I’ve been fighting excessive coal build-up (and resulting reduced heat output) ever since the weather turned cold… whenever temps drop into the lower teens or below. I bet I’ve hauled out at least a 55-gallon drum of coals since the first of the year. We’re lookin’ at a high of only about 4[sup]o[/sup] today, with winds nearing 30 MPH… so it will be one of those days. I’ve managed to make it a bit better over the winter by trying different things. I stopped using the draft control on the firebox… I just leave it wide-friggin’-open and control the fire with the flue damper. I clean ashes from the box every day, sometimes twice a day… when ash mixes with the coals, the ash further reduces air to them. I removed the firebrick from the sides and back, just left it on the floor of the firebox… which has increased the rate of heat transfer to the air around it. And on days like to today I just run the thing wide-friggin’-open; that seems to reduce coal build-up more than anything, but eats more wood than any other wood-fired appliance I’ve ever used (reloading about every 3 hours)… but at least we get high heat output all day long and the box don’t fill ¾ full of coals. That ain’t worth squat for cold overnights though… 64[sup]o[/sup] in here this morning.
The design of this EPA firebox (burning on a firebrick floor, air coming in over the top) works real well when temperatures are mild… say, mid-20’s or warmer… I use very little wood, loading it once in the morning and once in the evening. But the flaw in the design becomes more than evident when it turns arctic outside, especially if it stays that way for days. Really, over-all, what wood it’s saved me during the mild times just gets used up during the cold times. And when you figure the wasted heat because of hauling out coals to make room for more wood… I can’t say wood consumption has been reduced. What I can say is (during cold weather) we spend way more time babysitting the box while using more wood and putting up with colder morning in-house temps. The reason for this is simple… to make efficient use of the coal bed it must burn on a grate system where air is fed up from below. It’s the same principle of burning coal… it ain’t so much how much air is fed to it, put where that air is directed.
I’ve been doing some measuring and designing… I’m thinking I may leave the EPA firebox in place when I install the Daka furnace. That would give us a nice option next winter… we could use the EPA thing during mild times when we just need to take the chill off, and switch over to the real heater when that cold Canadian air moves in.
The design of this EPA firebox (burning on a firebrick floor, air coming in over the top) works real well when temperatures are mild… say, mid-20’s or warmer… I use very little wood, loading it once in the morning and once in the evening. But the flaw in the design becomes more than evident when it turns arctic outside, especially if it stays that way for days. Really, over-all, what wood it’s saved me during the mild times just gets used up during the cold times. And when you figure the wasted heat because of hauling out coals to make room for more wood… I can’t say wood consumption has been reduced. What I can say is (during cold weather) we spend way more time babysitting the box while using more wood and putting up with colder morning in-house temps. The reason for this is simple… to make efficient use of the coal bed it must burn on a grate system where air is fed up from below. It’s the same principle of burning coal… it ain’t so much how much air is fed to it, put where that air is directed.
I’ve been doing some measuring and designing… I’m thinking I may leave the EPA firebox in place when I install the Daka furnace. That would give us a nice option next winter… we could use the EPA thing during mild times when we just need to take the chill off, and switch over to the real heater when that cold Canadian air moves in.
