Pictures of your stove

europachris · By: **europachris** On: Thu Dec 14, 2006 9:39 pm

Very nice stove! Thanks for the pic.

It's a shame that the Franco Belge, Surdiac, Weso, Haas & Sohn, Koppe, and other fine European stoves aren't available anymore. Heck, Jotul used to be THE name in stoves, but now you hardly hear of them.

On that same note, there are only a handful of US stove manufacturers left in the game, compared to the dozens if not hundreds during the "stove boom" of the 70's.

Chris

JerseyCoal · By: **JerseyCoal** On: Fri Dec 15, 2006 12:23 am

Chris:

I understand that the European stovemakers are still doing well, in Europe. When I started looking for a Franco Belge two years ago, a former dealer told me that they no longer ship to North America because of American environmental regulations. I vaguely remember something about requiring secondary air supply and secondary combustion above the coal bed. I may be wrong but, as far as I can determine, on my stove a bi-metal adjustable thermostat controls the air supply which is directed UNDER the coal bed. Perhaps that is why it cannot meet federal regulations.

If anyone else is burning in a Franco Belge, let me know how it's going.

dutch · By: **dutch** On: Fri Dec 15, 2006 9:55 am

Here is my Mark III,
although today I'm letting it
burn out! (56 today and 59 sunday?)
It's December!! feels like April!

dutch · By: **dutch** On: Fri Dec 15, 2006 1:04 pm

Here are pictures of the hood and duct system the prior
owner of the house had used to bring heat upstairs
into the living room.
We open a basement stairway door to allow return air
to the basement... and with a cieling fan the house stays
quite nicely heated. I am working on the possability of
running my boiler water lines thru the coal stove to push
heat to the bedrooms that are the farthest from the
center of the house.
the duct has a fan that i seldom use,, but will when temps
outside drop below 15* or so.

dutch · By: **dutch** On: Fri Dec 15, 2006 1:06 pm

pictures of the vent from the living room upstairs,,
and of the fan underneath...

coal_kid · By: **coal_kid** On: Sun Dec 17, 2006 5:36 pm

I posted my first pictures Nov 7th, basically I had the stove setup for just heating my basement at this time.

I could now say that my Locke Stove Company Model 400C (Warm Mornings) burner is heating most (I need one more duct run for an upstairs bedroom) of our 1600 sq house with ease. We only had one cold spell with a 15 degree low, and with it stoking I was keeping the gas furnace (set at 69) from running.

I have a forced hot air gas furnace, so the house is already ducted. I bent the collector on the coal burner using galvanized sheets from the HVAC section in Lowes. I have two 8 inch METAL blade duct boosting fans sucking the air off the collector and blowing it into the top of the hot air collector, thus into the rest of the house. (Fans from http://www.airboosterfans.com, its impossible to find metal blades anymore!). I have both fans plugged into a standard receptacle. The receptacle is wired to a speed control that I got with the fans. I have the big board, because I want to someday put temperature probes on it.

I have a temperature probe about 6 feet from the collector. In this weather (highs in the 40s and 50s, lows 20s-30s) 80-90 degree air during the day, and 100 degree air at night keeps the house warm. It was 130 degree air (as hot as what the gas furnace blows out) during our cold blast, which kept the house warm. The only problem is when the gas furnace does run, it blows hot air on the coal burner too. I don’t want to run the coal collector into cold air return, as my furnace manual says to use wiring rated at 110 degrees if I need to replace wiring on it(so that’s what they used), and I know I blow hotter air than that. I’ve seen one-way dampers, which might be what I do.

I wonder how professional installers of Coal / Wood Central Heating integrate with pre-existing hot air furnaces. The Harman units have blower fans, as do the Leisure Lines, and Alaskas.

coalguy · By: **coalguy** On: Fri Dec 29, 2006 4:44 am

Hey lime4X4! Don't feel bad about the insulation. I have a simular looking stoker ( 90,000 btu ) in my unfinished basement ( need that heat down there to ) and from my top vent I ran a three way to 3 registers to my 1st floor ( I upgrade to a 320 cfm blower and ran a air intake to it ) and insulated all three 6inch wide duct runways. Also wraped it with aluminum tape to boot. ( no lost heat ) Love that stoker :santa: :santa:

coal_kid · By: **coal_kid** On: Sat Dec 30, 2006 8:02 pm

My Dwyer Mark II Model 25 arrived yesterday and it’s all plumbed (ordered factory direct, they give you almost everything you need). I followed how Barley Master described how he had his manometer hooked up. Mine is hooked up between the stove and the damper. I also have my hoses flipped, so I can see if I’m over -0.05. I don’t have a barometric damper yet, I think that can wait until next season. At least now I really know what is going on and not just doing it on my gut.

