Anyone Use a Logwood "Yankee" Furnace??

Hi everybody?? With the price of fuel oil, I'm considering buying/trying coal in my furnace. I also burn wood, but usually save that for extreme cold snaps or when the power goes out. I'd like to know the particulars when using coal with this model. The owners manual doesn't offer much guidence when using this fuel. Even though it's thermosatically controlled, I'm concerned about the temperture of the fire getting too hot & damaging the blower unit(forced air), or the heat exchanger. I also don't want the blower to run continiously. When using wood, I pull the blower unit out of the furnace & turn it off. House heats up great just like this. Problem is, without the blower & themostat working correctly in sync, I'm afraid of doing heat damage to my unit using the coal or a wood/coal mixture. I'd appreciate hearing from any other Logwood owners or someone who has good knowledge on this subject. Thanks in advance!

Another question I forgot to ask earlier is when I have my oil burner serviced on this unit & the tech sets the reading on the barometric dampner for greatest efficentcy, does/should this setting change when I burn coal?? Someone please set this newbie straight................

I looked at the the Logwood before I bought my AHS. I'm not that familiar with that unit at all. I will tell you that you will need the combustion blower to burn coal with success. If it works like most boilers, the combustion blower should shut off ( controlled by an aquastat ) when the water temp reaches a pre determined temp. This starves the fire of oxygen and the fire will just smolder. With a coal fire, once the combustion blower shuts off the water temp will almost always creep up 5 degrees or so. So, you have to set your water temp accordingly.

My unit is only forced air right now. I do see a boiler in my future though...Here's a link to what I've got. http://marathonheaterco.com/standard_furnace.html

Anybody??

You didn't mention the model number of your furnace, which one is it?

Ah, the only model you can burn coal in.........................

Cyber36 wrote:Ah, the only model you can burn coal in.........................

Duh, guess I had that one coming! I saw the Yankee model and the standard and thought they were different. Silly me.

The drawings are not complete enough to really tell how it works. IMO the reason the manul has very little to offer regarding burning coal is that they had no real knowledge base in that area. Very simply my advice is don't do it, you will most certainly damage something since there appear to be no safety or control methods to prevent over firing.

Sorry not to be more positive, but since no one stepped forward with experience with this unit I thought that erring on the side of caution would be best in light of your concerns.

If you are going to rely on burning coal, then I'd recommend buying a dedicated coal burning stove/boiler/furnace. Wood can be burnt in a coal burner, hand-fed stove/boiler/furnace. But a wood stove/boiler/furnace that 'can burn coal' is a compromise. I've gone through the whole frustration of trying to burn coal well in a unit designed to burn wood,

I'd stay away from it. Unless you are going to burn wood as your primary solid fuel, with coal as the backup for ocassional use.

Greg L

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Hmmm.....I wonder what Logwood would have to say after reading this thread?.............

It doesn't look like they spend much time online, their website is still advertising Y2K stuff.

The furnace does have temp controls, if it burns coal well, I would use it. The barometric damper should be set for coal, the oil side will do fine with whatever that is. I would guess about .06 max draft.
The cutaway shows a decent firebox, maybe its not the best thing going, but if you are not having trouble with the fire and it heats the house its fine by me.
I would like to know how the draft control works and who made it, had a Sears furnace years ago and when I got it right it worked like a charm. With no power.