New Member Appreciates Helpful Forum and Videos

Folks,

I'm new to this forum, having discovered it after purchasing a timber frame home with a Mark III stove. I have had two Alaska Stokers previously but this was my first hand fired stove. Your helpful threads and videos have made this a seamless transition, and I recently bought a used Mark I and put it in my basement to replace a Vermont Defiant. Our house has one large chimney with two separate flues. Both draft well.

The Mark III is actually installed as an insert upstairs. We are heating our whole home with it. We lit it October 20 and it has only be out twice since then, which we feel pretty good about as new burners. The first time was my fault, and the second happened while I was hunting a few weeks ago, after my wife accidentally shook the grates too far and jammed them with a clunker. She text me in the woods and I linked her a YouTube video from this site. She was able to restart the fire herself, with our 12 year old daughter handling the "texting Dad pictures" duty.

I just fired the Harman Mark I in the basement for the first time today. We bought it used, and it was completely refurbished by a local stove shop. New bricks, grates, and gaskets... it looks great and is a perfect size for our basement. Now we are heating our house solely with nut coal, no need to mess with firewood any longer. Nice, clean burn... no smell.

My question for the group would be regarding stove temps. I'm seeing about 450F on the side of the firebox measured with an IR thermo. I'm seeing 250F at the breech, and 155F 18" up the 6" stove pipe. The chimney itself is probably 30' high. The draft is strong. I could feel it and hear it as I installed the stove pipe. These measurements were taken with the air screw on the ashpan door is 1/2 turn open. I do not have a barometric dampner. I feel that this is well within range for what I have read here. Do you folks agree?

I also notice that the Mark I in the basement is much more receptive to the AP door being open. In 60 seconds I have a raging hot burn - upstairs with the Mark III it is common to have the door open 5 minutes (when refreshing in the morning).

The Mark III will burn/idle with the air screw at 1/4, and when it has gotten cold we typically run 3/4 turn.

We are located in Northcentral PA. I appreciate your comments and even constructive criticism.

I also take great pride that every member of my family can, and does tend to this fire as needed... even my 12 year old daughter....

Tom in PA

Welcome to the FORUM T. Be patient, there's some MARK users around.

I'd like opinions on this as well - If we would like more heat from the Mark III, should we run the blower first, or open the air screw and not use the blower? Today it is about 46F with a decent wind.

Below 40F we need the blower to keep the house warm as the ceilings are 25+ feet.

If it were my HITZER, I'd open the air some & blower be damned!

Tom in PA wrote:I'd like opinions on this as well - If we would like more heat from the Mark III, should we run the blower first, or open the air screw and not use the blower? Today it is about 46F with a decent wind.

Below 40F we need the blower to keep the house warm as the ceilings are 25+ feet.

Hi Tom welcome to the forum. A nice big 3 blade super cool lookin' ceiling fan that the Mrs. picks out is a lot quieter than the blowers on a stove

Hi Tom, welcome to the forum. Try your stove both ways, see which works best. IMHO, I think you will be better with the blower on to help distribute the heat especially with 25 foot high ceilings. Do you by chance have ceiling fans hooked up also in the high section? That may help with heat distribution.

EDIT: Mike beat me too it, LOL.

We are running ceiling fans for sure... there are two.

Often we need our upstairs bedroom windows cracked some, which is fine by me. -- she just wants some more heat downstairs when she comes home.

I love heating with coal, and find the hand fired stove 100% more fun and enjoyable than the stoker.

Below is a picture of our Mark III on the first day we lit it... didn't even have a proper coal bucket yet ... --- obviously I am just getting it going with wood at this point, and just starting to shovel coal on.

Tom in PA wrote:I love heating with coal, and find the hand fired stove 100% more fun and enjoyable than the stoker.

It will be hard to heat comfortably with a 25' ceilings. Ceiling fans and the fan on the stove is all I can suggest. Maybe someone else can give pointers on how they accomplish the task.

Looks like a nice place you have there.

Awesome set up Tom. The only suggestion I have for gaining heat at floor level is to actually heat the floor more with the basement Mark l . If you have any insulation in the basement ceiling joist bays I suggest removing it. I do this in my unfinished basement and have yet to fire my livingroom stove...still in the 30's up here.

The side of the basement with the stove has a drywalled ceiling. All the insulation in this house is sprayed foam, so I can't remove it.

Being that today is the first day I have actually burnt the basement stove that alone may produce more floor level heat...

What do you think of the stack temps? I looked at the thermometer thread - some neat stuff.

Tom in PA wrote:The side of the basement with the stove has a drywalled ceiling. All the insulation in this house is sprayed foam, so I can't remove it.

Being that today is the first day I have actually burnt the basement stove that alone may produce more floor level heat...

What do you think of the stack temps? I looked at the thermometer thread - some neat stuff.

If the joist bays behind the drywall are empty you could pop in a few round metal grates but if filled with spray foam no dice.

The stack temps look good, time will tell as winter just arrived up here.

Using the Mk III as an insert, I would definitely use the blowers to push as much heat into the room as you can. Since there is no airflow around the stove, all the heat coming off the back and sides is doing nothing but warming up your chimney.

The barometric damper would likely lower your stack temps a bit after the damper. Your observed reading seem a little high to me but my chimney draft is crap so I really can't say.

I know I can hold my hand on the the smoke pipe for at least a "3" count which puts it at ~130*. After the damper I can lean on the pipe all day so that would be <100* I believe.

Welcome To the forum Tom.....beautiful looking install.

Your temps are reasonable and the # of turns you are running the air screw are about what I set mine to back when I ran the hand fed. I would try the fan first before opening up the screw any more. You may find the fan noise bothersome since it is in your living room though and end up going the other way.

You may want to pick up a manometer and check the draft before deciding whether a baro or manual damper is necessary. That way you have some real numbers to react to.

I had a Mark III in our basement for many years and saw an improvement when I installed a baro. My stack temps came down a bit and the stove temps went up.

Nothing wrong with the white buckets!! I have used them for many, many years. but mine is in an unfinished basement, not nearly as decorative as yours.

One suggestion with the Mark series stoves is to shut down after about a ton of coal and see how much fly ash has accumulated on the top of the baffle plate. Too much there will impede the heat transfer to the tubes that the distribution air flows through. Check any horizontal flue pipe at that time too and see how much fly ash is there. You can then gauge how many ton you can burn before needing to clean it out. I think it is a good idea to check it after 1 ton since this is your first season with it.