How Do You Feel About a Thermostat Controlled Hand Fired?

rberg, that would be a consideration, if I was only trying to maintain the stoves temps, but at this point, as I said above, now I am toying with maintaining the 1st floor room temps. In this case, I'll need a T-stat sensor on the 1st floor and the stove temps will have to vary in an attempt to maintain it.

Yes, I'm of the old school regarding MPDs. .. from when we were too poor to be letting the heat go up the chimney. Actually, the baro damper has it's place in this application, as it will limit the burn on the stove, should the stove damper be open for an extended period of time.

Ah, yes, I see what you mean. What you are trying to do is way more fun because it will probably involve motors and other cool stuff.

Dallas wrote:My stove has gotten a bit beyond "KISS" and "room". So, I'm not thinking of keeping the stove temp. constant, but have moved more toward keeping one section of the house at a "near constant", as will be determined by a programmable T-stat.

You've got some extreme hood/ductwork going on there! Really nice work (Really tempermental stove/draft). Now it looks like you could get into some tech stuff like RF Thermostats, linear actuators or DC step motors to make it happen Maybe a 8" rf or X-10 duct fan hooked to the P T-stat and a simple bimetallic air control on the stove's inlet . The duct fan comes on via P T-stat signal, cools the stove causing the bimetallic flap to open up and increase combustion air/draft to kick up the output. Hmmm... timing is everything Good project!

For those of you , who haven't gotten a good picture of how this might be done or it's operation:
Hopefully tomorrow or Tues., I'll have found a good source (cheap) for the damper actuators.

I was thinking about the thermostats: Does anybody have a good feel for how a "2 stage heat" or "heat pump" T-stat works? Would one of those do the job for both, the furnace and stove? Or would I be better with two separate T-stats?

As long as the T-stat can handle 2 seperate heat sources, you should be good to go......

It seems kind of hard to pin it down. A heat pump stat, seems like it must be manually switched to "emergency heat" to take advantage of the other heat source. A 2 stage stat might do the job. Or two separate stats might be more versatile.

This may have been mentioned, but have you considered a thermostat controled [could be a simple close on decrease snap disc] combustion blower.?? My Big bertha controled the water temp with a combustion blower.. thermostaticly controled through the water temp aquastat..

Can you put a combustion blower on your stove so it feeds air under the grates but won't blow ash and combustion fumes around and out of the stove [positive pressure in the firebox] ??

A small squirrel cage fan controled by a snap disc in your nice heat collector could turn on the fan when the temp dropped below a desired temp, then stop blowing when the temp rose high enough to open the snap disc . Pretty simple, and the advantage is that you could get the best burn from your coal possible with a forced draft... but you would have to monitor your draft and pressures, and probably leave your MPD open [for safety, to prevent positive press in your firebox].

Just another angle to look at,

greg L

It was kinda mentioned earlier, however I'm going for "space control", by controlling the burn, rather than "stove control".

I didn't do as well as I had hoped for, on the damper actuator. $74.34, plus shipping was the best I could do, without hanging out on eBay. It should be here later this week.

The damper is in place and operational ... it's "in charge" tonight! Getting the thermostat wire down through the old oak sill was a PITA, but it's down to the basement. Now, I have to get it through the ceiling (currently, laying on the floor) and over to the stove. Hopefully, I'll have some pictures by tomorrow.

Sounds like fun. Because you are going with a full-on / almost-full-off system, and because coal is a bit slow to respond, it will be interesting to see whether your room temperature experiences significant fluctuations. Does your thermostat have an adjustable heat anticipation feature -- that is, turns on the burner somewhat before the room temp drops to the set level, and turns off the burner somewhat before room temp rises to the set level, to prevent overruns in both directions?

So. yesterday was my birthday! My little 30 year old buddy and her husband came to help celebrate.

I had the pictures, but didn't get them up ... now I can't see or type.

Everything is done except the thermostat wire.

Here is the box with the 24v transformer and relay .. controlled by the thermostat.
Here is the the damper actuator.
Here is the operation of the system. .. with me pulling the plug, rather than running upstairs to change the thermostat.

The new damper actuator/thermostat has been working great! The house temperature seems to stay very level. I've only noticed the furnace run two times, both times being first thing in the morning, after loading fresh coal, before it had a chance to get "up and going". I do have the T-stat set back for night, but on the "min/max thermometer" the temp doesn't seem to have dropped all that far through the night.

The pea coal seems to burn good and shake down better than the nut - in my stove.

I've been wondering about this type of coal firing - "full draft/minimum draft" cycles, in regard to ash, complete coal burn, efficiency, etc.. It works

What a success story. Very well executed

Very cool!