Hotblast Year 3

lightning:

How much coal can the hotblast 1357 hold? Must be more than 4 shovels full.

How many pounds of ash does its ash pan hold?

Larry:

What are the goonies you talked about in you text?

Are these just coal fused together,then you should just burn them their good fuel.

I weigh all my coal in and weigh the ash left to see if I'm burning right, the ash runs

about 10-12%.You should not see any rocks in the pan,but you will find slate and

bone. The ROM coal of varying sizes has higher slate mainly because it is a much

larger size. You should not have any unburned pieces larger than what size you

burned. The large chunks can have a lot of slate in the layers, some even thick

layers of slate are visible,sometimes bit can have a lot of limestone attached to

the layers. There is even a coal mine /Power plant that uses this blend for fuel

and produces cement as a byproduct.

BigBarney

freetown fred wrote:hell, I forget how long it took him to get his stove runnin right with MUCH help from FORUM members.

Yeah, good question so I went and looked at old posts from 2011. It took about two months to figure out I needed a baro to steady the draft and another month to block the bypasses so combustion air would quit uselessly going around the fuel bed. So, about three months. Everything else I've done was just to make a good thing a little bit better. It's a real stove now I know it'll never quite live up to yours though. I mean geez once a day tendings in 10-20 degree weather with the whole house 72-75 degrees, that's awful....

a pic of the inside after you've "filled" it would explain a lot...

Point being Lee, ya listened & followed suggestions & came out knowing the how, why's & what-for's of your stove & YES most of your adaptations after have just been glitz/ personal playin! As long as it's keepin ya warm & not aggravatin ya on a daily basis--ya don't have live up to anybody else's!!

Lightning wrote:

freetown fred wrote:hell, I forget how long it took him to get his stove runnin right with MUCH help from FORUM members.

Yeah, good question so I went and looked at old posts from 2011. It took about two months to figure out I needed a baro to steady the draft and another month to block the bypasses so combustion air would quit uselessly going around the fuel bed. So, about three months. Everything else I've done was just to make a good thing a little bit better. It's a real stove now I know it'll never quite live up to yours though. I mean geez once a day tendings in 10-20 degree weather with the whole house 72-75 degrees, that's awful....

Just done with boiler tending. Last night at 2330hrs cleaned the grate,by the way I don' t

have a shaker,all I do is use a poker with a hook and a straight poker to clear the ashes.

At 0830hrs added 36# of coal (after 18 hrs burn) and cleaned the grate,all done,it got

warmer so maybe I can next service it in the evening,took 10 minutes. I burned ~50# of

coal just shy of 3# per hour,about 30,000btu per hour.

BigBarney

There must be some kind of misunderstanding here. What do you mean by "left it open in the front and back"?

A big pile in the center sloping to the front and back with hardly anything at the very front and back.
Let the air through the grates.

OK, just for the sake of hearin myself talk--get a real stove that you can handle Larry. Any HITZER would be ideal-- pus any number of other ones. I'm believing that this one is way above & beyond your capabilities--but you've know this for quite some time haven't you?

When I get your check you can tell me how to spend money.
I'll PM you my address.
Actually, my furnace is working pretty well.

This latest series was on how to get longer burn times.

Yep I have to agree I'm not trying to brag on my Ashley stove but it handles bit coal great.

Also that pic I posted today just now before a good stir the temperature was 290.

Just now, I'm at 725 and 254 in the duct

What are the goonies you talked about in you text?

They seem to be hard clumps that may be fused together.
I can't break them apart with a poker.
I'll get a picture of one next trip down.

I haven't added any coal as of 10 AM because I had a fair amount left from overnight.
I did have a dickens of a time getting everything to catch.
I will be adding when I go back down and will get a pic of a loaded furnace.

Here is picture of a couple "goonies" as well as shovel so we can know what we're talking about.
Before loading: I don't know if you can tell from the picture but I'm about 1/3 of the way up on the bricks.

After loading 4 shovels. 25-30#s.
I know I could put a couple more in to fill the front and back.
But, in my experience, it would choke the fire.

Build up in layers, not all at once. Can you give each layer a few minutes to get burning, then add more ?

Don't expect the fire to produce a lot of heat if you don't give it a lot of fuel. It's all about heat volume, not just high temperatures.

Like I've said before, a wooden match burns just as hot as a log. Guess which one would do a better job of heating a house ?

Think heat volume, not just heat temps.

Paul

I believe your advice is more pertinent to anthracite, Paul.
If I did that with my bit, each layer would burn out before the next later was added.
Thank you

Then how are the other guys getting deeper firebeds with their Hotblast stoves ?

Paul

Hey Larry,

Just as a reminder, SHAKE-SHAKE-SHAKE baby!
Sorry to pop in and out but we are slammed at work. I want to emphasize a little of what we talked about on the phone the other night. After a quick read through the last couple of pages above, I think a more thorough shake down and ash clearing will help a bunch.
If you get as much ash out as possible (sometimes I get two pans of ashes), shut your load door for a few and let the fresh air super heat your coke, you should be able to load that fire box up from front to back with coal. I would also recommend use your shovel to put the coal to the back and hand stacking some larger pieces in the front 1/4 of the firebox so as not to smother the fire bed.
Here's what I do EVERY TIME I load coal;
I vigorously shake, run a poker down both sides of the fire bricks on top of the grate "ledge", poke out all four corners, lay my poker flat on top of the grates and scrape them down and thoroughly shake again. Shut the load door for a few minutes (maybe 3 or 4) and this will create almost a blow torch effect through the coked coal bed.

larryfoster wrote:I believe your advice is more pertinent to anthracite, Paul.
If I did that with my bit, each layer would burn out before the next later was added.
Thank you

No it wont burn out if you add it in layers.

Then how are the other guys getting deeper firebeds with their Hotblast stoves ?

It's not a Hotblast but how does BigBarney add 71#s?
It doesn't sound like Ky Speedracer is layering, either, with his Hot Blast.

As of right now, my bed is full of hot coals to the top of the bricks.
Part of today's chronology:

10:30 4 shovels 525 150
11:00 Spinner closed to 4 turns open 350 135
Poked
12:30 Poked and broke up 410 143 77
Lots of coals, spinner open 4 turns secondary wide open.

Maybe, I might have learned something today.
Of course, it's hard to say this is definitive.

One thing I did today was close the spinner part way after I got a hot fire.
I've always worked on the premise that I needed more primary air so I never, ever closed the spinner.

Since I'm testing Ky's method again hoping for some modicum of his results, this is something he recommended.

I don't know what will happen with a full burn cycle.

I had gotten the furnace to work tolerably well.
Now seeing if I can improve it's performance.

When I say "tolerably well" I mean that I've been able to eliminate being cold on cold days like I was the first 2 years and the beginning of this season.
It did require a lot of monkeying around to do that.
I suspect there will always be some involvement that is more than loading coal and it will keep my house warm for 12 hours

No it wont burn out if you add it in layers.

I'm not burning Kentucky bit

Larry:

Are you getting your coal from south of slippery Rock?

BigBarney