From: "Geo" 

"Frank Haber"  wrote in message
news:434a781e$1{at}w3.nls.net...
> That Bierly stove looks impressive - funky cast iron, but efficient and
easy
> to stoke, shake down and clean out.  A 120F exit pipe is the proof of the
> pudding.  Your eyes never sting?

No fumes, the stove is actually under negative pressure so air leaks in not out.

> Do you nice powder ash from the tray?

That depends on how you empty it. At first I was using a hand shovel to
empty the tray into a metal bucket then taking the bucket outside, that
created a lot of ash dust. Now I just take the whole tray outside, no more
dust.

>  Do you burn pea coal or the egg-sized
> stuff I remember bouncing all over city sidewalks?  Does it come blue-dyed
> (g)?

It's bigger than pea, more like 1/2" to 1" pieces, it can burn
egg sized but I only do that when I want to get it really hot (the air gaps
allow it to burn faster but you waste more heat that way.

>  Is the flame really blue, like the pictures?

Yep, blue dancing flame when it's cranked, just a red glow when it's set to
normal or low.

> Do you just leave the doors to the upstairs rooms open to get heat there,
or
> do you have backup central heat?  I assume you've stocked up on CO alarms
all
> over the house.

Yes to the alarms but they never go off. My house is weird, it's sort of
two houses stuck together by a long hallway. The ranch side is heated by
the coal burner, it's one floor and 2x4 walls and that heater is more than
enough. The other side is round and 2 story with 2x6 walls so much more
insulated. It's electric heated but the coal heat leaks over to it (I
sometimes use a fan to move the air) and so the electric heats only come on
during the coldest 2 weeks of the year, the rest of the time we get enough
heat for both sides from the burner but I have to use a fan to move it from
one side to the other.

the real problem is when the kids shut their bedroom doors, the amount of
heat generated doesn't change so when a room is closed off the heat that
would go into it stays in the rest of the house so everywhere else gets
hotter.

Geo.

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