draft gauge. You mind posting the model number. I went to there website site, but way to many numbers. Thanks. Matt.

Cat # 2000-00 ,I got both of these without mounting brackets,not sure if some are available with brackets or not.No liquid to mess with .i love these gauges !! & thanks,Depipo79

Nice job Windy.....Nice gauge! Its good to have a warm room.

The cats will 'warm' up to it. When we had indoor cats they would disappear into the basement the weekend we fired up the stove and park themselves on a couple of boxes down there for the winter.

I smiled at your 2-3mph indoor wind speed comment. When we bought this place in late Nov, no remodeling was done until the next spring and the windows were so bad you could see the curtains move with the wind that winter!

tt1, thanks, Our windows do allow lots of air thru especially when the 40+ mph gusts are pressurizing them from the outside. We had hoped to replace at least a few windows b4 this winter,we even had them figured into our loan request for the boiler purchase & install but the bank did not give us a big enough loan to replace windows. But we have the boiler going ,doing its job & now the Crane is keeping this concrete slabbed room WARM,just the way I like it, & coal is so easy compared to all the work we did with wood.

Thanks windy. I appreciate it. Matt

This a/m the stove temp is down 100* @ 200*,I shook the grates till lots of glow in ash pan,but only the two ends glow. There is a good sized area in the middle that just will not glow,do I keep shaking hot coals down to get that area clear or do I join the poker club ?? As in poke the ashes from below ??

Windy, you will have to poke from underneath, the grates just don't move enough to shake everything.

Windy,
You put your left hand in, your right hand out, and do the hokey pokey, that's what it's all about!!!!!(LOL)
Nice 'warm looking' set up.
Cheers

Thanks, coalvet,i just picked out a piece of bent rod from my scrap metal pile to use for the job. Thanks, D-frost , it is really nice to not just have a warm house as we always have had when burning wood & coal in remote boiler warming the house with the heat exchanger, but now we have a WARM room to go to .The steady heat of coal is amazing,although we do miss the fire view of a good wood fire but not the work.

coalvet or dcrane , ... Poking ..... should I be doing a vertical poke & then bring it down,move to another spot & then poke up again ? I have been poking upwards & then slicing front to back but getting a lot of big pieces in the ash pan.Not happy with the results so far on even, whole bed fire,have not lost the fire yet ,had it burning low @ 180* stove top.I just would like to get a more consistent shake down & spend less time with shake down/refill/walk away. How fussy is this stove with the reloading procedure & puff backs,that is something I am trying to prevent,do I always need to have flames up thru the coal bed as I fill it ? If coal bed is glowing good can I just fill up ,close up & walk away ? We are enjoying our WARM room !! This stove has prevented the exchanger fan from running which means the EFM is getting a bit of a break with less demand from our house & it dries laundry well too !

Front to back motion is what I do, you will have to look underneath for any dead spots. I never run the blower with coal it cools the fire pot to much which will cause dead spots in the corners. It's not a temperamental stove at all you just need to make sure to clear the ash.

Thanks coalvet, any special loading procedure ? any issues with puff backs ? I didn't have any poofs yet but do not want any either.

Never had any puff backs, just make sure the small secondary air holes are clear around the fire pot. After shakedown I just load it up and do the open ash door routine for about 10 or 15 minutes!

Thanks again, at least I've been doing that routine pretty close to what you posted.

Thanks for the info ,coalvet, it does seem to burn more evenly across the whole bed of coal without the fan running. 30 yrs with a crane ,is it the same one all those yrs???