New Chubby Vs Old Man Winter.

I am burning coal for the first time. Got a Coal Chubby and I am going to try and document this winter. I'll try and watch how much coal I use a day and the outside temp vs how warm it is in the house. So with that here we go.

So I fianlly got the Coal Chubby installed on Wednesday. Big thank you to Larry for coming over and helping me through the set up. On thursday it was inspected. Last thing I have to do is cement my old ash cleanout door back in. My wife took some pictures last night so If I can figure out how I will post them. i'll try and post a picture from the perspective of my stove too and where it will throw heat.

The stove. I have a refurbished top vent Coal Chubby with a blower I bought directly from Larry Trainer in Pembroke. Honestly could not be happier with the stove and with Larry's customer service. He cut the stove pipe to the correct length and drilled the hole for my manual damper on top of also coming over and looking at my setup.
I had it inspected on thursday and the building inspector said "Wow a Chubby." I said "Oh you know anything about them?" "One of the best stoves ever built." he says. A guy at church has one and basically said the same thing. His is about 30 years old and he still uses it.

I'm thinking on saturday or early next week I am going to give it a test run and try to get familiar with using it. My wife wants to just burn wood on Saturday so I have a feeling that the actual coal test will be early next week. I'm naming this stove Magna because I sold my V65 Honda Magna to get it. I hadnt really ridden it since my daughter was born anyway so it was really a win win. Anyway here is the Chubby Magna installed along with what I got rid of.
I am looking foward to see what happens this winter with it.

Using wood a couple times will give you the hang of it and season the paint. Try burning the wood slowly as that will give you good practice for coal. Very nice looking setup. Theres usually someone lurking on the website day or night so if you have problems just ask. Of course you can call Larry too. A couple CO detectors are a must. You'll love the stove.

Sweet stove and install!

What you really want to monitor is HDD's (heating degree days) vs. coal consumption.

HDD's on a daily basis are calculated by this formula:

Daily HDD's = 65 - (days high + days low)/2

I believe that when your utility company calculates an estimated monthly bill they use this formula. I know that the company I work for monitors HDD's to keep the utility company honest.

After a period of monitoring you should be able to zero in upon how many lbs. of coal you burn per HDD.

An example:

Days high temp = 35 degrees
Days low temp = 22 degrees
Coal burned for day = 30 lbs.

Days HDD's = 65 - (35 + 22)/2
Days HDD's= 36.5

Coal burned per HDD = 30/36.5 = 0.822 lbs.

congratulations on your new chubby. I purchased my chubby off craigslist about 3 years ago. this will be our third winter with my old girl. its a 1979 top vent model with no blower. we love our chubby. saves us a ton of money on fuel oil costs and keeps us incredibly warm. and its a very easy stove to operate. I also have to mention how good looking of a stove they are. make sure to watch larrys video. larry is an awesome guy to deal with too. excellent customer service.
best of luck with your new stove.

That install is just plain sharp Congratulations, and enjoy your new friend.

I kept a book that charted temps (Inside, Outside, Stove), coal usage, type of coal used (I had pea and nut) and some other things I want to chart. I used a good scale and IR thermometer to track things.

This allowed me to learn a lot about my stove quickly and gave me enough data that I still look back at things when I have a question.

SD

The cast iron parts look painted. Did you paint or polish the cast parts?

I fired up the chubby for the first time on Saturday. Just wood no coal. Stove temp was about 200 degrees for two hours with the air open all the way. Old wood. Suddenly it shot up to 400 I closed the air to about a quarter inch and it settled in at 380. I know it wasn't all that cold but it raised the temp in the room with the stove by 13 degrees. Every other room about 5 degrees. That is just wood so coal should really kick the temp up.

As for paint on the cast iron I think it was painted and then polished. I could be wrong. Minimal smoke came off for ten minutes.

My wife loved it. I'll upload a picture of it going later.

Welcome to the forum Nordillaca. Nice looking install. Just wait till you try some coal. You haven't felt heat until you feel coal heat. Your wife sounds as enthused as you do. Good for you guys. Hope you the best with your Chubby. I too keep a log with daily temps and stove performance. Matt

It looks like paint to me. After buying parts earlier this year I mentioned to Larry I was going to polish my stove with the stove black. He suggested to me painting it instead using 2 different rustoleum high temp paints. 1 is a flat finish and the other was an ultra. The ultra was a high gloss that I used for the doors, legs, and top. I am so glad I took his advice because my stove looks great. Seems like it will hold up for a long time too.

EB426 if Larry said to do that them I'm sure thats what I have.

Anyway I came down this morning and my house was sitting at 71 degrees pretty much everywhere, except outside where it was 45 degrees. The last few mornings it has been 63 degrees in the house when I wake up so that was nice. I checked the stove and it was still at 150 degrees with one log still smoldering at 8am. Went to church and 1pm it was just some hot coals. Here is the picture from last night with it going.

Ok maybe I cant upload the picture

I have also made a few wood fires this year in my chubby mostly to burn off the paint fumes but yesterday afternoon finally lit a coal fire. It went down in the 30's last night here and we even had light frost this morning. Two things I added this year to my stove were the ash tray that mounts under the front of the ash door and the ash ring that sits inside on top of the grate. I had no idea about the ring that sits on the grate until reading on here. It really helps with getting the ash to fall directly into the pan. Also the ash tray on the front of the stove really seems like it will help to keep the mess contained. Plus add a little flair to the stove.

Eb426 yea I really like the look of the ash catcher as well. I'll look maybe see if I can add one next season but its not in the cards for this one. I'm in Mass on the south shore. where are you from?

We are in berks county pa. Very close to the anthracite mines around the tamaqua area. I actually added another bucket of coal to the stove this evening. It will probally burn another 24 hours now at 200 degrees. It's about 46 degrees outside around here now. I'll check the weather again tomorrow night and see if I add any more. I hate hearing my boiler fire up and my house is anything but energy efficient.