Paul, very interesting discussion. I'll add in some notes into your response.
Sunny Boy wrote:
Dave,
Yes, the stove coal reacts faster in my range, too. Sometimes too fast for what I want it to do at that time. And by weight the fire box holds about 10% less coal with stove size than with nut.
I wonder if your stove is less "air-tight" than my G6. When I want to slow down the fire, I simply close down the air. I never noticed much difference in stove vs nut - coal has "inertia" so neither slows down particularly quickly, but with good air control, they do both slow down fairly well. The really big advantage from my perspective is when you want to ramp up. Then the speed of ramping up is noticeably better with stove.
Sunny Boy wrote:My range firebox holds about 20 pounds of nut. If I fill it with stove and damper it to match the same heat levels of nut it needs to be reloaded sooner. And as you've noticed stove being more responsive, it's tougher to damper down to get a long burn overnight. A full load of Stove coal won't go the usual 11-12 hours over night that a full load of nut coal will.
You're definitely not the same as the G6 here - I get solid 11-12 hour burns flat out in the coldest of weather. In more normal winter weather I'm going 16 hours quite easily. Shoulder months, 24 hours or sometimes more.
Sunny Boy wrote:I had thought about getting deliveries of both stove and nut, but I've learned to use the natural size-sorting of a poured in place coal pile to tailor heat output during the day.
When poured into the bin from a coal shute, the larger chunks of nut coal tend to roll down the pile more easily than the smaller chunks, so there is a higher concentration of larger than average size pieces around the outside of the pile - more like the smaller half of the range of stove coal sizes. The middle of the pile then has a higher concentration of smaller than average pieces - more like the larger half range of pea coal.
About an hour before needing to cook ( higher heat demand), I use coal from the outer edges of the pile. And at night, coal from the middle of the pile.
I don't have this lay-out, I just have a large coal bin that I take from - no segregation for me...
Sunny Boy wrote:So when I load the coal scuttle in the morning, I'll put in a few shovels of smaller chunks from the middle of the bin and top it off with a few shovels of larger chunks from the outer edges of the bin. Then as I take coal from the scuttle during the course of the day, I'll have a higher concentration of the larger pieces during the hours we'll be cooking. Come night time, I then am left with a higher concentration of the smaller pieces in the scuttle (a scuttle a day is all it uses), which naturally helps slow down the fire, plus gives a greater fuel density in the firebox for longer overnight burns without having to over dampen the stove. Over dampened to slow down stove coal, it will not burn as well later on in the night as ash builds up unevenly in the firebed. With stove coal it goes dead in some spots of the firebox before it all burns. With the concentration of smaller chunks of nut coal, it burns more uniformly throughout the firebed during the night.
Definitely not at all like the G6. I can fully close all dampers and run the stove down to close to 150*F and still get coal to completely burn to ash. I have to make sure I clean out ash from the fire after a month or so of burning, sometimes that can be work. Depends a lot on coal. But if I'm running a clean fire, I have nothing like you describe above in the G6.
Sunny Boy wrote:With the #6 having almost double the firebed depth of a range, I can see that it will react much more to the increased breathability of the stove size. Plus, you've got your #6 set up with a much deeper firebed capacity than a standard #6. I can see where you'd have to run stove coal with that much depth.
Paul
You have said this to me before. I'm never felt I have a much deeper firebed capacity - it seems to me the top of my ceramic liner is right where my old gas ring used to sit. But maybe my fire pot is higher than the originally ceramic lined fire pots. It was originally an unlined version being just the cast iron firepot without ceramic liner. Maybe Glenwood made them taller than the lined firepots. Since they might have been thinking those were more likely being used for wood, then perhaps they made them taller for great capacity? I don't know. It may be something to explore...
dj
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