This meter really opened my eyes to a problem with my feed door. The door has been not shutting tight, but I didn’t think much of it since it ran a few seasons with the previous owner just fine. I noticed when I push the door shut the draft goes from -0.03 to -0.05 or -0.06. I did a temporary patch so the door stays closed tight at all times, and I’ve been burning better than ever.

Oo-v-oO · By: **Oo-v-oO** On: Sun Dec 31, 2006 10:50 pm

Keeping the home fires burning:

I had to experiment with different settings to get a picture that wasn't out of focus. I think this one came out OK, though.
This is resized from about a meg and 1600x1200, but I think the resolution is still decent.

JerseyCoal · By: **JerseyCoal** On: Wed Jan 03, 2007 6:50 pm

Some weeks ago, someone asked for the dimensions of the firebox in my stove. Here 'tis: 16" wide; 6" front-to-back; and 3-1/2' deep. Specs indicate 48,000 BTU output.

It was quite difficult measuring the firebox; I burned my fingers badly and my plastic ruler melted!

bksaun · By: **bksaun** On: Sat Jan 13, 2007 6:07 pm

My Channing is in the basement of a 75 year old 1-1/2 story house,1500Sq Ft. Didn't need to heat the basement much,need most of the heat on the first and second floors.

Made a few alterations and it's about to run us out of the house on these warm day's. It's 49 outside and 78 in here. Stove is idling.

BK

bksaun · By: **bksaun** On: Sat Jan 13, 2007 6:29 pm

More pics of channing alteration.

BK

bksaun · By: **bksaun** On: Sat Jan 13, 2007 6:47 pm

A few more pics of channing.

BK

bksaun · By: **bksaun** On: Sat Jan 13, 2007 7:17 pm

Last pics, I promise. So I have increased the size of my heat exchanger by about 2/3 I guess and am sending the heat where I need it most. I have burned the stove for 2 months before I decided to alter it and believe me it was worth the effort. My furnace has not run at all this year. My house is a lot more comfortable. The coal heat is even. Goodbye $400.00 GAS bills!! Coal in Nov and Dec $80.00.

Hot in here!

BK

Highlander · By: **Highlander** On: Sun Jan 14, 2007 9:08 pm

Hello Folks Kind of long post here so be warned!

Just wanted to say that this is a really great forum, I've been lurking here for a month or two and now that my stoker is up and running, I thought I would share some Pix of it and the story.

I have been a fairly long time coal user, for the last 24 or so years we have burned coal in a VC Resolute. It was/is a good stove, but it took a lot of hands on tending to keep it burning well. On warm days, It could only be turned down just so much so we would swelter and on really cold days, it just didn't put out quite enough heat.

Being a fairly devout Craigslist reader, I found someone here in NJ selling a Harman Magnum for $500. It was in fairly rough shape, they had it in a basement that was quite damp and there was a lot of rust on this baby. I completely disassembled it, and cleaned all the rust and scale inside and out, and gave it a fresh coat of paint. New gaskets all around, and a new pyro ceram glass for the door and some noxon metal polish to get the brass to shine again and she was back in shape.

I had just gotten about a ton of nut coal in October so I decided to keep burning the Resolute to burn up some of that coal. This gave me about a month and a half to get the Harman ready.

This weekend we swapped out the stoker for the VC and so far so good. Its been a warm weekend here so the stove is idling along in pilot mode, at about 225 to 250 deg, just above the door. The flue pipe is running real cool, easily touchable by hand, the VC never ran quite this cool, but it seems to be drafting well enough, and is putting out quite a bit of heat.

After reading the CoalTrol posts, I decided to build a controller that would control the stoker in a similar fashion. The unit I made has a Crouzet micro Plc that monitors room temperature and compares it to a preset value. It then calculates an error value that controls the on and off times of the stoker. There is a built in LCD on this unit, and on it I display the setpoint, room temp the amount of correction applied and the remaining on or off time of the cycle. It can also be used in a manual mode where the on/off time ratio is set by a dial. Two ceiling fan speed controls were added to allow the combustion air and convection blowers to be run at reduced speed. The temperature sensor is a kit board that uses an IC to send a 0 to 10V room temp signal back to the controller.

Lastly, I noticed that the stoker motor tends to run pretty hot, the previous owner had replaced it at about the 5 year mark, so I added a small fan on the cover that blows directly onto the motor, that did the trick.

I hope to add a hot water coil that will supplement my propane boiler. but that will be a later project.

Thanks for reading my long first post

Bill A.

My Weather Page: http://www.webusers.warwick.net/~u1046951/

Pictures of your stove

Coal Burner with Collector into Duct Work

Improved Heat Exchanger for Alaska Channing III

My "New" Harman Stoker