Cold Air and Test Fire

Since I haven't been able to do much lately my son has Friday off from work so he helped me finish piping the cold air intake up. Since it was a semi nice night we figured lets put a fire in the stove to set up the coal trol and burn off the pain. This was we can open windows up stairs to keep smell to min. Everything went great. I love the cold air intake and my redesigned combustion air stoker mount cooling works amazing. The outside temp was 51 deg. F and even with the stove on max fire the stoker motor stayed nice and cool and you could feel the air blowing over it. I'm happy as a pig in mud with that design. Coal trol worked great. We did seem to have a issue with the coal bed. I didn't think the coal bed on the grate was deep enough. Even on max fire the coal bed was only about 1/4 the grate height. Well after double checking everything and then it dawned on me. I emptied out the hopper and sure enough there are 4 tabs on the bottom of the hopper that sit into the carpet feeder opening. The front tab is so big it wasn't allowing coal to fill up the area. We bent the tab up and now she give me about 3/4 of the grate full of coal. The ash coming off the grates was pure burnt coal. Everything worked so sweet. Here is some pictures of the piping for my cold air intake. We kinda made up a intake flange for the combustion blower then used 3 inch round duct then went to 4 inch round duct to 4 inch flex dryer vent into 4 inch PVC. We also put a damper in the pipe to adjust the combustion air since it's a 10cfm larger blower then the fasco unit. (the new blower is ball bearings and runs quite compared to the fasco)

Good catch on the hopper tabs. I may have missed the stoker motor design update, are you taking some air from the combustion fan and diverting it through the stoker motor housing to cool it?

eta... never mind I found the thread......very nice design update.

I'm curious, what was your main goal in sealing in a cold air inlet for combustion? To keep the motor cool? We're you having a draft problem?

The reasons for the cold air intake was 1- to help cool stoker motor and keep the grease from becoming liquid. I tore my old one apart after being told to explore. Was shocked at how the grease turned to liquid and isn't doing any good. 2- was tired of sucking up all the dust and stuff into the blower and then having to clean blower wheel. 3- it also helps keep the blower motor itself cooler.

That darn hopper tab I think was part of my issues last heating season as well. I never gave it any thoughts until last night. I know that everything is good cause I replaced the grate, carpet feed plate, stoker motor, stoker link arm and all new gaskets plus all new flue pipe. Who would think a simple little thing like that would cause one such stress. LOL