old coal boiler?

John_173

My tiny high school (150 or so students) heated with coal-fired boilers (in NC mountains). Lucky seniors were excused from class to shovel coal all day several times each winter. From railroad cars into our dump truck down to the boilers. Each shovel was a big scoop, say 18 - 24" square, more or less. Don't know how much each scoop weighed, but moving coal for a day was pretty serious work (worse that mucking out the cattle stalls or butchering hogs, in my view). Especially as you worked your way down toward the bottom of the car & had to lift that shovel up over the side into the truck.

We were black from the dust, inside & out. Bone tired. And we were all in top physical condition. Man, did that shower feel good.

400 pounds of coal wouldn't be much, based on my experience.

bob meyer

questions about coal boiklers

hey guys,

my name is bob meyer.i am an hvac tech of seven years.i have an old monster coal boiler in my basement which was unhooked when the previous homeowner put in new weil mclain gold.my thoughts were to maybe hook it back up seeing how there is 400 pounds of coal in the basement.but i am not sure about the workings of the old coal boilers.can anyone guide me to any web sights that might better help me understand it's workings?

thank you in advance guys!!!

bill nye_3

Bob

Bob , go to resources on top of the page, go to Library, check out Coal. Maybe it will help

http://www.heatinghelp.com/pdfs/45.pdf

bob meyer

THANK YOU BILL

Steamhead (in transit)

Bob, do you know

the make and model of the old coal boiler?

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Scott Larabee

Bob,
Did you say 400 lbs? If that's all the coal you have, it will cost you more to hook the boiler up than you will save! If you are considering buying more coal, to replace some of the oil, then it may be worthwhile!

Most of our coul customers burn around 4 ton of coal a season! Those are the ones that heat primarily with coal, some burn considerably more, some less.

Scott

Scott Larabee

One other thing,

Regardless of what you do with the boiler, if that coal is piled near any metal, or on any copper lines, move it and carefully inspect the object. Coal is very corrosive to metals! Around here, coal bins seem to be the prefered spot for the oil tank. That's fine as long as all the coal is removed! I've seen several oil liness eaten away by being run where there is coal on the ground.

Scott

[Deleted User]

Turn it into a radiator...

I had a custoemr do this with an old converted coal burner he had in his basement.

Strip the asbestos, clean it up, install it parallel to the supply and return mains, install a non electric TRV on the line going to it, and park it in the corner of your basement entertainment room and let it heat your basement.

Nothing beats an 800 pound antique radiant gorilla in the corner for keeping the room toasty warm. He's got it all gussied up, highlighted the name in paint, polished the brass gauges and so on.

Sell the coal to the local kids for crystal growing experiments...Tell them you will trade their labor for the coal...

ME

coalcracker

Coal boilers can burn up to 16# of coal per hour.

Rich Kontny_5

Does

BTU still mean heating one gallon of water one degree? Seems like a little overkill to take a small volume high efficiency boiler and use it to heat a very large volume coal boiler that it replaced (was this not why the boiler was replaced in the first place?)

Rich K.