Coal Boilers

Ken D.

Does anyone know of any U.S. companies that make coal fired boilers and furnaces? How about wood fired boilers? With the price of fuels, anything helps. Thank you. Ken D.

Floyd_7

Axeman Anderson....

made in S. Williamsport, Pa., family operation, great service. You call, you speak with the owner, go to pick up the boiler and he may even help you load it. Two sizes, 260 and 160, both will put out more. Self feeding auger....dump the coal in a bin and forget about it.

Keystoker..... made in the Scranton, Pa. area, works well, but has a small bin that you have to fill every day or so.

Floyd

BillW@honeywell

HS Tarm...

is a Scandanavian company that makes a wood-fired boiler. They do have distributors here in the US, however, I don't know of any in Joisey. Previous posts have said these were good products, but I have no personal experience with them. Any other Wallies use them?

Ken D.

Coal Boilers

Thank you all.

Troy_3

Wood or Coal

Ken we sell Empyre. Well made ss unit. we have 2 sizes in stock. We can order other sizes if needed. I can send lit. if you like. we are in western NY. can ship anywhere. 716-649-5723

JM_2

Check this one out

http://www.harmanstoves.com/vf3000_boiler.htm

Paul/Pa.

Check out these sites...
http://www.efmheating.com/d520.html

http://www.keystoker.com/

Efm is a little pricey but well worth it. Key Stokers are good units but filling the hopper is a pain sometimes. Axeman Anderson is a good company and they make good units but trying to find someone who knows how to work on it may be difficult. Also the coal today is not as good as it used to be and that could cause some problems too. Where do you live? I'm asking because is there good coal around to buy?

Paul.

Ken D.

Paul

Bucks County, Pa. north of Philadelphia. Not all that far from Allentown. There are very few coal dealers around. Most are in the upper reaches of the county near me.

Ken D.

Coal

Which do you think would be better to use- anthracite or bituminous?

jerry scharf_2

I'd use anthacite if I could get it at a reasonable price

More carbon, less tar and ash. The fires are harder to start, but they burn better and cleaner than the stuff I grew up around (western PA.)

jerry

Mijola

Coal Heating unit

Ken,

Are you planning to use coal as your primary fuel source? If you are you should really think of the pros & cons of coal.

It can be nice as a supplement in a coal stove used for point of use. However if you are planning to use it as your main source of heat in the home, you will be creating a lot of (on going) work for yourself. Not that it is bad, but you just must understand that there is no (totally automatic) coal boiler or furnace.

I hate to date myself but when I first started in the trades, I worked for a company that did HVAC work but also sold coal & fuel oil. When I was not on service I helped pick up coal from the cola breakers here in NE PA, and I delivered it into the homes and businesses. Almost everyone used coal in those days. We also sold EFM, Van Wert and Key Stokers, and worked on all types of coal equipment.

Thereafter we had a large flood in the area, (in 1972), that all but wiped out the coal delivery business in the area. Almost EVERYONE, jumped on the chance to replace their coal heaters with gas, oil, or electric, so they could have real “automatic heat”

A service tech has not lived until you get the call at 2: am, when it is -5 degrees and the stoker is out. They just got 4 tons of coal this afternoon and now the worm snapped because some rocket scientist replaced the shear pin with an 8 penny nail, and a piece of
slate from the breaker was mixed in with the coal. Now you shovel the entire 4 tons of coal out of the bin, on the homeowners cellar floor, remove and replace the worm, and shovel it all back in. Ah the good old days, yea right….

Just my humble opinion.

Regards,
Ed Carey

Quote: Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad
judgment.

hr

old king coal

I got some form a local Amish buggy builder in 40 lb bags. I load up my wood boiler at the end of the day to keep a good hot fire throughout the night.

Is my math correct 22,800,000 BTUs per ton of anthracite? Is so a 40 lb bag is about 456,000 btus.

If I could burn it at 85% efficiency in a gasification boiler, I'm closing in on LP costs. Except for the hassle of manual feeding.

hot rod

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B. Tice

Stokers

Ed, I know what you mean. I only have 2 efm's and 1 keystone left, but the nights of broken binfeed worms still haunt me.Nobody had a proper "doghouse" going into the bin, so,you hadda dump it. I still carry some of those paper bag firestarters and some pellet starter gel(nice stuff) for those service calls. Do you remember the shortcut for replacing efm S-20 burner plates without removing the stoker? I guess every stoker mechanic knows that one......I guess the only real heavy area where service work is done on stokers is Schuykill county. There's still alot of stokers around, but the homeowner handles repairs....I will say this- every coal to oil I did was because the people were too old to do it anymore.....ALL of them lamented the fact that they were no longer to have that nice warm heat anymore. I guess in modern terms, it would be like if somebody had a nice oil boiler with radiant and an indirect had to remove it and put in a Goodman gas hot air job and an electric water heater.

Ken D.

Ed Carey

Ed, Thanks for your reply. I'm thinking of using coal to supplement my oil boiler. In my old house, I had a wood boiler. That was a lot of work.There are a couple coal dealers in my area and I'm not all that far from NE Pa. coal country. You mentioned the flood of '72. I remember. Hurricane Agnes. In those days I was a volunteer fireman. A bunch of us took a week off of work and went to Scranton-Wilks Barre with a couple pumpers and a rescue truck to help out. Pumped a lot of water, cleaned a lot of debris and helped a ton of people. In was a good experience. The folks there were very kind and grateful. Disasters have a tendancy to bring out the best in most people.

greg_7

I use an Axeman 130 (130,000 BTU) to heat my nearly 4,000 sq fooot house with 1,100 squares of radiation and it is great.

Simple too. The Axeman-Anderson and its knock-off, the Alternate Heating Systems Coal Gun use an achimedes screw (a spiral welded into a 5"tube with a hole in the middle) to dump coal into a fire box. The only problems with the coal feed are a frozen pile, too much finings (dust that binds the pieces) or a blockage. Theres ways to prevent most of this.

A broken belt or a burned motor is the usual malfunction. I've had almost all these problems.

Other than taking out about 2 to 3 bushels of ash a week, its very easy.

A new unit will cost plenty, 0ver $6,000. Get a used one. They are built like a locomotive. Sheet steel and ASME certified.

The axemans are simple units to install and maintain.

John G.

Buderus Coal Boiler

I don't know if it's still available , but I installed a Buderus Logana multi-fuel boiler in my home back in 1983. It's still going strong. A 5 section cast iron unit with double doors in front and a Sampson (mechanical aquastat) valve for draft control.

I burn oil for DHW during the summer and anthracite coal during the winter. It is efficient as hell, (about 2 lbs coal/hour) The BTU output is 115,000 on oil and 108,000 on coal. It's a manual feed and I rarely need to shake it more than one time per day.

I have a 2000 sq. ft. house with 2 zones and the comfort is wonderful. I hope it lasts another 20 years, (or more.)