Box Stove to Base Heater Conversion Adventure

For me, the HDD's threshold is not 15 lbs. but rather it is 10.5 lbs of coal (since each day I burn around 4.5 lbs. to provide for the homes DHW, which also must be accounted for, meaning that on average my minimum total daily consumption sums to 15 lbs.), and at 1.4 lbs of coal per HDD, the threshold is therefore at 10.5/1.4 = 7.5 HDD's. I assume that my boilers fire will survive a day on only as little as 10.5 lbs of coal, plus the 4.5 for the days hot water demand.

For every day when the days HDD's calculate to at or below 7.5 (call it 8 for simplicity), these days coal consumption and HDD's should not be counted for my case. Steve must also have a minimum level of daily HDD's where this break-over occurs and he is merely burning coal to keep the fire alive.

If I don't account for the warmer days properly, then my consumption vs. HDD's for October climbs to around 1.8 lbs. per HDD instead of conforming to the more typical 1.4 lbs. per HDD that I see from November through March.

Sunny Boy wrote:there's no way to know how much coal a stove burns?

What he means is, there are days that we keep the fire burning when we don't need the heat (shoulder months). If those pounds are counted against HDDs, they will skew the results slightly when comparing an entire heating season. Instead, it's better to compare the times when you absolutely need the heat, like Dec, Jan Feb and March. But, any month can have a warm spell so all that needs to be accounted for.

lsayre wrote:

Sunny Boy wrote:Larry,
My question was in regards to your last line of your last post.

" .................... Another reason why merely summing up a seasons worth of coal consumption and a seasons worth of HDDs is unreliable.

Paul

If you are comparing coal consumption vs. HDD's, then on those days when you must burn a certain amount of coal merely to sustain your fire and not to counter the cooling effect of HDD's, then for those days both the HDD's and the consumption should be discarded. About a quarter to a third of October is generally like this for me, and then it occurs again in April/May. It's much more rare when it happens in the months that lie between these extremes, but it can happen

And for just using a hand-fed stove just for heat, if the stove is let go out on the days they don't need heat, I see Steve's pounds per time period vs HHAD's as a valid method.

Up until this year, I just let the stove go out whenever the outside temps were equal to, or higher than indoor temps. Otherwise the stove was always providing heat to keep the house warmer than outdoors.

Since Steve's stove is a hand fed direct heating stove,..... and if he's only using it to keep the house warmer than outdoors, I don't see that there's any validity to deducting any of the coal used. Even on warmer days, if the stove is idling along, it would still add to the houses "heat bank" unless the outdoor temps exceed the indoor temps.

And in this instance, I think that trying to apply a cutoff amount for just idling on warm days would just needlessly confuse the results as regards to this direct heating stove project.

Paul

Sunny Boy wrote:Even on warmer days, if the stove is idling along, it would still add to the houses "heat bank" unless the outdoor temps exceed the indoor temps.

That heat don't get banked.. There is air infiltration loosing it. It goes out the window stats ect.. , or the stove is running so low that most of it just goes up the chimney or it just isn't enough to radiate into the home to be stored..

Lee, I beg to differ. As you know, not all stoves are like yours.

This year, now that I have a mano, I ran the range on days where it got up to as high as 75 outside. No window stats because with 4000 square feet of house to soak up the heat, it raised the indoor temps from the usual upper 60's to the mid 70's. In other words it stored that heat indoors, even though the range was dampered down to an idle with about .005 to .01 draft.

Don't forget the range acts like a base heater. In fact it has more than double the heat radiating surface area if you compare firebox capacity to most any base heater. So, there was very little heat going up the chimney.

At night our temps can drop down near to freezing and a few times it did. The house didn't cool off as quickly as it would have done had I let the stove go out. Instead, the house continued to be warmed up by the stove to above the normal level we keep the house in cold weather.

Everything in the house, structure, plumbing, appliances, pots pans, furniture, etc. soaked up more heat than if I had let the stove go out when the outdoor temps exceeded normal indoor temps. Since it was warmer outside, no heat was being lost through the exterior.

