Not a bad idea, I've heard of guys doing it that way too

Nice 👍👍

I'm not familiar with those ones. I like the hopper because it sure beats hand shoveling coal into it through the front door. I thought the same thing about fire going up in the hopper so at first I wouldn't fill it up all the way til I got comfortable. It doesn't burn up there I think because no airflow in the hopper. Some coals will glow right at the base of the hopper but that's all.

The hitzer 50-93 is pretty much the same thing.

No manual or barometric damper. From my understanding those aren't common for coal stoves. 6" pipe which steps up to 8" duravent up thru the 1st floor, attic and out the roof

Not sure what you mean. Last year for example I lit it once in November and burned continuous til spring so like 120 some odd plus days?? As far as how long I can let it go between tending: longest I've done is in the 18hr range. I bet I could go a full day without touching it if I had to. The coal in the hopper isn't burning but just is there to feed the fire as it burns down or when ash is shaken down. The rate it burns through depends on how far I have the thermostat on the back open or close depending on outside temps.

Pretty sure he was wondering how long of a burn you would get if you just filled the hopper completely and let it burn down to nothing.

@@mitchdues1 I think if I filled it up and let it burn down to nothing it would smoother itself out before all the coal would burn down to nothing. The ash would build up and block airflow up thru the bottom and need shaken down to prevent that from happening.

I don’t understand your question.

A stove like this can be tended once a day unless you’re running it hard! Running for 2 days without tending is possible, but it tends to be smothered by the ash and takes a long time to tend if you get the ash built up too much! My stove/house combination gets tended once a day unless it’s a bit below 0F and then I tend to it 2X a day! I’ve gone 72 hours idling along while out of town, but that’s a stretch!

I don't have like decades of experience with other stoves to know what's good or not. I can say that the return tubes do their job - when it's running hard you'll see flames shooting down from the holes in the tubes and when the stove is running light you'll see the occasional flame from the holes. I'm told the system increases efficiency in the stove so chimney temps are lower which would be wasted heat energy. Volatiles build up when new coal is trying to ignite and having the air wash on more open is what helps keep that dreaded kaboom from happening (I've had small ones happen once or twice and a big one once where it filled the basement with smoke as a result of my mishandling the tending process - too much new coal with low air flow caused gases to build up to the point it finally ignited with a boom). From my understanding volatiles aren't much of an issue once the newly added coal is burning. Long answer but hope this helps.