VC Vigilant coal burner - Help burning wood

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Paolo191

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Dec 27, 2012
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I have a VC Vigilant coalburning stove (1996 UK model)

The instruction manual gives no guidance on if and how you can burn wood. I ve tried but with very limited success - I think the problem is the coal riddling grate which the embers fall straight through and the air supply, which I understand passes from underneath and not over the logs.
I ve seen a few photos of older Vigilants which have a flat grate, presumably for wood burning, and I m guessing the air input is also different to mine?

Before I invest in a new dedicated wood burner can anybody offer any advice on how the Vigilant could be modified to operate as a log burner?
 
Coal and wood burning have quite different air supply and reburn designs. If you want to have a good woodburning experience, I would get a stove designed to burn wood. With a modern, secondary burn design you will burn less wood and get more heat in the house.
 
We burned wood all the time I would fill the fire box from the top and air it down .
The stove would burn hot for about 4/5 hours .
At night we used chest nut coal .
day time was wood .
I cant remember where the air intake came in the stove but it entered the coal box from the bottom .
On my vigilant wood burner the air entered the stove from the rear .
coal was cheep buy the truck load and burned for a long long time .
we burned about 50 gallons of chest nut coal in a very cold week .
 
In the old Vigilant, there was a coal grate/basket thing that was used for burning coal and would be removed when burning wood. Not sure if the modern Vigilant is the same. The current Vigilant is less of an either/or model and more of a straight coal burning stove, it seems.
 
Thank you for the replies - decision is to forget about wood and go with coal but I have another question.

Can anybody tell me what the small oval shaped port on the left side of the stove is and when it should be opened /closed?
My Uk manual has no reference to this part. Online I see it's listed as 'Air control' (part no 50) which sounds important to me so I' surprised there's no instructions
 
Paolo191 said:
Can anybody tell me what the small oval shaped port on the left side of the stove is and when it should be opened /closed?
Click to expand...

Secondary air input? I have a Vigilant wood burning stove. It has a port on left side near back which is covered with a teardrop shaped door the size of a thumb. That small door (port) need to be open when in horizontal burn mode (damper closed). Perhaps you have something similar.
 
rawlins02 said:
Secondary air input? I have a Vigilant wood burning stove. It has a port on left side near back which is covered with a teardrop shaped door the size of a thumb. That small door (port) need to be open when in horizontal burn mode (damper closed). Perhaps you have something similar.
Click to expand...

Yes it sounds exactly the same, although I wonder if it should operate the same on a coal model?
 
It should be kept CLOSED when burning coal. There is no mecnanism for 2ndary air in the Vig. coal.
 
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