Later in the day, all those things inside the exterior that had absorbed extra heat, slowly release it back out so the stove doesn't have to work harder, sooner.

That's "heat banking".

An even better example. A friend who lives between here and Freetown Fred, does the same thing but on a grander scale. With one of his two 100x100 foot antiques storage buildings. These are just steel buildings with only thin blanket insulation. One of the buildings has so much cast iron machinery packed into it, that is soaking up heat all summer long, that he doesn't have to turn the heat on until about the end of December.

That's MAJOR heat banking !!!

Letting the stove make a house get warmer on warm days doesn't mean that extra heating is wasted. It's stored and released later when the temps drop again. If that didn't happen than passive solar gain heating,.... with it's ability to do heat banking, wouldn't work either. And we know it does.

Plus, as it warms up outdoors, as long as the inside temps stay above however slightly lower the outside temps are, the stove can be considered to still be heating the house ....... unless you let that heat out by opening window stats.

Paul

I suppose there is/could be some heat banking but if it's 65 outside, I'm letting some fresh air in!

Lee, you have to remember that not all of us live in a 65* world,some of us like to be warm

12 hr. old fire knocking out 450* / 119* just before shake and fill.

wish the blues came out alittle better, the pic doesn't seem as rich as in person. this is about the least blue activity I ever have.

KingCoal wrote:12 hr. old fire knocking out 450* / 119* just before shake and fill.

wish the blues came out alittle better, the pic doesn't seem as rich as in person. this is about the least blue activity I ever have.

Excellent photograph.

thanks, I figured out to put a dark back drop in front of it and photograph past it. it seems to keep the light and room features from being picked up in the glass.

been cruising along like this for a week, 46 #'s per 24 hrs constant.

I get my best pics by turning off the lights in the room and using a "low light" setting on my camera. If your stove room is effected by natural light thru windows, you'll wanna try that at night lol..

Nice picture!

LOL that pic WAS at night with the lights off !!

the peach / orange glow coming out that door glass hits the light colored wall across the room and lights it up to reflect on the glass from behind me.

that's why I need a dark back drop. the light will come out of the stove but get absorbed and not bounce back.

i'll mess with it some more and see what I can get.

still in base mode, burning less than a pound an hr.

stove 234 / stack 97. house nice even 70

i can see that if it lingers at 50-55 days and 35 ish nights i'm going to have to drop down to direct mode, hopper out and shallow fire.

as might be surmised from my entries in the " new era base burner" thread, I intend to be using a diff. stove for next heat season.

"FRANK" will be for sale.

steve

KingCoal wrote:still in base mode, burning less than a pound an hr.

stove 234 / stack 97. house nice even 70

i can see that if it lingers at 50-55 days and 35 ish nights i'm going to have to drop down to direct mode, hopper out and shallow fire.

as might be surmised from my entries in the " new era base burner" thread, I intend to be using a diff. stove for next heat season.

"FRANK" will be for sale.

steve

Your a tough man to please !

Seriously though, it looks great and the results seem really good. Can't wait to hear the season's final tally.

Paul

i have a particular mind set. from my point of view we are well past the zenith of the american experiment and having been in the preparedness ideal for 35 yrs. I feel it's time to proactively move away from a single fuel choice stove. anthracite is a fine luxury, but there will be days when unless you are very near a breaker and later a mine you will need to be able to burn from the deposits that are at hand.

i want it lighter, leaner, multi-fuel and combine as many of the attributes of the very best radiant heaters of the golden age as possible. this going to be a heat machine first and foremost. I wanted to build an interpretation of a mica radiator but it's just too much fussing, form MUST support primary function.

it will remain a coal stove, there are already very good options for excellent wood only stoves.

i've developed several designs and am weeding out the ideas that rely on marginally obtainable parts. this next stove will probably be the one I will try to sell copies of, as I expect a market / economy environment that is reality of needs driven as the regulators start loosing the funds to operate.

also at this point I will technically be restoring and updating an existing design, not producing a new product that needs to satisfy codes and regulations.

i will post the final coal usage for the converted stove after I quit burning.

thanks,
steve