Clayton / Hot Blast Mods and Tending for Anthracite

I just don't know what else I could do besides put a register in the door, I hate to shut off the duct out there because its nice to have some heat out there in winter with ought running the wood stove 24/7, it seems to stay around 40-45 during the coldest parts of the month which is better than the cars being outside

Letting the cars get cold won't hurt them any. At least they are out of the weather. I would think having the house more comfortable would be a better trade off.

Ya it just kills me to have it attached to the house and not heat it, because in theory that side of the house should be easier to heat because those walls of the house are warmer

Keep the garage door closed. The residual heat from the vehicles will melt off any snow and ice they accumulate while driving them.

I also park my tractor with the snow lower on it in there too which on the weekends we don't go anywhere so, I have a shut off in the duct goin out there anyway so this winter I can always shut it off and do some test to see what changes

KingCoal wrote:BTW Larry, have you gotten any closer to a decision about a new heat appliance ?

Not to barge in on another topic, but I still have my eye on the Keystoker HFH-90 (which is their hand fired hopper model) for the living room. Only now my wife is waffling once again about putting it in the living room. If it's going into the basement it might as well be a more substantial and more heavy duty stove. So this dilemma has me waffling also.

hotblast1357 wrote:But before I added the baro, I was not sucking as much air out as I am now

Here’s another way of looking at air infiltration and barometric dampers:

My house is 2,000 square feet. With 8-foot ceilings it contains 16,000 cubic feet of air (ignoring attic and cellar). An “average” not-too-bad home has one air exchange per hour, so in my case 16,000 cubic feet per hour.

Now let’s take a typical coal stove convection blower that moves 200 cubic feet of air per minute. When you stand by your stove, you can feel quite a blast of air. Imagine that we take the blower off the stove and set it up with a vent so it is drawing outside air into my house. In an hour, the blower will move 12,000 cubic feet, significantly less than the natural exchange rate.

Compare the blast you feel from the convection blower, to the low flow into your barometric damper, and you will probably conclude that the baro’s effect on infiltration is trivial.

rberq wrote:

hotblast1357 wrote:But before I added the baro, I was not sucking as much air out as I am now

Here’s another way of looking at air infiltration and barometric dampers:


Compare the blast you feel from the convection blower, to the low flow into your barometric damper, and you will probably conclude that the baro’s effect on infiltration is trivial.

WADR, i'm not sure I see this as an apples to apples example, or that the baro. loss is / would be trivial.

i will admit it might be IF in the given installation there is a struggle to build and hold much more than -.02 WC of natural draft.

but, some of us have seen -.2 WC above the fire with no dampers present. in my own case when I was trying to use a baro. having such levels of draft meant that it probably WAS pulling 200 cfm and could be heard moaning from behind a closed bathroom door on the second floor.

to say that there was trivial infiltration as a result is laughable. there were places along various first floor walls and near windows that we could have flown miniature kites. no foolin'

not banging the damper drum, just sayin'

steve

Steve I agree in your case with the strong draft that its possible the baro yielded a significant amount of additional infiltration. But I see your situation as not typical. Usually most people have a lighter draft.

I'm in the process of hunting down some true numbers of CFM amounts that the baro uses based on an "average draft" figure in relation to an average infiltration turnover to see how they relate..

yeah, not much of my situation I s "typical"

i believe there are numbers to support your position. it's just being able to find them.

Yes I also have a non typical draft, I can see .1 wc with a baro wide open, so just imagine how much that is sucking

hotblast1357 wrote:Yes I also have a non typical draft, I can see .1 wc with a baro wide open, so just imagine how much that is sucking

Right but you also should take into account how often you see that high of a draft.. I occasionally see spikes too. An average needs to be considered.

When never the winds blow, which is almost every third day it seems like

Lightning wrote:I'm in the process of hunting down some true numbers of CFM amounts that the baro uses based on an "average draft" figure in relation to an average infiltration turnover to see how they relate..

Me too. I found a treatise on the proper ventilation of turkey houses, which seemed appropriate. If I did my math correctly, it says that a 6-inch baro at .05 to .08 draft can pull 115 CFM. So it's not an insignificant amount of air after all, if average turnover infiltration is 250 to 300 CFM in a 2000 square foot house.

Doing the math I made a lot of assumptions in lieu of actually knowing what I was doing so I'll be interested to see what numbers you come up with, Lee.

This is my first year ever burning coal and I plan on firing my furnace up next weekend as were starting to get into cooler temps and the house is getting down into the mid to upper 50's at night. Currently, we're just taking off the chill with a propane stove in the mornings. This write up and the video has informed me greatly as well as this whole site, and I think I'm addicted to burning coal even though I never have lol. However I do have a question about the secondary air. I did the fiberglass insulation modification to my stove that you show Lightning, but I don't have the secondary air pipes that you have. Once I reload the coal after a shake down I have to wait for it to ignite. I believe this is where you are leave the load door open 1/8" to allow some air in over the fire for the ignition. Could I just open up the load door vent instead of leaving the door cracked until the coal ignites? Also, once ignition has taken place after a reload, do you need any secondary air after that? I know that anthracite needs most if not all of its air from the bottom, so I plan on keeping the load door vent closed all of the time. I guess I'm hesitant that a while (whether it be 1 hr or 6 hrs) after I close the door more volatile gases would end up building up and then won't have any secondary air to burn in and cause a puffback or explosion..... Is this possible or is it that once the coal ignites after reloading it doesn't need any more secondary air until the next reload?