New and Need Help Alaska 140 Dual Feed ?'S

oilman · Post by **oilman** » Fri. Dec. 12, 2014 10:42 pm

I'm sorry Ben. They did you wrong. The supply should have went to the warm air not the return. No return air back to the box either. I'm thinking it ain't going to work very well. The vent is totally against code and it's listing obviously. We go into the warm air side with the supply, put an isolation damper in the furnace plenum and run a cold air return off the drop back to the filter box on the side of your 140 on our jobs.
You risk damaging the gas unit with the hot air blasting into it like that- or for that matter, the heat may come out of your returns- the 140 has a large blower.
I would get it redone before using it myself.

ben21921 · Post by **ben21921** » Sat. Dec. 13, 2014 4:26 am

Great... does anyone know of a good installer in the Cecil county MD area so I can have this thing looked over.

ben21921 · Post by **ben21921** » Sat. Dec. 13, 2014 10:38 am

Ok so now I'm really confused. I just got off the phone with Alaska stove company and they said typically they tie there stoves into the cold air return.

coldinmaine · Post by **coldinmaine** » Sat. Dec. 13, 2014 10:48 am

Huh....that would be odd. I bet they tie the blower (that is currently pulling air from your basement) into the return, and tie the hot end of the stoker into the output of the propane furnace, with a damper to direct the air int he correct direction. This should not be terribly difficult or expensive to fix....but I would also be annoyed if they set it up this way. A someone mentioned earlier, it could damage your other furnace.

oilman · Post by **oilman** » Sun. Dec. 14, 2014 2:18 pm

You can't blast air that is far higher in temp. that a condensing gas furnace is caplable of producing into the bottom of the furnace. You will damage parts of the secondary heat exchanger and probably the fan control board which is in the blower compartment.
If you go to keystoker.com and read the Koker installation manual, it will have diagrams on how to do the duct which apply to any of these units.
Tying in like yours comes from the days of the old wood add-ons which didn't have blowers.

ben21921 · Post by **ben21921** » Sun. Dec. 14, 2014 4:14 pm

Thanks for info Oilman. How do you tie the cold air return back into your blower. Do you build a box around it? And do you have to filter the air somehow?

oilman · Post by **oilman** » Mon. Dec. 15, 2014 1:48 pm

the 140 has an optional cold air box. get one and tie in to it.

jjfcars · Post by **jjfcars** » Wed. Dec. 17, 2014 7:28 pm

There is a installer in cecil county. His name is josh, give him a call.

ben21921 · Post by **ben21921** » Sat. Dec. 27, 2014 7:11 am

I got all my problems fixed and got the stove up and running. I'm still a little confused about what the idle and tstat controls are for. CAN anyone give me a rundown. Like those yellow book coal burning fire idiots. It's a digital control box one side says idle and the other says tstat. But they both go from 1 to 99. I'm not real sure where I want to set them

Post by **StokerDon** » Sat. Dec. 27, 2014 9:46 am

Those two settings are to set the idle fire and the heat call fire.

Set the idle so that it uses as little coal as possible without losing the fire. If your scale goes from 1 to 99 I would try about 25 to start.

Set the TSTAT so that on a long heat call, at least 30 minutes, the fire is 1.5" to 2" from the end of the grate. And, not pushing hot coal off into the ashpan. I would start somewhere between 40 and 50 and tune it from there.

-Don

Rick 386 · Post by **Rick 386** » Sat. Dec. 27, 2014 10:05 am

ben21921 wrote:I got all my problems fixed and got the stove up and running......................................

Could you explain what and how this was accomplished ??? It might help others who search later and come across this thread.

And pics definitely help.

Rick

ben21921 · Post by **ben21921** » Sun. Dec. 28, 2014 6:28 pm

They just moved the location of the stove and vented the power Venter into a area that meets code. They still ran the duct work into my cold air return. I'm going to work on that this summer. I have both burners lit and my idle setting is on 8 and my tstat setting is on 40 and my house is staying right at 70 I'm probably going threw a little over 2 bags a day about 90lbs

McGiever · Post by **McGiever** » Sun. Dec. 28, 2014 8:49 pm

ben21921 wrote:They just moved the location of the stove and vented the power Venter into a area that meets code. They still ran the duct work into my cold air return. I'm going to work on that this summer. I have both burners lit and my idle setting is on 8 and my tstat setting is on 40 and my house is staying right at 70 I'm probably going threw a little over 2 bags a day about 90lbs

You are in MD and it is what...50*-45* out and using 2 burners eating 80#'s a day...what will happen when it gets cold out??? WOW!!!

ben21921 · Post by **ben21921** » Mon. Dec. 29, 2014 8:56 am

I'm guessing it's because I have both burners lit. And I'm still trying to figure this thing out I'm very new to burning coal and very inexperienced. Do you have any suggestions or do you want to write anything else encouraging in all caps with a lot of exclamation points.

titleist1 · Post by **titleist1** » Mon. Dec. 29, 2014 9:49 am

I'd have to believe the one burner can be shut down as warm as it is which would cut your coal usage a great deal. My guestimate at my daily usage when idling is probably 25 lbs or so. I never actually weighed it out just going by the amount the hopper has gone down.

It has been recommended to leave the back burner lit and shut down the front so it is easier to relight when the cold weather comes back.