successfully burning anthracite coal in a clayton furnace

if you own a clayton furnace and having trouble burning coal, contact me ,i know all the tips on to have success w/ it. there are too many factors and variables to list. if you explain your set-up i can understand better the best thing for your stove.

having problems burning anthracite w/ your clayton furnace? i did to, but learned how to have great success! these furnaces are excellent, but if your not familiar W/ set-up and operation you'll rip your hair out! if you have poor draft you need to get this fixed or it'll never work for any make furnace. if your chimney is too short w/ a large flue diameter you'll have to line it w/ properly sized pipe. also burning on warmer days is difficult(poor draft). you must properly install a barmetric damper. be sure to try coal from different suppliers. use coal stove size only. nut coal stops air flow and jams the grates in this model(see manual).load to top of fire bricks adding one thin layer at a time. draft fire heavily during loading after fire is strong draft as low as possible.see posts on starting coal fires. as w/ all coal fires grates must completly covered w/ coal end to end, side to side, top to bottom. no excuses.contact me and i'll do all i can to help i have learned so much in the last 4 years it's unreal. don't panic your furnace is fine just slow down and think.

Hi Coalcrazy, that's a nice offer, If you /we can keep the thread informative and on topic it will be a real asset to refer to for the many folks who end up with one of these units or similar type wood/coal units.

What is the size of your firebox?? This is the main problem with most wood/coal units. The firebox is so large to be able to burn wood, that it requires a very large amount of coal to cover the grates and fill the firebox... Then the fire is hard to control, because it is so large, and spread out.

I think the Clayton has the deepest firebox of the various US Stove products, so I would like to find out the dimensions of your firebox and the depth from the top of the firebrick to the grates, and the length/width of the grates... Then I think we can compare these dimension to other wood/coal combo stoves.

Good idea for a thread..

Greg L.

ls, so many people buy these furnaces and have problems but a few of us are having great success. i agree we need to get this info out to those having so much trouble. i've read so many post that describe total failure. my fire box is huge about 32in length 10in wide 10in deep. i to was always afraid to load this unit completly but if you draft it low and use barmetric damper set properly(mandatory!)i keep my house between 72-78 in mid winter w/ full load of coal. now the secret way to a half load coal fire. rake ash and unburnt coal to the front of grates keep fire in the back of grates this insures the air flow is'nt tempted to find an open spot and not go through the burning coal bed. i use this method for warmer days the fire lasts the same as a full load due to its depth but less btu's. the 1800 clayton is capable of 160000 btus in full swing, so ifyou have a half a fire, your around 80000btu's this will heat most average homes easily. also how much you draft your fire will affect heat and fuel consumption. i believe in making a larger fire w/ less draft rather the opposite.

I built my 'Big Bertha' boiler and modeled the firebox after the US Stove firebox..

So I had all the problems associated with a large firebox, that was too shallow, and had 'V' shaped tapered firebrick at the bottom 'funneling' the ash and fire down to a central row of grates...

I ended up making a firebox reducer... a moveable wall blocking off the back half of the firebox,, with a steel plate over the grate, blocking the airflow up through the grate in the unused portion of the firebox.

As you mentioned fill the firebox, 'no excuses' That is critical.. It is a hard transition for wood burners, people think they will have too hot of a fire. But with coal, the deeper the fire, the better the control of the heat output, the less ash, and the longer the burn.

Greg L

hey greg, my hat goes off to you for building such a monster! thats huge! as for the design of the vshaped firebox it does slow the ash shaking process a bit. for me i load w/ a good amount of coal on top, draft hard to get fire going good, then shake aggressivly until penny sized embers fall, this is w/ a healthy fire of course.claytons grates are not that aggresive so the operator has to be. the weight of the green coal helps force the ash along the bricks down. this technique has worked well for me. this goes to show how many factors and variables are involved w/ coal burning. between this coal forum and experimenting and following basic rules i now have fires that last weeks not hours, steady heat, little effort,and best of all low heating bills.

