Glenwood Is Lit and I'm Stoked

What do you think your.burn time's are how much coal does your pot hold with the lining in it mine holds 40 lbs and about 16 hr be tweet shakes at 250

I'm not sure on really anything specific. I've just been letting burn than I top it off. I be only shaken it once. As soon as the new car feeling is over I'll start keeping track.

Merc300d wrote:I'm not sure on really anything specific. I've just been letting burn than I top it off. I be only shaken it once. As soon as the new car feeling is over I'll start keeping track.

That's how I started. Just doing the basics then slowly adding to the routine and seeing what input changes give what results.

Get a settled fire going then crack the check damper and see what happens. If nothing notable, open it more.
Fuss with MPD position.

Do one thing at a time and make a mental note of the results.

I think I fuss with it too much. This morning I shook it then reloaded it. Must of been a lot of fines in the bucket. It smothered the fire. Temp dropped to 100. Pipe temp was like 75. I poked through to the bottom to let some air pull easy and uncovered the coal bed. Still taking a bit to get going.
I thought the check damper was to cut draft. Why would I opened it now when I want the most to get fire going again. ? Maybe I'm looking at it wrong

Merc300d wrote:I think I fuss with it too much. This morning I shook it then reloaded it. Must of been a lot of fines in the bucket. It smothered the fire. Temp dropped to 100. Pipe temp was like 75. I poked through to the bottom to let some air pull easy and uncovered the coal bed. Still taking a bit to get going.
I thought the check damper was to cut draft. Why would I opened it now when I want the most to get fire going again. ? Maybe I'm looking at it wrong

You would not want to use the check damper when you are trying to get the fire going again. You would only want to use the check damper to slow a fire down.

Randy

That's Randy. I remember William talking about that as well. It started to climb back up again

Close the check damper and forget that it exists for awhile. The check damper shouldn't be used unless there is an excessive draft in the chimney.
Opening it CUTS air from getting to the fire. That is it's purpose.
When you have a nearly dead fire, don't disturb it. Just open up the primary dampers and put the stove in direct draft.
Be patient. You can nurse it back to life if you don't mess with it until the temperature on the stove barrel is above 250 degrees.
If it is around 100 the fire is almost dead and it must be attended to right then or it will soon be out.

Merc300d wrote:I think I fuss with it too much. This morning I shook it then reloaded it. Must of been a lot of fines in the bucket. It smothered the fire. Temp dropped to 100. Pipe temp was like 75. I poked through to the bottom to let some air pull easy and uncovered the coal bed. Still taking a bit to get going.
I thought the check damper was to cut draft. Why would I opened it now when I want the most to get fire going again. ? Maybe I'm looking at it wrong

You don't want to open the check damper when getting a fire going. I worded that poorly. I meant, once you get a fire established, THEN start playing with the controls (like the check damper).

This is a good time to play with it and learn before we get clobbered with winter.

Thanks. I brought it back up to 300. Took a while. I opened up the primaries all the way ,put it to direct draft and opened the mpd. Its all set now. I probably somewhat screen. The coal. Too many fines put out my fire. Not to mention he outside temp is only slightly below 60.

Merc300d wrote:Thanks. I brought it back up to 300. Took a while. I opened up the primaries all the way ,put it to direct draft and opened the mpd. Its all set now. I probably somewhat screen. The coal. Too many fines put out my fire. Not to mention he outside temp is only slightly below 60.

Nut coal is a bit more difficult to work with than stove coal is as far as establishing a fire or recovering a fire....and the warmish outside temps don't help a bunch either.

Yeah I think stove is my size of choice. It seems to burn hotter and ignite faster.

Merc300d wrote:Yeah I think stove is my size of choice. It seems to burn hotter and ignite faster.

I haven't noticed that it burns hotter though I haven't run mine very hard yet.....but it is MUCH easier to start the fire on stove coal.

I went out an bought an infrared thermometer a couple of days ago. I lit the stove today after shutting it down for a few. Stove temp on the barrel per the magnet gauge is reading 300 So I decided to see what the firepot is reading. That was 615 degrees. A big different for obvious reasons. So what if the barrel temp is 500 could the firepot possibly be almost 1000. I've had the stove in direct draft with the draft open all the way for a bit to get the stove roaring. Just about ready to put it in base heater mode. Just thought I'd share the temp differences.
The differed between the magnet and infrared is about 30.

I ve come home twice to a dead fire. It seems like the temp drops slowly until it goes out. There's always plenty of unburned coal left. Am I supposed to get the stove really hot before I put it in base heater mode? It gets to about 275 then I flip the the lever. I must be doing something wrong but I not sure what. When I set the primaries , I just crack it less then a 1/4 ". Is it maybe I don't have enough draft in my setup while in base heater mode to pull the air , heat , smoke through the stove with the primaries set so low. Anybody know whats going on here ?

Merc300d wrote:I ve come home twice to a dead fire. It seems like the temp drops slowly until it goes out. There's always plenty of unburned coal left. Am I supposed to get the stove really hot before I put it in base heater mode? It gets to about 275 then I flip the the lever. I must be doing something wrong but I not sure what. When I set the primaries , I just crack it less then a 1/4 ". Is it maybe I don't have enough draft in my setup while in base heater mode to pull the air , heat , smoke through the stove with the primaries set so low. Anybody know whats going on here ?

How did you light the fire?. Did you get a good layer of coal going good and hot before you filled the pot?.

If I recall, you are burning nut size.......I am not the most experienced coal burner here but I have been fiddlin' with my stove off and on since July....and like I mentioned above, running nut only isn't that easy in these. Once the fire is well esablished, it's not a problem. Starting a fire on nut alone has been challenging.

I am probably not doing it right but I get a layer of stove coal going good. Then I'll put a good layer of nut (a mix of nut and stove works better, all stove coal is best) and let that get going to where I can see the blues or flame....then I'll smother it. I have found if I DO NOT do this, the fire won't go out but it takes FOREVER to get going and get heat out of it.

Banking is another thing I've found works with nut size coal (I don't need to do this with stove size).

So, to answer your question, I don't put it in base burner mode until I get the blue flames/fire and start seeing an increase in temps on the barrel/stack (with nut size coal).

If all you have is nut size, be patient and work with it....you'll get there. Banking the coal helps A LOT.