Taking coal burn-down to a new level.

Dealing with large quantities of coal as the temps stay down around here. The time it takes to let the coals burn down is hurting the ability to keep the house bearable. Tonight I am tidying up around the stove and got a bright idea. I took the vacuum cleaner hose and hooked it to the exhaust outlet and then lodged the other end of the hose into the main air inlet on the 30NC. Piled all the coals to the front as high as possible, closed the door and opened the main air to max. Hit the power on the vac and was really pleased with the effect. After about 90 seconds, the pile was settlling inoto itself as the coals burned away. Let it run like that for 5 or so minutes and went through the process again of stacking up the coals etc. 3 cycles of that and what was 3 or 4 gallons of coal became a proper bed for a reload. I did go out and check for sparks exiting the stack and there was none. The bright white coals burned with a green flame shooting from them. Best part was no shoveling them into the can. Just don't forget to remove the hose when done!

seems dangerous. Why not pick up a bag of pellets and toss a handful in the fire as others on here have recommended? Or split up some dry pine and toss a few on there to burn it fast and hot with little to no coals.

That fire was hot enough to forge and weld with. Blacksmiths still use charcoal with air injected to do their work.

You got lucky.

Matt

pellets in a wood stove, I can do that?

Sure. Some folks use eco-bricks and such, it's the same material, just smaller pieces. Good to use to burn coals down or burn with not so seasoned wood.

The main issue is getting air movement through them. Pellet stoves have a blower forcing the air through the mass.

Matt

When you put them on a bed of coals and open up your air, same thing, air comes up through the coals and catches them. I swear, it works. With it being this cold, I'm reloading more often on hotter coal beds so eventually too many to load the stove. Scoop of pellets, burns them right down

Used mostly to burn down the coals but some have had some luck adding a little along with the splits.

If the coals aren't giving you enough heat, why not shovel most of them out and reload the stove?

That would create a positive pressure in the stove and pipe and carbon monoxide as well as other poisonous gasses would escape every air leak available.

Might have something there. I will have to check into how to block off the secondary air while doing this.

Make sure that you have a clean chimney also as you might touch off any glaze in there also.


There are better ways to do what you want without endangering yourself and your family.

Matt