Burnham steam boiler replacement for coal stoker

leonz · April 20

Burnham904A20250415_161038.jpg

Fixed, I was distracted by the need to do daily chores and taking care of the brood herd.

I am not a licensed steam plumber, and this is not my steam boiler, but I wanted to upload this photo from the coal pail forum simply because I would like someone with much more experience than me to look at it.

Of course the installation is not finished, but I feel like there is something missing besides a 6 inch drop header on this Burnham steam boiler.

He mentioned today that this is the smallest commercial Burnham boiler 904 with585,000BTU burner and using one of the 6 inch risers, he told me he ordered it three years ago.

The Burnham people sent all the needed controls and wanted it plumbed this way. He was surprised to see that two water feeders were part of the installation

The company that is installing it did a complete heat loss study before recommending what size boiler to order to replace the Van Wert VA1800 coal stoker steam boiler that was there previously. There are 4 pressure units on the boiler as well according to him.

The sheet below is page 38 of the owners/installation manual and the picture above it is the initial installation and placement of the boiler under the existing piping.

burnhampic20250415_161038.jpg

They have a welder coming to tie in the riser to the plumbing this week

burnham904112393-01-V9A-IOS-Manual_09.2023.pdf

Happy Easter

In the Greek language we say "Christos Anesti" Christ is Risen.

ethicalpaul · April 20

don’t forget the pics my friend!

leonz · April 20

Fixed. ☺️

ethicalpaul · April 20

I can't see enough of the piping to see if there's even a header.

Heat loss isn't the right way to size it…I take it this place is massive?

Multiple safeties and possibly mechanical safeties seem to be required by code for commercial/multi-family installations, but not in single family residential. But I don't blame Burnham for their mandates. If they don't mandate stuff, then people cut corners.

The people who actually know the code will speak more to that, but for me I'd love to see more piping, I don't think we can see enough yet.

leonz · April 20

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1852991#Comment_1852991

6,000 square feet, more than 57 windows, solid brick walls insulated ceilings. The Van Wert VA1800 coal stoker steam boiler which was the largest coal stoker boiler they made was sized the same way 48 years ago.

ethicalpaul · April 20

it could have been sized way too big. And a coal stoker I assume has different steam production rates depending on how fast it's stoking? I have no idea but it seems it might. The oil or gas burner isn't going to have that variability, right?

RascalOrnery · April 21

I was in the house, awesome place! The van wert was hugely oversized and had a modified feed rate below the maximum. His total yearly usage was around 500,000,000 BTus if I remember correctly.

He is a very remarkable fellow, one of those guys you could sit by the fire and listen to talk all night. I'm not sure I totally follow the posted question but this area is a little backwoods, I imagine finding a quality installer took some digging. This isn't an area with lots of these home situations in my estimation.

leonz · April 21

Whoopsie; I was mistaken in saying the VA1800 was the largest stoker they made; the largest stoker they made was the VA4000 which had a 30 inch diameter burn pot and could burn 100 pounds per hour.

Each VanWert boiler or furnace was designed to allow the sprocket size to be changed to either increase or decrease the coal feed speed.

I cannot upload the VanWert manuals or the coal feed rate chart GGGRRRR.

They are PDF files, I can always e-mail them to anyone that wants them.

Burnham steam boiler replacement for coal stoker

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