New Harmon Mark I owner

Hi, I just wanted to say I've been reading this forum for a bit and enjoyed the comments here. I bought this stove about two months ago and have a few questions. I know some are going to sound like repeat posts here. So please forgive me. I've been using Blaschak 40lb. bags of anthracite nut coal and get a day out of a bag. I'm turning the primary draft control 3/4 to 1 turn open. Stove temps are 300-400 degrees. I did not have any damper as per factory instructions and am concerned about sooting in my living room. I know some recommend the field control one. That's the same one I have on my oil burner now. I fill my stove three times a day, morning, at 6:00 pm and bedtime at 11:30pm. I shake it down twice a day.

I would like to know a little more about why some use pea coal and what are their results. Also why do some say not to shake down the stove before you fill it? I'v been shaking it down then filling it, because there is no room left to put in more coal if I didn't..

I'm just wondering what other owners are doing and welcome the recommendations.


Thank You
Pete..

PS. Thanks for the post about the explosions and puffs when filling the stove. That was pretty neat to see the first time it happened

Also, If someone from Harmon reads this post. Please put a switch on the blower. I'm an electrician so it was easy. But $6.00 isn't to much to ask for a switch. Also thread the casting on the bottom ash door for the bolt that holds the draft control or weld the nut to door if possible.

The baro should not cause any "Soot", unless you get a backdraft or something. The stove should be under a slight vacuum and the baro draws air from in the room to keep the draft down on the stove and keep more heat in the stove from going up the chimney. You probalby get more 'soot' or ash when loading coal and unloading the ashes.

RePete wrote:

P1200032.JPG

Hi, I just wanted to say I've been reading this forum for a bit and enjoyed the comments here. I bought this stove about two months ago and have a few questions. I know some are going to sound like repeat posts here. So please forgive me. I've been using Blaschak 40lb. bags of anthracite nut coal and get a day out of a bag. I'm turning the primary draft control 3/4 to 1 turn open. Stove temps are 300-400 degrees. I have did not install any damper as per factory instructions and am concerned about sooting in my living room. I know some recommend the field control one. That's the same one I have on my oil burner now. I fill my stove three times a day, morning, at 6:00 pm and bedtime at 11:30pm. I shake it down twice a day.

I would like to know a little more about why some use pea coal and what are their results. Also why do some say not to shake down the stove before you fill it? I'v been shaking it down then filling it, because there is no room left to put in more coal if I didn't..

I'm just wondering what other owners are doing and welcome the recommendations.


Thank You
Pete..

PS. Thanks for the post about the explosions and puffs when filling the stove. That was pretty neat to see the first time it happened

Also, If someone from Harmon reads this post. Please put a switch on the blower. I'm an electrician so it was easy. But $6.00 isn't to much to ask for a switch. Also thread the casting on the bottom ash door for the bolt that holds the draft control or weld the nut to door if possible.

Nice looking setup there Pete. Good luck with it!
Do you really need to run it that hot? I run mine between 200-300* which manages to keep the whole house around 68*.
If you can turn it down a bit you will cut down your coal use, shake downs & dust. I have gotten to the point that I shake my Harman TLC-2000 down once a day while adding new coal as needed. I recommend sticking with Blaschak as I have always had good luck with it.

Hi Pete, welcome to the forum..

I believe the techique about when to load fresh coal, either before or after shaking all depends on the ash your coal creates.. So ash is so light and powdery that just adding a shovel of coal on top will cause the ash to collapse and fall through the grate openings.. Other ash is a bit 'tougher' and requires some aggitation from the shaking action, yet other ash is hard and crunchy, and requires a LOT of aggitation and grinding of the grates to get it to fall into the ash pan..

The most important part of loading fresh coal is to make sure the fire is healthy and hot before loading... shake a bit, leave the ash pan door open a bit or the ash pan air control open, so the fire can get lots of oxygen and get hot and 'wake up'... Then when you add fresh coal it won't try to put out a 'sleeping' fire...

I like your stove's location, looks very nice..

As for a baro damper.. if you are able to control the burn of your stove without one, then you are fine.. Some instalations and chimneys have such strong draft that they need a baro to control the draft to a manageable and consistant amount... With your new stove, an airtight one, you can do a good job controling burn rate and heat output with your air intake spinner knob..

