coal heating system pressure update

leonz

I hope every one had a nice turkey day dinner and I hope you were fortunate enough to not have a no heat call.

I have switched to a buckwheat/rice mixture of Anthracite Coal which creates much less coal ash and coal ash fines under the 3 grate wide fire bed where the combustion air is blown upwards into the coal as it burns and is forced down the fire grate to the point where the coal ash drops of the edge of the stokers fire grate and into the ash pail.

I want to keep everyone up to date on my flat grate stoker coal boiler system.
The system pressure has been been wandering between 0-12 P.S.I.G. and it is operating well with summer operating temperatures of 140 low 160 high with a 10 degree differential.

After finding the -5 HG reading on the vacuum gauge after I started burning coal in late October I chatted with my plumber friend that I purchased most of my parts from and I added water back to the system to bring the vacuum HG (pressure gradient) back to zero HG.
I then closed the gauge glass valves until they seated and tightened them 1/4 of a turn and then reopened them.
I then drained the excess water from the steel compression tank through the airtrol valve and the heating system has been operating flawlessly since then and had no issues with a Vacuum condition(pressure gradient) on the inlet side of the single B+G NRF-25 circulator (without the internal check) valve my system that would indicate a circulator failure causing cavitation and micro bubbles.

Rather than raise the operating high limit temperature I simply adjust the coal stokers delivery rate by turning the stoker threaded rod in one thread to increase the coal feed and it responds in roughly an hour providing more heat in my 225 feet of fin tube baseboard.

I wish I had cast iron radiators instead with one inch steel pipe as I would have much, much more hot water and thermal mass to heat this leaky old house as I would be burning even less coal.

Many, many thanks to the dead men for my heating system as I have kicked oil and my former oil supplier to the wheelie bin(rubbish bin) as my friends in England would say. It did not help matters that they let me run out of oil four times too many so good riddance. I am spending much less money to heat my leaky old home.

So far so good.

Docfletcher

One of my fondest memories from 1959 was being in the basement of my Grandmothers home, watching & hearing the coal slide down the chute into the bin.

leonz

If anyone would like to see a great video of a home owner using coal mined in Montana to fuel his AHS S130 coal stoker it is on you tube.

The traveling grate stoker of the S130 burns the Montana coal to a very fine ash with no almost no visible smoke.

www.youtube.com?watch_time_continue=54&v=pLvo3vJxgPs

That should fix it now.

Docfletcher

Link bad

leonz

try this

coal gun in montana.

Docfletcher

ok, will do

Docfletcher

Got I think. The one with propane torch?

leonz

If the gentleman is wearing a baseball cap and glasses and the gray colored boiler says alternate heating systems S130 that is the one.