successfully burning anthracite coal in a clayton furnace

How are you doing Blend 120?
I'm late to the party here!
What is your chimney?
Hey Mudman you coming to plow me out!!!!
I love this edit button.

Hi North Candlewood,
I have a triple wall Dura-vent chimney running through the house about 30 feet long. I don't have thermometers on everything yet which I think is holding me back from figuring out which slight changes are working to kick up the heat.

It has been about 67 degrees in the house which isn't bad but I feel that it should be able to pump out more heat. I have a full bed glowing red to the top of the firebrick with some blue flames flickering through the center line mostly. I have been playing with the baro damper a bit to see if more or less draft would get the fire what it wanted to be hotter. I don't have a measuring tool for the draft. The HVAC was asked to set it to .06. I have no way of knowing if it actually was or not. Is there a visual guideline that I can use when the stove is running. Something like it should be slightly tilted in or it should be slightly bouncing. I understand outside conditions play a major role so this may be impossible but I thought I should ask. It's below 20 degrees out. I'm burning Blashak Stove coal. Been running 50 hours now. The ash pan spin draft is 14 turns out. I have washers covering the three holes front and back. Distributer fan on setting 2 of 3. Forced air draft flap closed.

Thanks in advance for any help!

It does take a lot of heat to get a house warm again with coal.Your regular furnace is 2X bigger than it needs to be in most cases so it will heat your house up fast.Coal for the most part is sized just about what the heat loss in the house is so it heats up slower.A thermometer for the front of the furnace will help you a lot and one for the stack is very useful also.They don't cost much and give you a lot of info when you first start burning coal.In time they also are helpful when tweeking a furnace.
DON

Blend
How warm is the flue pipe before and after the baro and is there much of a differance? Holding your hand near the pipe either side. I can not touch mine before and I can touch it after(not hold it). I'm running .05 draft 1.5-2 turns open on the ash draft and 3/8 inch on the FAD just enough so when and if the tsat calls for heat.
I would close down the draft /ash door in to the stove and open up the baro somemore. See what that will do. Give it an hour to settle in.

Thanks for the replies everyone.

Ok so I'm at hour 61 I believe. Just woke up and added a center layer to a beautiful fire. Waited ten minutes or so, went back down and shook it down well. I will let it go for about 15 minutes and then add more to the center line. I have been having luck running it this way so far. Funny thing is right before bed last night it really started to fire up. The stove was noticeably hotter. The pipe before the damper was finally hot enough that I couldn't put my hand on it and the pipe after was hot to the point I could set my hand for a second or two. My wife was laughing since I spent 90 percent of my day trying to get that effect. So far we are very happy with how everything is going and can tell that once dialed in we will be warm and cozy.

I am going out to get thermometers for the face of the stove and at least two for the pipe. I might even pick up one for the duct just to see what's going on there. This will be the first day away from the stove. I'm going to be wondering all day...

Hey guys just wanted to update you on my progress. I installed the baro damper,cleaned the chimney and stove out while I was at it. Right off the bat noticed huge difference in fire, it burned a lot slower thus giving me way better burn times, a lot less coal usage and a lot less maintenance. I could probably let it go for two days without going out! But that was when it was 30 degrees outside. Now here in wny we are getting single digit nights and I just can't get enough heat out of it. This morning I woke up at 4:00 fire going just fine and 46 degrees in the house. Brrr! Had to tape the baro shut and crank it to warm the house up. I think the problems I had before were due to having to run the furnace so hard to heat the house it was just burning the coal up so fast and thus creating more ash, klinkers, and short burn times. Hoping I can find the happy medium because running it so hot is also burning coal very fast. I have been running less than a month and have gone through almost 2 ton. Still learning I guess, but I am starting to miss the thermostat and full nights sleep.

My stove pipe is too hot to touch before the Baro. Damper and after it. Does this mean I have it set to far closed?

Not necessarily. A stovepipe thermometer will tell you for sure. As long as it is not glowing dark red, or glowing at all, you should be okay. But that is a crude and inefficient way of burning. Check it with a thermometer. Those magnet mount ones have a burn gauge on them so you know the temperature of efficient wood burning along with numbers of the approximate temperature. They are a low cost way to gauge your temperatures.

Hi everyone..
I have a US Stove Ashley 24A.
Anyone else have this stove??
Been burning Pittsburgh Nut Bit coal pretty well, Don't like the dust and heavy smoke though.
I will be getting some Chestnut Anthracite this weekend, taking in all the posts in this thread.
I will follow up with my progress or digress..

MERRY CHRISTMAS..

Hey Merry Christmas to you too! I am still going from Friday of last week. Came home to 71 degrees tonight. Not too shabby. Going to load her up and shake her down for the next half hour or so then wait for Santa.

Have a great holiday everyone. Hope you all are safe and warm.

All of a sudden it's hard to keep a fire going. This morning I cleaned out the burn chamber and vaccumed out the stove pipe. All the air holes holes are clear, I have the ash door damper opened all the way up, In fact, I have the ash door fully open. I have the flap on the draft inducer open about half way and have been running the inducer most of the day. I found that the fire I have going burns at the same rate whether I have the inducer on or not.
I know the temp. outside can contribute to how the furnace acts but It has been 30 degrees or less here lately. so I don't think I can blame it on that. At this point I am drafting the fire as much as poosible and am trying to pull as much air up through the coals as possible. What am I missing here?

Are the grate air passages clear of clinkers and coal? After a period of time, sometimes the fingers collect debris and block off the air to the fire. Ash in the stovepipe is another thing that can drag down your appliance. I take my hand fired boiler down every 90 days and clean her from ash pan to thimble. Keeps things up to snuff.

I see in your previous post the damper issue, get a manometer and use it. That hot pipe after the baro is your money saying goodbye as it's going up the chimney.

coaledsweat wrote:That hot pipe after the baro is your money saying goodbye as it's going up the chimney.

I like that I may have to quote it sometime! If I may?
Coaledsweat has a good point and his stem to stern cleaning at a point during the season is GOOD ADVISE! Everyone should take to this.
John think back and go thru each step we talked about and call me if you like.

Thanks for the quick reply everyone, I must have something blocked up because I pushed all the coal to the back leaving the front open down to the grate and It seems to be running fine.
I am going to see how it is working on Monday, If it's still giving me a problem I am going to take it completely apart and clean it.

One question I do have.
I have a Class A - double wall insulated chimney I just put in this season, Do I clean out just the stove pipe or do I have to clean it out all the way to the top of the roof?

It was good to hear from you Charles, I hope all is going well.

Thanks
John

Well I took apart the entire furnace, wiped out and vacuumed the stove pipe out to the thimble. I removed the grates and fire brick and cleaned them, as well as vacuumed out the fire box and ash pan area. I also cleaned the bricks on the top of the furnace and the slide damper too.
Should I have run a brush through the chimney from the top down?

The fire is burning now but not with the intensity it was just last week, I am lost now, I really thought cleaning the pipe and furnace would have made a big difference in the way it performs.

when I add to to an existing fire it gives off a lot of either smoke or steam, why???

Is it possible to get a bad batch of coal??