I Got the Stove Installed.

I just had my Stanley Agrand parlor stove installed and boy am I excited about it. I was going to do it myself as I have put in many stoves over the course of my life, but; since I rent this house I decided to have it installed while I acted as straw foreman. I put it in front of the big, stone fireplace in my living/dining room, which has an ample stone hearth to set it on so I feel that it is safe. The hearth rests on a concrete form so there is no wood frame under it to get hot. I might need to get a fire proof rug or and extension to protect the oak floor right in front of the stove.

The house is one story and the chimney is 24 feet high and had a terrible draw as the fireplace is huge, poorly designed and the flue is 13" X 18". I had them run stainless steel flex pipe through the flue all the way to the top, capped off the top and extended the flue by an extra four feet with double wall stainless pipe. I wanted to MAKE SURE I had enough hieght for a good draft.
The doors on the stove fit nicely but the stove is from the 1890's so it is not air tight. To compensate for this I had a pipe damper put in about 7" out from the exhaust collar on the stove.
The stove was put in on last Saturday and it was a hot, muggy day, yet I wanted to test to see if my new flue pipe would draw. I took an oil lamp, lit it and put it in the fire pot then waited about 10 minutes or so. I took the lamp out, put in some damp leaves lit them and boy did they smolder! Even on a hot, humid day the smoke was quickly drawn up around the brick arch in the stove and out the pipe with just the heat from a flat wick oil lamp. I guess I won't have any trouble with the flue drawing, now I might have too much maybe!

I wonder if there is anything that I skipped that I need to do before the stove is lit for real this fall? I want to be safe and responsible with my stove and use it properly.
I have another question if anyone would like to answer it. I would really appreciate it.
The grate is 10" in diameter and the fire pot is 10" deep. I am curious as to how much coal this will hold as I expect to use nut coal in it and how many BTU's per hour I can expect from it. I have burned Bitumenous coal since childhood, but this is the FIRST time I will use Anthracite since I am now in the great State of Pennsylvania. The stove was specifically designed to burn Anthracite.
What can I expect with hard coal?
Thanks in advance for any replies.

Boy, this sounds familiar to me.. I first got the coal bug when I bought an old pot belly/parlor stove, half because it looked nice and half for the 'free' heat. I'm not sure what a Stanley Agrand is, but if it is a small cast-iron parlor stove, it might be a challenge to keep it burning through the night - mine was. If you just want a fire going during the day then I'm sure it will do fine. One problem I had was controlling the air flow - it would often over-fire since I could not fully close off the draft. If you get too much draw, then get a barometric damper and it should help. Good luck

I put a picture of it up in the stove pictures thread if you want to look at it. Thanks for the reply. I have been an advocate of coal all my life, but as I said above all of my experience has always been with Bitumenous coal. I'm an Anthracite virgin.

wsherrick wrote:What can I expect with hard coal?

You can expect to be nice and warm........ cheap.

Two things, barometric damper and CO/smoke detector.

Oh, and a nice comfy chair to sit in and grin.

Based on the dimensions you provided, It should hold about 23-25 lbs of nut, maybe a little more if you can pile the coal in the center. You will have to see what size coal works best in the stove, you may find that the burn is easier to control with pea size.

BTU output is tough to estimate until you get a feel for how well the stove operates. I have no idea how efficient a 100+ year old coal stove would be, maybe 65%? In any case, you can estimate the stove's output per hour with your desired burn time and anthracite heat content. (Stove capacity in lbs)*(Anthracite btu/lb)/(burntime)*(stove efficiency) = BTU's per hour

As a baseline, quality anthracite should be around 13,000 BTU's per pound.

Thanks guys for the replies. I'm confident that the stove will perform well, but I know I am going to have to do a lot of experimenting with it ( a lot of fun for me) to optimize it's performance. The holes in the grate are 1/2 inches wide so that's why I think that nut size is the right size for it. Will pea coal fall through the grate? It is brick lined all around the back about a foot above the top of the fire pot and it has a brick arch much like a steam locomotive firebox to create a longer flame path to the exhaust.
I don't have a CO/smoke detector but I will get one for sure, but I want one that doesn't go off every time you fry up some bacon or something else in the kitchen.
I have read the thread about Barometric dampers, how would that affect how a non air tight stove operates?

I am not familiar with Anthracite sizes. Back home in we just burned run of mine Bituminous coal which I got for $40 a ton.

A barometric damper controls the draft pulling on the stove.. this is ESPECIALLY important with a non-airtight stove...

With a tight stove,, you can to some extent limit the air getting to the fire.. so if the draft changes during the day or overnight when nobody is around the stove to notice it is getting HOT, the stove can limit the excess air to the fire somewhat, reducing an overheat. With a non-airtight stove, the air leaks would allow way too much air to the fire, burn up all it's fuel too fast, probably overfire the stove, or many other much worse scenarios..so you need to control the draft. A manual pipe damper doesn't control draft, it adjusts airflow rates, and only to some extent.

With a barometric damper,, you can set the draft that the stove sees at say .07"wc... and from this maximum draft, you can control your air to your fire.. If the draft in the chimney changes drasticly,, the barometric damper will keep it at .07"wc, and the stove and the fire won't know that the wind outside is not blowing at 35knots, and the chimney is pulling .12"wc, which would surly overfire the stove and create a dangerous condition, even with a manual pipe damper..

