To Those Who've Used Both, Do You Vote Hopper or No Hopper?

Which do you prefer, hopper or no hopper?

Hopper
33
97%
No hopper
1
3%
 
Total votes: 34

 
rberq
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Hand Fed Coal Stove: DS Machine 1300 with hopper
Coal Size/Type: Blaschak Anthracite Nut
Other Heating: Oil hot water radiators (fuel oil); propane

Post by rberq » Mon. Apr. 20, 2015 4:25 pm

lsayre wrote:Wow, 23 to 1 in favor of a hopper (so far) and (so far) my wife says she still wants a ComfortMax 75 with no hopper.
Style before practicality? It's not THAT much better looking. :o
Tell her she can run the gauntlet, and if she gets by all 23 of us she can have it.
gauntlet.jpg
.JPG | 74.6KB | gauntlet.jpg


 
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davidmcbeth3
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Coal Size/Type: nut/pea/anthra

Post by davidmcbeth3 » Mon. Apr. 20, 2015 5:00 pm

lsayre wrote:Wow, 23 to 1 in favor of a hopper (so far) and (so far) my wife says she still wants a ComfortMax 75 with no hopper.
We all know which one you are going to get LOL

Image

 
coalfan
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Other Heating: kerosene\cold nat. gas

Post by coalfan » Mon. Apr. 20, 2015 7:32 pm

isayer my wife and I went to gealer last week and the first one she seen was the 75 and then he brought the 1500 up opened the grate and told her this is the stove that I been looking into and after looking at it more and the less work involved she got to liking it more and the looks grew on her fast soooo we pick it up soon good luck with your choice !!! :)

 
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oliver power
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Post by oliver power » Tue. Apr. 21, 2015 6:54 am

You could take the circulator model and dress it up, as I think someone else started to mention. Different sides, handles, warming shelf, color, etc..

 
KingCoal
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Coal Size/Type: Nut Anth.
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Post by KingCoal » Tue. Apr. 21, 2015 9:48 am



http://messickstove.com/products/ds-machine-stove ... index.html

here's a little vid for you along with the pics on the Messick Stoves site and some commentary to help you think about the comfortmax 75 stove.

this stove is completely brick clad inside, all 4 walls all the way up AND the top. on the side walls you have the bricks and a thin metal retainer, then an air space and then an iron wall, then an air space, then the outer body walls, then the circulator tubes ( now on the outside of the stove, who'd of thought ?) then a decorator sheild. the exhaust and heat ravels up and down thru all these channels before it leaves the stove.

is much of that heat getting out of anywhere but the flue ? don't know. same thing with the top,bricks, iron baffle, air, stove top. back wall, brick, air, circulator tubes, outer stove wall, back panel.

all this might work well with wood where you will be running 450* + to keep the creosote from building up in all the channels, but, i'm concerned about coal in this unit. 1/3 of my burn season requires much less heat than that and I wouldn't want to have to burn so much more aggressively just to get heat out of the stove.

last 2 cents worth.

steve

 
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lsayre
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Other Heating: Resistance Boiler (13.5 KW), ComfortMax 75

Post by lsayre » Tue. Apr. 21, 2015 5:28 pm

The ceiling of the firebox is not covered by fire bricks to my knowledge. There is some sort of heavy walled heat shield up there to divert the gasses, but it does not appear to be fire brick.

 
KingCoal
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Baseburners & Antiques: 2014 DTS C17 Base Burner, GW #6, GW 113 formerly Sir Williams, maybe others at Pauliewog’s I’ve forgotten about
Coal Size/Type: Nut Anth.
Other Heating: none

Post by KingCoal » Tue. Apr. 21, 2015 5:42 pm

ah..........yep, it is, except for the band of open space in front of the secondary tubes that lets the exhaust start it's varied route thru the rest of the stove.

http://messickstove.com/products/ds-machine-stove ... oto-5.html

I looked at the larger versions of this stove before I bought the 1400 circ. and made the dealer let me dismantle one after he couldn't tell me how and where the exhaust path went and was supposed to work.

i've been IN them and encourage anyone else interested to do the same. tell the sales person to shut up and go away and look closely according to what you already know about burning in general and coal in particular.


 
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lsayre
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Post by lsayre » Tue. Apr. 21, 2015 6:07 pm

So the bottom line is to stay away?

 
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Lightning
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Post by Lightning » Tue. Apr. 21, 2015 6:17 pm

KingCoal wrote:but, i'm concerned about coal in this unit. 1/3 of my burn season requires much less heat than that and I wouldn't want to have to burn so much more aggressively just to get heat out of the stove.
I don't follow.. Yer saying that because of all the flue gas paths and layers of "shell" between the fire and the outside of the burn chamber, you would need to burn it more aggressively to get heat out of it? My confusion is that I was under the impression all of that would make it more efficient. Isn't that the reason for the intricate design?

 
KingCoal
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Hand Fed Coal Stove: 1 comforter stove works all iron coal box stove, seventies.
Baseburners & Antiques: 2014 DTS C17 Base Burner, GW #6, GW 113 formerly Sir Williams, maybe others at Pauliewog’s I’ve forgotten about
Coal Size/Type: Nut Anth.
Other Heating: none

Post by KingCoal » Tue. Apr. 21, 2015 9:46 pm

lsayre wrote:So the bottom line is to stay away?
i can not declare a bottom line for you. i'm merely making an appeal that the best of your critical thinking and proof texting be brought to bare in the assessment of this stove.

we all need to be fully convinced that we are making our decisions on facts and not hype.

it might be the stove for you, or it might not.

