Coal fire goes out

[pyro68]

Question for you folks, friend of mine came to me with a question that has me stumped, he has a wood / coal boiler made by Harmon. Burns fine with wood, but he has been trying to burn coal with no luck. Burning hard, nut coal, wood fire first, good red coal bed then adding coal little at a time until it's burning good, builds the coal up layer at a time, coal burning red & even white on the bottom, but as soon as he shuts the door the fire will die in approx 2-3 hours. If he catches it and gives it air still cannot get the fire burning again. Sounded like he was doing everything right, but I'm out of ideas. Any help?

 

[myzamboni]

Sounds like he is trying to burn it without the grate usually needed for burning coal.

 

[pyro68]

I know he has the shaker grates, is there another one he needs? He is unable to get help from his friendly local harmon dealer. hh:

 

[branchburner]

Harman dealers more likely to be pellet savvy, not coal savvy. I don't know a thing about coal, just it has different needs for air, etc. than wood. Good air feeding from below for sure.
If the stove is set up for successful wood burning there may need to be some stove adjustments, but maybe there are issues with the flue or fuel or other parts of the system that don't pose problems to wood burning. So this may be more of a coal question than a stove question. Try posting in The Boiler Room also, may be more coalies over there, and try the search function - always worth a few shots.

 

[pyro68]

thanks, I'll give that a try.

 

[myzamboni]

Also some wood/coal stoves have different air controls. Air for wood usually feeds from the top of the box. Coal air control usually controls air flow somewhere under the grates.

 

[Thomask9590]

You need a huge amount of air for coal. I tried to burn it in a Wood/Coal stove. I had very mixed results. The wood burned really fast due to the large air flow. The coal took for ever to get going and it would go out from time to time. Good Luck.