An Intro and Looking for Input

JeepinPete wrote:Also found that if I had the air turned up a bit too much, it would blow gas out the auger pipe.

You have discovered why many of us use the additional bin auger. Using just the burner or "pot" auger makes the stoker more likely to push fumes back through the tube . With big rice or buck size coal, it is even more of a problem. If you keep the air at 4 or less it will probably be fine, but I still recommend you purchase a bin auger & coupling. You can make your own bin pipe out of 2" sch. 40 pipe.

I've got the auger, but I need to build something a little more permanent to store the coal. The barrel gets me two days of heat when it is cold out. I really want to get away from humping bags down stairs too. As much as I hate the idea, I may move the EFM this summer, basically swapping locations with the oil boiler.

Decided not to move the boiler, just built a coal bin to get around all the various obstacles. The corner by the window is sloped to allow access to the sump pump underneath. Sloped the side facing the EFM per the EFM installation manual. Then transitioned to a simple box to maximize capacity. Decided to use melamine coated particle board on the sloped sections. Nice and slippery that stuff is. All in all, I am happy with it. Should hold 4 tons.

Also took the baseboard apart in my son's room and reduced its length in half. Could not keep the temps down in his room last winter, which tells me the room is better insulated than I estimated in the heat loss calc. Also got the baseboard installed in my daughter's bedroom. The room was unoccupied last winter, but that is no longer the case. Finally, I pulled the PEX up to the attic bedroom. Still need to route it under the floor and to the interior wall.

That leaves me with two more rooms on the second floor that need baseboards, adding a corner force air unit in the kitchen (which probably won't happen until we replace the cabinets), and adding one more section to the living room. What a change that will all be from when we moved into this house. Last winter was much nicer with only half the baseboards installed

OUTSTANDING JP

Here are some pictures of the build...

The only thing that struck me as odd is the angle of your bin auger...in the pictures it looks like you are using a flexible coupling and it is not keeping the bin auger at the proper angle. Unless you support the end of the bin auger and correct that, it will cause a lot of unnecessary wear on the auger & tube. I would consider a used coupling from an EFM dealer, or go for the gusto with a new split-coupling from EFM.

Yes, in the first two pictures the tube is just hanging. I had it in place to judge where the pipe wanted to be laterally. It is now supported at the bin so there should be no odd loading of the auger.

Nice JP--looks like my 2/3 basement Love useing a level in these real old houses. Bin's fine--the friggin house is out of plumb

No doubt about that This bin is the plumbist thing in the whole building...

And now I am happy to report that the bin has 4 tons sitting in it, and my back is screaming. I will have to build something to get the coal from the window further down the bin. Today was the old fashion way, a shovel

Been a fun few days. Hurricane Sandy certainly made a mess in my parts. Trees down everywhere, power lines are a mess. So no power, no internet. Heck, even the local cell tower went down, so no communications at all. Not a bad thing, really

Anyway, I went down to the basement Mon afternoon to discover that the bin had sprung a leak in the sloped corner, which in turn filled the sump for the sump pump with coal So for the next hour I dug the coal out and got the sump fixed up. Then came to discover than some time over the summer the pipe to the street collapsed. All the water the pump was pumping was coming back into the sump Fortunately I have a long flex hose which I ran out the basement window.

We lost power around 6pm on Monday, so I have been running the EFM by generator. Last night I hooked it up to run for a couple hours before bed. The boiler kicked on and heated up, but 20 minutes later the baseboards were stone cold. A trip to the basement showed the boiler sitting on the hi limit, but the circulator was not running. 0v at the terminals on the aquastat. So this morning I wired the circulator directly to the generator. Got a new aquastat ordered.

I will be happy when this isn't an adventure anymore

This week has been the first true cold snap since getting the EFM up and running. The EFM is acting like nothing out of the ordinary, but I cannot maintain temps in some of the rooms. The baseboard installs are not complete, and apparently the calcs for the living room were optimistic as far as the amount of heat lose is concerned. We have maintained 65-67*, but it will not come up higher. The bedrooms and the dining room are fine, so the calcs are good there.

So it looks like I will be adding one more section of baseboard to the living room. No big deal as I have one more section of wall I can fill. I went back and reran the calc using different numbers for the windows, changed the room temp to 65*, and it spit back the length that I have installed It says I need to add 4 more feet to get those conditions up to 70, but I'll put in a 7' section just to be safe.

I'd estimate I've burned 3 tons thus far, from the end of Oct to date. I've got an order in for another 4 tons, which will carry me through the winter, and probably until Christmas next winter. So glad I found this site since the info here gave me the confidence to go ahead with coal in the first place

What temperature do you run the boiler? Are you sure the baseboards in the cooler rooms are getting the proper amount of flow?

Jpete

If you don't want to give up the extra wall space you can get high output fin tube(usually just a double fintube one over the other) or cast iron baseboard or a good old radiator.too you could put that room on its own zone.....

I have a thermal regulator to keep the supply lines at 180*. Don't want to go higher with the PEX in the system. Right now the boiler hits the high limit at 185*, and kicks back on at 175*. I've got work to do to the boiler, as the DHW coil leaks at the gasket at higher temps. The coil is bad too, so I have birds to kill when the weather and time cooperate. I also need to add a larger expansion tank to the system. I am sitting near 30 psi when the boiler is up to temp, and 12 psi when cold.

No worries about the wall space. The location for the additional baseboard is at the bottom of the stairs, so it is dead space anyway.

Flow could be a problem. By the calcs, the Taco 007 pump I have should be sufficient. I have no good means to measure the temp of the baseboards themselves, but the touch test on the inlet side and the outlet side confirms they are hot enough I can't hold my hand on them for long. The IR thermometer doesn't read well on the painted surface.