# adding a stoker fan to ash door hot blast 1557m



## Bentley528 (Feb 20, 2014)

looking to add a fan to ash door for stoking fire on hot blast 1557m

the reason i am looking to do this is because, to extend burn times at night i close the stove damper almost closed. burns good and long but my house will slowly cool down at night and in the morning my stove still has plenty of wood( coal is going out because i dont have enough air even with damper open all the way not enough draft) but my house is only 64-65 degrees in the morning while not bad downstairs it makes it really cold upstairs cause with my drafty house it cools down fast

the plan was to use a wall mounted thermostat for contoling baseboard electric heat (110v) to control a draft inducer fan  mounted on the ash door to get fire hotter when it gets below a certain temp upstairs say 67 it will kick fan on and blow to heat fire up till it gets above that in the house then the fan will shut off my blower fans for the ductwork kick on when the stove reaches 120 and kick off when it cools to 90(snap disc thermostat)

let me know your ideas if this sounds stupid or any advice on how this will or wont work mainly looking to do this for coal wood i can keep it pretty close to 67-68 when i get up if i fill it full when i go to bed at 2-3 but coal goes out cause i dont get it enough air


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## maple1 (Feb 20, 2014)

Can't you just not close the damper as much?

I would be very leery of doing what you're talking about - I'm not directly familiar with anything Hot Blast, but I seem to remember not reading much good about them. You would likely be creating an overfire condition that it was not designed to withstand or operate under.


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## mustash29 (Feb 20, 2014)

Sounds like you are dampering it down way too much, with the fire & coals dying out, the flue cooling off and loosing draft.  Burn it hot and clean and feed it as needed.  Adding a blower with jerry rigged controls sounds like a very bad idea to me.


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## Fred61 (Feb 20, 2014)

A blower without some sort of automatic damper will essentially supply large amounts of air to the fire even if not running. Draft will suck air right through the fan and fire will pretty likely burn out of control.


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## Bentley528 (Feb 20, 2014)

i was going to use one of the fans that has the slider on it to control the amount of air it supplies when off and when its running just pulls air throught that crack a little faster
and if i open the damper up to keep the fire hot all night the fire runs out in like 4-5 hours and my house holds the heat pretty good downstairs so it doesnt take very long with the damper open to get hot and like i said having the problems mainly with coal i can keep my wood controlled pretty good its when im burning coal i cant supply enough air to keep the coal light tills its gone will slowly cool down even with the ash door open so i was wanting to add the fan to help control the coal burn


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## brenndatomu (Feb 20, 2014)

Add a few feet onto your chimney to increase your draft. Likely easier/cheaper/safer/better/ than modifying your furnace, which by the way will get your HO insurance cancelled if they find out or if you have a claim that they can weasel out of due to said mod.
A lot of people that have furnaces with forced draft quit using it, I know I did...


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## Buzz Saw (Feb 20, 2014)

Hot blast makes what your looking for

https://www.usstove.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=306_35_135&product_id=463   
Will this work?

I have the same furnace(can't wait to go with hydronic heat) and with wood I can dampen it all the way down and burn through the night, as long as my wood is dry.  I've never burned coal, no need to


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## Bentley528 (Feb 20, 2014)

that is the right blower they actually make a kit but it mounts on the back of the furnace not the ash pan which works for wood but coal needs air underneath
my chimney is new i ran 6" double wall supervent chimney its two ft above the close peak but about even with the peak but the peak of the house is like 25-30 ft away and i was told that my height was fine cause i was far enough away but i have a lot of trees around my house so i might try adding another 3 ft section and see if it helps i can get coal pretty cheap and it is a lot easier i dont have a gauge to tell my draft or a damper to control it only damper i have is on the ash door i solid mounted the one on the feed door cause it would bend and the stove would run almost wide open ill try the chimney when it stops raining here this weekend


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## M1sterM (Feb 21, 2014)

I bought a house recently, that has a 1557 in the workshop.  I believe the previous owner burned mostly wood, but he has the blower mounted to the ash door, as the filter box for the blower in the back is in the way of the port, I think.  I haven't had time to clean the furnace and chimney, and give it all a good once over before lighting it off, so I can't say anything about the operation of it, yet.


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## JustWood (Feb 21, 2014)

Bentley528 said:


> that is the right blower they actually make a kit but it mounts on the back of the furnace not the ash pan which works for wood but coal needs air underneath
> my chimney is new i ran 6" double wall supervent chimney its two ft above the close peak but about even with the peak but the peak of the house is like 25-30 ft away and i was told that my height was fine cause i was far enough away but i have a lot of trees around my house so i might try adding another 3 ft section and see if it helps i can get coal pretty cheap and it is a lot easier i dont have a gauge to tell my draft or a damper to control it only damper i have is on the ash door i solid mounted the one on the feed door cause it would bend and the stove would run almost wide open ill try the chimney when it stops raining here this weekend


My Woodchuck gets a more compete burn on coal running the forced draft. With wood I don't really need it.


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## Bentley528 (Feb 21, 2014)

yeah this is mainly for coal i can get my wood to burn all night the main problem is the blowers are on the snapdisk so they run kind of indepent from the stove like if i dampen the stove down it will burn hot but not always hot enough to kick the blowers on i was gunna try and make mine kinda like a wood boiler that would turn the blower on to make heat on demand sort of i can get almost ten hours out of my stove if i dampen it down but it does preduce enough heat to kick the blower on and off frequently enough


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## JustWood (Feb 21, 2014)

Have you tried mixing wood/coal. I mix and the wood keeps the coal going longer . In the morning all I have to do is bust up the coal and add more wood.


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## laynes69 (Feb 21, 2014)

I would say don't waste your money in the forced draft. I was trying to burn coal like you in the same furnace (1500 hotblast) and I was having issues, so I did like you want to do, and I mounted the draft fan on the ash door. In the end, I removed it. I didn't feel safe having a forge in the basement. What I later found, the furnace is an afterthought for coal burning. It's not meant for anthracite coal, and even soft coal doesn't burn well. The box shouldn't be angled for coal, but have flat sides. if I didn't fill up to the firebrick, it didn't burn well. 
I ended up giving up on coal burning. Mixing with wood is your best best.


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## Bentley528 (Feb 22, 2014)

i do mix with wood and that helps a lot but it still doesnt keep the coal going good im going to get another section of chimney on wednesday and we will see what happens


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## JustWood (Feb 23, 2014)

Are you burning mine run or sized coal ?
What seam is it out of ?


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## TdiDave (Feb 23, 2014)

I found stove coal worked much better in mine, the larger size chuck let more air thru I think.


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## JustWood (Feb 24, 2014)

TdiDave said:


> I found stove coal worked much better in mine, the larger size chuck let more air thru I think.


Yes it does. I've had the same results.
It burns so much better that it doesn't extend the burn time for me. Might as well just use wood. I have to run a lot further to get sized coal and its considerably more so it doesn't make sense for me to use it since it doesn't extend the burn. I can get mine run a lot closer to home and it's very cheap. Really extends my burn time so that's what I use.


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## Bentley528 (Feb 24, 2014)

its nut sized coal all between acorn and golfball sized anthricite burns really good when wind is crazy cause i got good draft but when its not windy my draft isnt that great im going wednesday night to go get that chimney section and we will see what that does for my draft and unless it helps a lot im gunna stick to wood cause i was burning a 50# bag a day of coal and i no i shouldnt have been going through that much


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## bioman (Feb 24, 2014)

Fan on the exhaust would be better, on the intake you may get a house full of smoke.


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