keystoker kaa-4-1 update on coal consumption

leonz

My keystoker coal stoker boiler was cleaned the day after thanksgiving and the young fellow that did the annual service for it said that I was running a much larger number of timer pins than what was needed per half hour hold fire time cycle.
I mentioned to him that I had to have 14 minutes of hold fire time every 30 minutes to keep the boiler running to keep the coal fire from going out previous to this.

The only thing that happened since last years cleaning was the stainless steel chimney extension was blown off/torn off the mounting plate that secured it to the concrete chimney cap-11 years of age and rusting did the dirty work.

The reason the chimney extension was on the chimney was because we have had a terrible down draft for years with our hand fired wood and coal boiler and we have a massive windbreak of trees around the home.

We have been running the boiler this way since the Friday after Thanksgiving and to say I was surprised would be an understatement.

With the chimney extension gone we have been running very well with 50 pounds of Anthracite Rice Coal per day and we have been maintaining an .02 negative pressure gradient (draft) according to our Dwyer Mark II Manometer.

Needless to say, I have been burning too much coal previous to this due to the chimney extension but with it gone we are using seventy five percent less coal per day than last year and going back to 2015-16 which was a horrible year with boiler problems, we have used too much coal to heat the home and make hot water until now.

We used a lot of hemlock and mixed hard woods and coal in our old hand fed boiler from 1982 to 2015 until I put standard firebrick in the fire box filling it half full to the flue breech in 2010 and we cut our fuel use in half after that.

All I have to do now is raise the low limit and high limit temperature to deal with the cold.
as the house is so poorly insulated.