For anthracite to burn well, and in some cases for it to burn at all, you need ALL the air getting into the stove to come through the coalbed from below, through the grates.. with some stoves, even a small amount of air leaking above the coal bed will steal too much air from the coal fire, and the fire suffers or goes out..

With a non-airtight stove,, and a manual pipe damper,, where do the excess combustion fumes, Carbon Monoxide, and smells go if the damper is closed too far? [or set for a very strong chimney draft] and the chimney draft drops drasticly [wind drops, temperature climbs, low pressure system/frontal passage].?.. Well the fire is going to slowly go out or burn lower,, but coal is very slow to react, so there could be a time period where there is positive pressure in the stove,, and fumes and CO are leaking out of the not-airtight stove body... and into your house...

So.,, get a Night Hawk CO detector,, or another brand that has a DIGITALreadout, not just an alarm.. keep one in the room with the stove, and one near or in the bedrooms.. read them often, so you know what the normal readings are.. a false alarm is much better than NO alarm, and you don't wake up the next morning..

If I were to use a non-airtight coal burning stove,, I would NEVER run it without a barometric damper, and I'd probably not use a manual damper,, this would depend on just how controlable the air to the fire actually is..

If your stove has obvious areas that will leak air,, I'd get some furnace cement and carefully and neatly seal these joints.. You have a very nice stove, and you want to have if funtional and SAFE.. You might be able to create a draft with either a hot light bulb or a hair dryer in the stove,, and then use a candle or a cigarette as a smoke source [or a stick of incense] use the smoke to detect air being pulled into the stove around the doors, windows, and joints.. deal with them now, and enjoy your stove when the weather turns cold..

The houses that were typical when non-airtight and open hearth coal stoves were common were VERY drafty houses.. the windows didn't seal, there was no weather stripping or very primitive weather stripping. So the House breathed very well,, a non-airtight stove had lots of fresh air to feed the fire from.. But in today's tight houses, without proper care, prevention and precautions,, a non-airtigh coal stove could be dangerous... So please put safety on the top of your list..

A barometric damper must be between the chimney and the stove, nothing between the Baro and the chimney.. if a manual pipe damper is installed, it cannot be after the baro, it must be between the stove and the baro.

Greg L.

Thank you for the time you took to lay all of that information out. I deeply appreciate it. I did a leak test with a candle and didn't find any leaks in the seams of the stove, but I did find a good leak where the first two sections of stove pipe didn't fit well together. I took them apart and re-fitted them so they mated correctly. Now they don't leak around the seam as before and they are tightly secured with sheet metal screws in case you were wondering. I will indeed look into getting a Barometric damper and get the digital CO/smoke alarms as suggested.

BTW- I didn't expect everybody that visits the house to go nuts over the stove. Now they all want one too. What have I done

I checked out the pic of the stove. That is realy a beautiful stove. I don't know when I have ever seen a more ornate parlor stove. Enjoy

I will second what Grizz said - a fine looking stove. And it has no resemblance to the potbelly I fought with at the beginning of last winter. I suspect that given it's size and the fact that you already have some experience burning coal that it will do just fine! Congrats - I wish Harman would make one that looked like that.. Keep the CO detector juiced.

wsherrick wrote:I just had my Stanley Agrand parlor stove installed and boy am I excited about it.

Good luck with your stove. I'll bet you that next year at this time you''ll have a full sized coal appliance that will take care of all your heating needs!

Thank you all for your good wishes. It is nice to meet sincere people who are so helpful.
The house I live in is pretty small. The main living area is the living room/dining room and the kitchen on the end of that. I should be able to heat these areas well with this stove, but; I don't expect to get it to burn on one loading all day. I will see if I can get it to burn all night with enough fire in it to revive it the next morning.
I do know that it will be a lot better than constantly feeding wood into the huge fireplace with little heat output as I have done for the past 2 winters.
I was going to wait until I bought a house in a few years before I got a stove, but; the $2,000 dollars worth of firewood (10 cords) I threw into the fireplace last winter was the straw that broke the old camel's back.

Well, all is ready now. I just received a delivery of 7 tons of nut coal. I didn't have time to make a bin for it so I just laid out some black plastic on the ground and had them dump it in the side yard next to the carport. It is in a shady spot so there won't be too much sunlight getting to it.
Before I bought it I had the dealer give me the specs and where he got it from. The coal I bought has 8% ash, 14,400 BTU's per pound and fuses at 2,700 degrees. He said the coal came from the South Tamaqua coal pocket. I hosed it down and looked through it. There is no trash in it and it is all very uniform in size. Hopefully, I did good.

This is the funny part. I live in an area of affluent, artsy, Lexus driving yuppie trendoids. I wonder what they are saying about the giant pile of coal in the yard? I am thinking about getting a stuffed polar bear and putting it on top of the coal pile and saying it's anti global warming art.

Tell them you are sequestering carbon dioxide.
Even better; xerascaping.

Hey, I just thought of an easy, clean way to test for stove and pipe leaks and slowly cure the new paint on my Stanley Argand. I went to the hardware store and got some Sterno cans and put one in the stove. I've already tested for leaks so I thought this might be a low impact way to cure the paint on the stove slowly without the overwhelming smell of curing paint when you light a real fire in the stove. The Sterno gets the stove moderately warm and I can smell the paint curing just a little. Maybe a couple of treatments like this will do the trick.
If you want to stop the process all you have to do is put the cap back on the Sterno can and put out the flame.
Has anyone else thought of this too?