Need Some Suggestions as My Real Quiz Is Coming up

The other day I was feeling cold and only 20F outside but not much wind so stove at 450 or so and checked room thermometer and it was 76-77 and said no way should feel cold it must be too dry in here. Put a kitchen pot on the stove and a gallon of water and boiling well in 15 minutes. The only reason I tried is windyhill said he cooks on his 404 so figured it must be able to boil water. As it turns out in 4 hours I went through 3 gallons of water so went another 4. Once the humidity started to come up a bit at same temp felt real wam and cozy so slowed the stove to 375 and another 3 gallons of water so shot for 350 about as low as I have been so far and put the pot on a trivet so instead of boiling just steamed slowly. House felt better at 72 than it does at 78 and no static sparks! To me a good solution for a humidifier as no maintenance other than add water when tending the stove no electricity so basically free other than the coal to heat the water. This brings me to the question of a sacrificial pot that I don't care about and what might happen if I have brain fade and don't keep it full when tending. Trust me I can see this happening LOL. I was thinking aluminum as stainless is a known slow to transfer heat material. Any ideas on that welcome as I see this as a coal saver plus better air quality thing.

Next problem that needs a solution for this first time burner. As weather warming up been slowly dropping stove temps and the added humidity deal says drop them more still. I am down to 325-350 stove top stack surface 110 and draft 0.01-0.02 back and forth. I have several days ahead that will be 50 something during the day and 30 something at night so don't want to shut down. The coal is dull red below the top just simmering so how low can I go? currently at 1/4 turn open on both inlets and ready to try 1/8 for several hours until temps start to drop and go back to 1/4. Windyhill how have you been? I have a choice of coal in the short time. I have about 360 lbs. of Kimmels left though wanted to save that for a relight and about 3/4 ton of Blaschack will the Blaschack cruise very slow and not go out in a 404?

Sorry if bored everyone with this but still learning here and lots to process,
Dave

Sunny Boy wrote:You can mix the Kimmel's and Blaschak to extend the Kimmel's. Try about a 50/50 mix. That will help it burn better in warm weather/low draft conditions.

When we hit a few days of warm spell earlier this winter, I had the range running on straight Kimmels when it was in the mid 70F's outside. And that was in indirect mode (oven on). No difficulties maintaining draft.

Anytime I put it into direct draft to reload, or higher temps to cook with, it responded just like it was in the upper 30's - lower 40's outside with straight Blaschak.

Paul

Thanks for the info Paul. If I understand it all Kimmels good for when it gets warm as easy to bring back compared to Blaschack. Currently down to 260ish as less than 275 and around 85 on stack surface draft 0.01 with very slow blues wandering around. Getting ready to add a 1/8 more open as this is getting scary for me LOL. There is still a dull red glow below the top of coal bed so assuming still alive. Maybe crack the MPD to 3/4 from full closed to give the draft a tad of help too. Major learning curve here.
Dave

ddahlgren wrote:Currently down to 260ish as less than 275 and around 85 on stack surface draft 0.01 with very slow blues wandering around. Getting ready to add a 1/8 more open as this is getting scary for me LOL. There is still a dull red glow below the top of coal bed so assuming still alive. Maybe crack the MPD to 3/4 from full closed to give the draft a tad of help too. Major learning curve here.
Dave

Hey Dave, you'll find that keeping draft will be more challenging than putting the fire out.. Does your stove have any adjustable secondary air inlets? If so, you can crank that primary down to a sliver, open the secondary air up some and you'll wanna have the MPD open. The extra secondary air will just get heated and go up the chimney, helping the draft move along. As far as appearance of the coal bed, you may find that you can't see any visible red glow or flames, and from above it looks dead. But don't worry, the red glow will be buried in underneath. I've been able to throttle my fire down to the point that the furnace is hardly producing any heat at all with this method. Even to the point that the convection blowers won't kick on all day long. My blowers kick on at 115 degrees on top the warm air jacket.

As long as you can maintain draft and have a sliver of primary feeding the fire, it shouldn't go out but instead enter a state of suspended animation.. The smaller size coals will throttle down a little easier than the bigger sizes. During warm weather burns I'll dig from the smaller size coal in my bin, which is anything from rice up to nut size but mostly pea and nut size.

I believe lightning is pretty well on the money. Today was quite warm, and the boiler idled down to 180 for a while. Could barely see any red in the coal bed. Stayed there for over 2 hrs before water temps dropped enough to activate the aqua stat. much to my surprise, when the primary opened the ol Harman rose in temps. Don't know if I would want to go any lower, but at 180 every thing worked just fine.
Jim

Lighti0hng and JF Graham Yes the draft the issue when I read this went to check and mano said 0 Opened the MPD to 3/4 closed and found some. Sprinkled a bit of coal on the bed and found more when it lit. Banked up 3 inches or so over the top and burning well after ash pan door open for 10 minutes and all glowing under the grates. I have learned that at 350 to 400 this stove does what is expected a shake down gives a glowing ash pan and all is well at 600 to 700 it is a beast that will gladly do the job but has coarse ash that will not shake down an requires all sorts of raking and poking to get it back, I think my job is to tighten up the house for next year and work on humidifier stuff so I can run much slower and not push the stove so close to the edge of meltdown.

Ran 18 hrs. on 10 lbs. of Kimmels shook down with fine ash running 250 on stove top and 90 on stack surface draft 0.01-0
02 depending if a breeze or not MPD 3/4 closed. I was surprised at how nicely it shook down to glowing grates on 60-70% of the a few pokes from below and all clear. The part I was worried about seems easier than when running it hard at 600+.

We had 62* for a high yesterday ,so I didn't shake the ashes,didn't poke,just left it alone. Last nite the stove was at 200*,i shook & poked,altho not real aggressively ,this a/m it was at 350*. Today is too be cloudy,breezy & colder with high of 48* so we will have the stove running hotter again. Humidification via stove top kettle ~~~~ we love this cheap,easy,no fuss way of adding water to the air in our house. Our stainless (probably chineese quality) kettle sprung a hole so my wife put an older canner on for now. We do occasionally forget to add water & the kettle runs dry which might shorten its life but a few kettles are cheaper than humidifier maintenance.

My thoughts exactly on the pot some from the dollar store will be just fine. No electricity and no maintenance and no NOISE!

Hit a new low for me today 175 on the stove top and 85 though suspect closer to 110 on the stack surface as I could put my hand on it but would not linger too long. I thought the fire was out gave it a good shake and got a half pan of ashes and mostly glowing grates did a very small amount of poking from below and all glowing. 10 lbs. of coal in 18 hours so a 1.25 worth from TSC. I had the primary air at 1/16 turn open and went to 1/4 and just fine as it is cooling off a bit and going to be cold tonight. Finally nice fine ash! The 404 I think a fine supplemental heat stove if run at 450 and below. Using as heat for a whole house that is 140+ years old a bit out of it's capacity unless pushed very hard to 650-725 and sort of like a hydroplane that starts to chine walk from side to side, you know you are going to crash and just picking out the scene of the accident LOL.

Dave