3000+ Sq Foot House With Oil Boiler in Garage

+1 to the EFM 520 Stoker Boiler

I have a bit more heating requirements (maybe) than you do, but it does the trick.
Only had it for one year.
Comparing it to oil that it replaced, I will have made back my $14 k investment in well under 5 years.
From there, about $3-4 k savings in my pocket EACH YEAR. WTF happens if oil goes up again??? (ask the oil guy, he might go crosseyed)
ALSO keep tstats at 70-72 verses 65f or so with oil !!!!!

I went with a complete new unit and professional install, however read up on the EFM 520,
and I will say that if you want to save a few bucks or get hands on to save,
there are a couple of members here that sell used, refurbished stokers for way less than half price new, really.
Good as new, but much cheaper than new.

I wanted nothing to do with tearing out the old and putting in the new.
So I did pay the price but wrote one check out and it is done.
Whole job took two days for the most part and we had nice toasty warm heat

Maintenance as mentioned is an hour to a couple each year.

Ohh and your garage would be nice to just place a 55gal bin to fill up for the auger.,
or you could maybe put a auger through the wall and make a 10-20 ton BIN !!! that would be great!

According to a PM from a member Connecticut will not allow a coal boiler in the garage. I do have in a call to the city but have not yet heard from them. Unfortunately it would be cost prohibitive to put the boiler elsewhere. If in fact the boiler is not able to go in the garage I would have to then go back to considering the stove or fireplace insert. According to my rough calculations if oil were $4 a gallon it would probably cost me close to $25 a day if my furnace only ran 4 hours which means that it will not be comfortable. If I run my furnace for only 1 hour per day to give me the domestic hot water I need and leave me will a full tank of heated DHW, the cost would be less than $6 a day. If I burn average 40# of coal at $310 per ton for 150 days which equates to 3 tons over 150 days that would cost another $6.2 per day for a total of about $12.5 per day x 150 days. I would theoretically save $1875 in oil costs over 150 day period and the house would probably be more comfortable than running my 1.5 GPH oil burner for 4 hours per day. Furthermore if I ever sold the house and moved I could theoretically take the stoves with me or sell them.

NFPA standards now prohibit solid fuel appliances in a garage. If your local building codes reference NFPA you are out of luck. If they don't, check with your insurance company. Many insurance companies follow NFPA and won't write insurance if the installation isn't per standards.

You could divide the garage with a fire rated wall but then you loose a portion of the garage.

Do you have a basement?

Or even a spare mudroom or sunroom that is not being used???

According to my rough calculations if oil were $4 a gallon it would probably cost me close to $25 a day if my furnace only ran 4 hours which means that it will not be comfortable. If I run my furnace for only 1 hour per day to give me the domestic hot water I need and leave me will a full tank of heated DHW, the cost would be less than $6 a day. If I burn average 40# of coal at $310 per ton for 150 days which equates to 3 tons over 150 days that would cost another $6.2 per day for a total of about $12.5 per day x 150 days.

The LL comes with domestic hot water coil and you're going to want to use it if you switch to coal. You can hook it right into your existing electric hot water heater and just shut the hot water heater off. We do that and the water is always plenty hot. If you're not using enough hot water to maintain temperature then consider routing it around the hot water heater. Worse case if you don't route around is you have screaming hot water going into the electric hot water heater as a supply so it won't run that much anyway. We don't need the electric hoe water heater but keep the electric hot water heater around in case of failures and in your case when the warm weather hits when you shut off the boiler you can always turn on the electric hot water heater.

I would theoretically save $1875 in oil costs over 150 day period and the house would probably be more comfortable than running my 1.5 GPH oil burner for 4 hours per day

There's an easy way to figure this out using the calculator here.

https://coalpail.com/fuel-comparison-calculator-home-heating

First in the top part fill in your local costs per gallon and for the coal and adjust the efficiencies

In the second part from the drop down menu select oil. If you know how much you spent on oil last yea put in the amount you spent the hit recalculate. You can use any amount, e.g. if you know you spent $15K over 4 years you can use that too.

For example using these numbers:

Coal - $280/ton - 85% efficiency
Oil - $4/gal. - 85% efficiency

Oil - $4000 (assuming you used 1000 gallons of oil)

You would need to purchase $1,618.05 of coal.

. Furthermore if I ever sold the house and moved I could theoretically take the stoves with me or sell them.

One of the members here lived in NJ and took his efm boiler with him when he moved to NC. He's probably the only person in that state with a efm boiler.

If you don't use your garage for parking your vehicles or other motorized equipment, then construct simple barrier walls to prevent vehicles from entering the garage. Then, your garage is no longer a garage if the code department approves of the permanence of your barriers. Simply walling off your boiler in the garage will not satisfy codes in most cases. The boiler room cannot be adjacent to or "communicate" air with the garage space. However, there are code officers who will make exceptions if they feel the garage will not be used for vehicle storage. In my case, my garage is now a workshop and a boiler room. I used one bay for a coal bin which has a barrier and 10 tons of coal preventing a vehicle from entering. The other bay is clearly too narrow for use by a vehicle because of fixtures, machinery, and usage. The code guy gave me a certificate of occupancy for the boiler because he was satisfied with the probable usage. My insurance company didn't care so long as I had the C.O.

I think a stove or fireplace insert is an excellent idea.. Installation would be pretty straight forward and not as expensive as a new boiler. The pay back on investment would be pretty fast and then you would be saving a lot on heating..

But it depends on the location in your home and if you could distribute heat well enough so it wasn't cooking you out in one room but then chilly in another.

ColdHouse wrote:According to a PM from a member Connecticut will not allow a coal boiler in the garage. I do have in a call to the city but have not yet heard from them. Unfortunately it would be cost prohibitive to put the boiler elsewhere. If in fact the boiler is not able to go in the garage I would have to then go back to considering the stove or fireplace insert. According to my rough calculations if oil were $4 a gallon it would probably cost me close to $25 a day if my furnace only ran 4 hours which means that it will not be comfortable. If I run my furnace for only 1 hour per day to give me the domestic hot water I need and leave me will a full tank of heated DHW, the cost would be less than $6 a day. If I burn average 40# of coal at $310 per ton for 150 days which equates to 3 tons over 150 days that would cost another $6.2 per day for a total of about $12.5 per day x 150 days. I would theoretically save $1875 in oil costs over 150 day period and the house would probably be more comfortable than running my 1.5 GPH oil burner for 4 hours per day. Furthermore if I ever sold the house and moved I could theoretically take the stoves with me or sell them.

I think your code issues may be what drives you here. We ran from a forced air oil furnace and converted to a wood hydronic loop and then ultimately changed to coal after help from folks here. We installed one of the early LL AA220K boilers (fall 2011) in my garage and I have done some redneck engineering to add a 154 bushel gravity cart with an electric grain auger to feed the LL's coal hopper. By my calcs that gives us around 6 ton of buckwheat in the garage. We found that putting the boiler in the garage worked great and I really don't have any complaints about how we sited it. As an aside, if I ever did move the boiler is coming with me and I'll leave the original oil furnace in the basement for the new owners-> although I doubt we will be moving anytime in the next couple of decades.
HTH
Bob