 
KingCoal
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Location: Elkhart county, IN.
Hand Fed Coal Stove: 1 comforter stove works all iron coal box stove, seventies.
Baseburners & Antiques: 2014 DTS C17 Base Burner, GW #6, GW 113 formerly Sir Williams, maybe others at Pauliewog’s I’ve forgotten about
Coal Size/Type: Nut Anth.
Other Heating: none

Post by KingCoal » Tue. Apr. 21, 2015 10:03 pm

Lightning wrote:
KingCoal wrote:but, i'm concerned about coal in this unit. 1/3 of my burn season requires much less heat than that and I wouldn't want to have to burn so much more aggressively just to get heat out of the stove.
I don't follow.. Yer saying that because of all the flue gas paths and layers of "shell" between the fire and the outside of the burn chamber, you would need to burn it more aggressively to get heat out of it? My confusion is that I was under the impression all of that would make it more efficient. Isn't that the reason for the intricate design?
if you watch the vid and listen you might hear some statements that are meant to create their own validity. just because things are said doesn't mean that the inference is truth or even good.

the pics in the other link clearly show the way this stove is built, the exhaust path is being intentionally kept in the heart of the stove and away from the outer shell as long and as much as possible. this is boiler thinking. because in that case you WANT to retain as much of the heat created inside the stove for as long as possible to heat your water tubes.

it just doesn't work that way in a radiant heater and I can tell you this is not the case in the antique mica radiator, internal by pass base burners or back pipe base heaters. those stoves put the exhaust and heat thru channels that take it to the outer surfaces of the stove in the most direct path possible and keep it in contact with those surfaces for as long as possible. not the other way around.

in the fall and spring shoulder burning of coal in this stove you will need to burn a hotter fire ( more fuel used ) just to get enough heat out of it, than in other stove designs, some modern AND even other designs by the same maker.

on the other hand, if you only need it in the dead of winter, running at a constant high cruise burn rate it may well satisfy the needs for the area it's intended to serve. we do have a testimony to that here on the forum.

applications and user results may vary,
steve

 
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Lightning
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Post by Lightning » Wed. Apr. 22, 2015 7:58 am

I looked at the pics. Must be I didn't quite understand what was going on there.. lol

 
KingCoal
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Hand Fed Coal Stove: 1 comforter stove works all iron coal box stove, seventies.
Baseburners & Antiques: 2014 DTS C17 Base Burner, GW #6, GW 113 formerly Sir Williams, maybe others at Pauliewog’s I’ve forgotten about
Coal Size/Type: Nut Anth.
Other Heating: none

Post by KingCoal » Wed. Apr. 22, 2015 8:25 am

Lightning wrote:I looked at the pics. Must be I didn't quite understand what was going on there.. lol
as you say, it's a very involved design. if i'd have taken a salesman's word for it and not taken one apart I would not have understood the issues created.

steve

 
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Sunny Boy
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Coal Size/Type: Nuts !
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Post by Sunny Boy » Wed. Apr. 22, 2015 8:40 am

I looked too. I can see what your saying Steve.

Seems like all that flue gas routing is a bit more complex than it needs to be for extracting heat. But, that complexity makes me wonder how much of a challenge that systems adds to seasonal cleaning of fly ash, or even creosote ??? Will this stove need the "Coalnewbie cleaning" technique ? Take it outside and use compressed air to blow all the fly ash out of hiding?

Plus, I see what could be two areas that will likely need daily raking to prevent clinker build up - the horizontal ledges to the front and rear of the grate bars. Those should either be eliminated by adding a third grate bar, or sloped downward toward the two grate bars.

Like some of the modern kitchen ranges, it looks like a wood stove that someone thinks can also burn coal, too. Might do better with bit coal ???

Paul

 
rberq
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Hand Fed Coal Stove: DS Machine 1300 with hopper
Coal Size/Type: Blaschak Anthracite Nut
Other Heating: Oil hot water radiators (fuel oil); propane

Post by rberq » Wed. Apr. 22, 2015 8:54 am

Lightning wrote:I was under the impression all of that would make it more efficient. Isn't that the reason for the intricate design?
I mistrust “intricate design”, which can result in more points of failure. That is, the stove may be great under exactly the right conditions, and may be a disaster under other conditions. That is one of the biggest criticisms of the newest wood-stove standards: that the stoves perform very well under rigidly-controlled EPA test conditions, but in the real world (wet wood, say...) they do no better than simple old stoves. Just for example, vary the draft a little and what happens to the air supply coming through the secondary-burn tubes?
KingCoal wrote:the exhaust path is being intentionally kept in the heart of the stove and away from the outer shell as long and as much as possible. this is boiler thinking.
Also "clean" wood stove thinking, I believe – wood being VERY difficult to burn cleanly over a wide range of heat output.
Sunny Boy wrote:it looks like a wood stove that someone thinks can also burn coal
Exactly. And remember, the wood stove market is MUCH larger than the coal stove market, so who are they going to cater to?


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