Take care, Greg L'

,

Hi Devil5052,
I was wondering how hot you guys are running your stoves. Now I see. It does reach 68-72 degrees in my house. I live in a two story salt box. It's about 1600 sf. I was wondering how low I could go and have it not go out. The chimney is in the center of the house. My oil burner tech said the draft is fine. I have a separate opening in the chimney just for the coal stove. I live on the back side of a cranberry bog so the winds pick up quite a bit. Also do you run your blower all day? I'm going to set the draft control at 1/2 turn today and see how it does. Thanks for the input. I thought I was burning too much. But with the winds picking up and sometimes no wind I didn't want to take a chance and come home to a dead stove. My friend has a Newcastle stove and he burns less coal than me. But his house is a smaller ranch style house.

Thanks
Pete..

RePete wrote:Hi Devil5052,
I was wondering how hot you guys are running your stoves. Now I see. It does reach 68-72 degrees in my house. I live in a two story salt box. It's about 1600 sf. I was wondering how low I could go and have it not go out. The chimney is in the center of the house. My oil burner tech said the draft is fine. I have a separate opening in the chimney just for the coal stove. I live on the back side of a cranberry bog so the winds pick up quite a bit. Also do you run your blower all day? I'm going to set the draft control at 1/2 turn today and see how it does. Thanks for the input. I thought I was burning too much. But with the winds picking up and sometimes no wind I didn't want to take a chance and come home to a dead stove. My friend has a Newcastle stove and he burns less coal than me. But his house is a smaller ranch style house.

Thanks
Pete..

Hi Pete,

I do run the blower all day in cold weather. My stove is in a basment family room of a split entry ranch so is really idealy located to heat the whole house. Generaly I turn off the blower if the fam room gets to be above 74* or so. My home faces south so the sun usually warms things up fine until mid afternoon. I notice your thermometer is afixed to the stove pipe about where I keep mine & I am able to get my stove to idle fine down to about 120* on warm days. I used to have a baro damper but haven't used one in years as it neverf seemed to do much for me. The real trick is to distribute the heat as evenly as you can throughout the whole house through creative use of fans, ducts, etc. Whatever will pass the "wife approval test."

The baro damper gives the stove a consistent draft under changing conditions. My wind direction and intensity changes dramatically during the day, the wind comes off the sound without much to slow it down. Without the baro damper my Mark II would over or under fire depending on the wind, now I can dial it in and know that the house will be 72 when I return. Only if I change the size/brand of coal or the outdoor temps dramatically change do I adjust the spinner draft.
I had a local shop custom make a SS adapter so I could install the Fields R/C 8" damper in my Metalbestos DSP Tee, the galvanized strap-on that came with the damper would have butchered the pipe and the black Tee version was too much money. In the spring I will paint the damper and adapter to match the pipe.
I use the gas furnace fan to keep the house temp even, it does boost the electric bill. I intend to replace the furnace fan with an energy efficient DC variable speed motor.

The Newcastle is a very efficient stove design that was built locally and has good parts avaliability.

CapeCoaler wrote:The baro damper gives the stove a consistent draft under changing conditions. My wind direction and intensity changes dramatically during the day, the wind comes off the sound without much to slow it down. Without the baro damper my Mark II would over or under fire depending on the wind, now I can dial it in and know that the house will be 72 when I return. Only if I change the size/brand of coal or the outdoor temps dramatically change do I adjust the spinner draft.
I had a local shop custom make a SS adapter so I could install the Fields R/C 8" damper in my Metalbestos DSP Tee, the galvanized strap-on that came with the damper would have butchered the pipe and the black Tee version was too much money. In the spring I will paint the damper and adapter to match the pipe.
I use the gas furnace fan to keep the house temp even, it does boost the electric bill. I intend to replace the furnace fan with an energy efficient DC variable speed motor.

I'm in a cul-de-sac in a "bowl" in my neighberhood so I'm pretty well protected from wind which is probably why a baro damper never had much effect for me.

