help! I'm in a new home and I've never lived in a place with any kind of hearth before

[lcplbenee]

Hi,

So I just moved into a new place this summer, and there is a coal stove here that I've been waiting to use. It's a European made Surdiac brand, model Gotha 713D, manufactured in 1981. It runs on pea coal and is loaded from a gravity fed hopper (tapered). I've been doing TONS of internet research, reading TONS of forums, etc...but I still have a few unanswered questions:

1) Can the furnace be lit and fired up when the hopper is full, or does it have to be completely emptied? In the process of figuring out this thing, I got a fire going with newspaper and wood, and I slowly added coal until I had a good coal fire going. Then I filled the hopper with coal. Well, I managed to choke out that fire, and now I have the hopper full. Do I have to empty it and try again? I heard via word of mouth that you can light coal with a blow torch. Is this true? I have a torch that uses propane & MAPP, and I tried both gases on the coals. It makes the coals red, and then they don't seem to catch. I hold it there for many minutes, and then when I take the torch flame away it doesn't take. Does acetalyne or some other gas work; or is this method completely bogus? Am I truly stuck draining that entire hopper and starting over from scratch?

2) In the process of learning this thing, I've broken some of the many glass panes in the front. I looked up on woodmans parts plus that they sell the individual panes, and they can make custom panes. Their custom panes are 3/16" thick and these small panes I have are 1/8" thick. I want to order one of their custom panes that is one large piece covering the front instead of the many small pieces that are there now. Will that extra 1/16" of thickness make a huge difference?

3) I have found the only crappy manual online that is available for this thing, and as all other posts indicate-it's not very detailed. I'm having a problem with the thermostat and dial. The wire from the thermostat sensor on the rear of unit is not connected to the cable that goes to the dial and the air intake door (the dial is connected to the door however so I can "manually" open and close it). How do I hook that up, and is there a lot of calibration invovled? I'm guessing I may have to calibrate the positions on the dial too....is this something I should dig into my pockets and pay a tech for?

thanks for your help!

 

[CT-Mike]

<EDIT> Oops, I thought there was a forum dedicated to coal stoves, my mistake.

 

[Valkyrie Rider]

I can't tell for certain due to the pic quality, but that looks a LOT like the stove we used in PA while I was growing up to heat the whole house. I don't know the start up procedure as I never did it (I was just a kid/teen), but I can say that those little glass parts can warp and buckle and they are very cosstly. My neighbor across the street had the same stove and got the one piece front glass and never had to replace it! It held up VERY well season after season heating 24/7 all of the heating season.

 

[ansehnlich1]

I never burned the stove you have there but I do have experience with coal, nut coal to be exact, in a hand fed Baker coal stove. My bet is you gotta shovel that coal out of there and start over. Sounds like you had it right the first time, using wood first, then slowly adding coal over time. The trick is to NOT smother the fire, which you said you did. A good way to make sure you don't smother the fire is to add coal over the coal bed but always leave a HOT spot, where it's glowing bright orange, in other words, don't shovel coal over the whole bed, leave an area where it's always burning hot when first firing up.

Always watch your coal stove when you are starting out as coal is NOT like wood. You can have the air controls open on a coal fire for a long time and it may look like nothing is happening, sometimes it takes a long time for a coal fire to be brought up to temperature after being banked down.

My routine with my Baker stove once the coal fire was established went like this. To reload, open air inlets all the way, maybe even bottom door of stove. Allow coal fire to begin to flame, then shake it down. Empty ash tray if necessary. Leaving air controls wide open, after shaking, begin to load fresh coal on top of vigorously burning coal fire, ALWAYS leaving a hot spot, normally in the front center of the stove. This process can take a little time, and you may have to add coal in several stages, but once the load is in you can allow it to burn well then cut the air back where you need to. My stove would easily run 24 hours on a load unless it was real cold, then I would shake it down and load it every 12 hours.

 

[ansehnlich1]

I just went out online and looked a bit closer at your coal stove. It looks like it burns pea coal, and is a gravity feed stove. If this is the case you would not burn it as I did my Baker stove.

 

[lcplbenee]

Thanks for your help ansl. It is indeed a gravity fed hopper and it runs on pea coal. Thanks for your useful operating tips! I updated my original post with my stove specs.