Uninteruptable power supply for stoker?

Hi all !

This will be my first season heating with coal. Over the summer I installed a Harmon DVC-500 in my basement. I was reading that starting an anthracite coal stove is not the quickest thing. So if the power goes out - how long before the fire goes out ??? I have a spare UPS here which would run the stove for about an hour - just long enough to drag the generator out, finally get it started & have the power come back on.

So do I bother with a dedicated UPS - or does the stove slowly die down over a longer time ?

Thanks

Mark

Depends somewhat on how large the fire was before the power outage, but typically (at least from what I've seen) a coal fire will come back to life if the power comes back in 10-15 minutes. 15-20 is hit or miss and 20 or more minutes will need a restart.

If your stove has a high temperature limit switch on it, it will trip after several minutes of no power. This, of course, will prevent the stove from operating when the power does come back.

If you can get the generator fired up inside of 10 minutes you should be fine without the UPS.

Thanks for the info !

Seems like the fire will go out fairly rapidly.

I have a spare UPS, so I'll plug it in. During the winter, the power mostly just glitches, with real outages only lasting a few minutes longer than it takes to get motivated and start the genset. ( 15-20 min) If there is an extended outage, I'll run the oil burner every few hours & let the coal die out.

I had the power off last winter for well over and hour and a half to get my electrical panel replaced. When the power came back on my stoker boiler was still lit. Coal will smolder for quite a while. Granted the fire was low and took a few minutes to get back to full burn.