Hi again Pete. Something you said about your chimney raises a question: You said the coal stove has a separate opeing into the chimney... not that it had a separate chimney flue.. So is the Harman Mark I hooked into the same chimney as the other heating [oil burning] appliance?? You mentioned that the oil burner has a barometric damper on it..
So if you hooked the Harman to the same chimney as the oil burner, and it has a barometric damper installed, then the baro damper is controling the draft to the whole chimney.. including the Harman stove.. I'm currious what draft the 'oil tech' serviceman measured or has the baro adjusted to??

Also, if your Harman shares the chimney with your oil burner, you may want to let your insurance company know you have a coal burner, and that it was 'professionally installed' Most codes don't allow for sharing a solid fuel burner and an oil or gas burning appliance in the same chimney.. Just make sure your insurance company approves so they can't or won't deny any claim...

Nobody has answered your question about using nut or pea coal yet... Nut burns faster, and will produce more heat, pea size coal will burn slower, a make a little less heat.. this is the product of the rate of air flow through the coal bed.. A be of nut coal has larger passageways and therefore more air flow through the hot coal bed, and more heat...

Some coal burners use a layer of pea coal as the last 'topping off' load at night, this produces a slightly cooler but longer burning fire for long nights.

Be careful with making large adjustments of your air spinner... you said you planned on turning it down to 1/2 a turn.. I'd recommend turning it down only 20% at a time once you have it burning pretty low.. just a bit too little air will result in the fire going out... I'd ''sneak up on'' the setting that works.. Making too-large adjustments may result in the fire going out.

Hope this helps.. Greg L

Thanks Greg L,
It does have it's own chimney. The oil burner is on one and the coal stove on the other. Each has it's own clean out too. Thanks for the info about nut and pea. I was wondering about that. I'll stick to nut. It's easier and not so messy to scoop. I did just turn up the draft a little. Your right boy is that thing sensitive. So how do they say you can go 24 hours between loading your stove? It seems like mine would be dead or almost dead with no heat? It might work fine in the early fall or late spring but no way today. It's snowing and 32* outside. My house is 64* down stairs and 61* upstairs. No osprey in the nest today...

Thanks for the info
Pete

Hi Pete, notice that the claim is that it 'can' go 24 hours.. not that it 'will' burn for 24hours..

The difference is the btu load your house puts on the heating appliance.. My house for example, is an old farmhouse, with 41 windows, only half are at all modern windows.. it also has 5 exterior doors, two of which are taped and caulked shut. I've insulated where I can get into ceilings and walls, but there are lots of sections of this house that need a bulldozer or a stick of dynamite...
so my place has a very high btu load, plus I heat the concrete floor of my 40x60' shop, so I use 3tons of coal a month in the cold months... but this is a huge savings over $25-2800 per month for propane.

You may want to get on the manometer loaner program, and see what your draft in your chimney is... if it is excessive, like .09-.12"wc, it will be easier to control the heat output with a steady even draft of say .05-.06"wc. Which you could easily set with a barometric damper. The Manometer loaner program only cost the price of mailing the manometer to the next person on the list..

greg L

I'm going to get a baro-damper next time I'm at the plumbing supply house. I'll get a "T" at the stove shop. I can hear my oil burner damper clang open and closed when the wind stirs up. I'll give it a try next time I let the stove die to clean the flue pipes. I'll set it to what you said it should be. I do know a burner tech with a meter who can check it for me too.

Thanks
Pete.

I use pea in my stove and the best I ever got out of it was 20 hours. I run a manual damper which I know isn't the "preferred" setup but it works for me. I ran nut for a while and it was just too much heat for my house. I couldn't get it to idle down enough to be comfortable. If I did, the first just loaded up with ash and choked itself out.

I want to say thanks for every one that posted. I tried this yesterday and today. WOW, what a difference. I keep the round draft control at 3/4 turn. I fill the stove a few more times a day to top it off. That way I don't have to load so much coal in at once and have less of a chance for a gas explosion. When I loaded it before sometimes I would get that gas smell in the house. If I put too much in at once. I now shake it down a few more times. But still only have to empty the ash pan twice a day. Not as much ash either since I'm burning less coal. Temps on the stove are 250* and stove pipe temp of 100*. I'm using much less coal now. I put the blower on a timer and run it most of the day. My wife loves that the living room should stay cleaner now!! She spent three hours wiping black soot from the wood and plastic items in the stove area last week. Not fun...

Warm and toasty on the Cape
Pete..