The big problem with the 'V' shaped firebox is that when you shake hot coals, and they jam together as they slide down the narrowing firebox sides, they stick together, and form clinkers... HUGE CLINKERS.. These clinkers caused me no end of problems... even burning pretty good anthracite coal, stove and nut, the clinkers would clog and block the airflow through the grate after about a week or ten days, depending on the rate of burn...

Once the clinker build-up blocked the airflow enough that I couldn't get hot enough of a fire, I had to let the fire go out and clean off the grate.... Sometimes I could dig around under an almost burnt out fire, and pull out a big clinker, this would give me a few extra days before I had to shut down and fully clean.

Greg L

WOW buddy! those clinkers are crazy big! the largest clinker i've had was the size of a quarter.now, when i was using poor quality coal 2yrs ago i had tons of clinkers which would kill the fire and clog/jam the grates. i think the coal i'm using now is excellent and when i used the bad coal i tended to draft it hard to make up for it's poor quality. but, yes i do agree the v shaped firebox is more trouble. i have a digital camera, i'd like to take pic's and show them to the forum but don't know how could you explain? thanks

heres the clayton 1800 hooked up to my propane furnace they share the same plenum seperated internally by backdraft dampers. more pic's soon still learning how this all works. thanks goes to greg, good instructions.

this is my coal bin i recently built the fire is in its beginning stages

this is my brothers stove he to had a tough time w/ anthra. but we got it straight.

more pics, the fire right before bed and the baro. damper. pics of duct not to good.

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Fill that thing right up to the top of the firebrick. That isn't enough coal to make your unit work anywhere near its design. What your doing is pushing a very small fire and it has to work very hard. Your heat will go up the chimney and you will have clinkers and unburned coal. Fill it up and you will be on easy street. You will have more heat and burn less coal, shakedowns will be a lot easier too.

Antracite wants a big mass throbbing heat, a little fire has to draft more to produce the heat needed. A lot of the heat is lost to the chimney trying to keep up with demand with a small fire.

easy coalsweat, your talking to a pro, that last pic you saw the fire box was mounded over the top of the bricks. the first pic you saw was the very beginning of a fire i made weeks ago. but i'm glad you repeated what we've all been preaching. i just checked my fire 5 min ago and its picture perfect. the same fire from tending it at 5:00am this morn. i added a shovel full just for maintenace. i shake it and add coal (2 grain shovels full). i just don't understand all the bad rap this furnace gets. now that i relaxed and did things right it's been cake.

i noticed looking through the posts i saw controversy over the use of baro. dampers vs. man. damps. i will share my experiences with both. the man. damp.,was ok at first but as nights got colder my draft would increase drastically (w/ damper vertical allowing a factory set amount of air through 2 quarter size holes)making the fire burn too hot thus making my house at 3am hot as heck! not to mention a pile of ash and weak fire around 5am, not good, i have to go to work and don't have the time to revive a coal fire. this happened many times until i saw in my owners manual,barometric damper stongly recomended! recomended didn't mean mandatory to me at the time of installation. so i finally went to my local stove shop and the people there were very knowledgable and i bought one at 90.00 bucks(the good one)and borrow a draft meter from the shop and installed the next day w/ the proper settings. BY FAR THE BEST THING I EVER DID TO MY FURNACE!!!!!
now my coal burns steady, but not crazy hot. the fire lasted 36hrs one time(full load, lowest setting possible). my chimney is masonary w/ terracotta liner and stands 2 1/2 stories high. THIS CREATED A MONSTER DRAFT! only corrected by baro. damp. as for baro. damps making for poor draft thats bull. things that i know cause bad draft are, poor chimney contruction,design, maintenance, too big or too small of a flu,improper improvements or worse, sharing one chimney between two appliances(dangerous!). there are natural occuring problems such as weather, warm air, barometric differences. if you have draft problems consistently you need to call professionals before someone gets hurt or worse. fuel burning devices emit co gas, very deadly. if you cant afford, don't know how or just simply ignore the warnings you should stop burning NOW! and yes i have 3 co gas detec.s at every level. this is the first and many other reasons to use the baro. damper. if your chimney is set up properly your appliance will run properly if it too is setup right