Plenty of heat but unburned coal

 
Dajones319
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Post by Dajones319 » Sat. Feb. 09, 2019 9:30 am

Hello guys,

New to the coal world here. We’ve always burned firewood. Just bought our Alaska Stoker 2 on Wednesday and got it installed. We are burning blaschak bagged rice coal. We’ve been keeping it on 1.5, it’s feeding quite a bit of coal and I don’t think it’s burning it all the way. When you empty the ash pan you could hear the coal that comes off the grate hitting the ash pan. It goes ting, ting... here’s some pics of my flame & grate. Any help would be appreciated. It’s keeping the house plenty warm enough. Just taking up quite a bit more coal than I thought it would.

Alaska told us the hopper filled on 5 would last 30 hours.

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WNY
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Post by WNY » Sat. Feb. 09, 2019 9:36 am

Welcome.
Looks like a pretty good burn!

You will always a little unburnt depending on how it feeds. as long as it's not A LOT, some pieces are ok, we all get some unburnt.

can you adjust combustion air up or feed rate down a bit so it stays on the grates longer?

IF it's cold outside, most of us go thru 40-60#+ a day depending on how you have it set for temperature and your comfort level.
Last edited by WNY on Sat. Feb. 09, 2019 9:37 am, edited 1 time in total.

 
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StokerDon
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Coal Size/Type: Rice, Chestnut and whatever will fit through the door on the Harman
Other Heating: Noth'in but COAL! Well, Maybe a little tiny bit of wood

Post by StokerDon » Sat. Feb. 09, 2019 9:37 am

Welcome to the forum.

Your fire pic shows a medium sized fire so you are not pushing lit coal off the grate. Did you clean under the grate before you fired it up? What are you controlling the stoker with?

-Don

 
Dajones319
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Post by Dajones319 » Sat. Feb. 09, 2019 9:59 am

Don,

We didn’t clean under the grate when we got the stove. We bought it right from Alaska and they didn’t advise us that we had to. Just said hook up the pipe, add coal and fire it up.


We are controlling the hopper speed with a rheostat that we currently have around 1.5... and fan speed between high/medium. we haven’t really had a chance to mess with the stove yet to see exactly how low we could burn it because we just got it. I’m upstairs with the kids and my husband works a crazy work schedule so won’t really know 100% how low we could turn it til we get a chance to mess with it. The house is at about 80, which I’d be happy with 70 honestly so I considered turning it down from 1.5 to 1, but I don’t have the time to be able to babysit the stove.

It’s about 17 degrees outside right now

 
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StokerDon
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Stoker Coal Boiler: Gentleman Janitor GJ-5, Van Wert VA-600, Axeman Anderson130 X3.
Hand Fed Coal Furnace: Harman SF3500 reduced down to 3 grates connected to its own plenum
Coal Size/Type: Rice, Chestnut and whatever will fit through the door on the Harman
Other Heating: Noth'in but COAL! Well, Maybe a little tiny bit of wood

Post by StokerDon » Sat. Feb. 09, 2019 10:43 am

Oh, this is a NEW stove. I didn't realize that so forget about the cleaning part, for now.

I guess this stove has no thermostatic control so you will have to manually adjust it to get the heat you need.

Keep in mind that burning Anthracite coal is very different than wood. Running a stoker is also different than hand firing. Typically, in cold weather, a stoker will turn about 18% of the coal you put in the hopper into ash. If you put 100 pounds in, you get 18 pounds of ash. This is a lot more ash than you get with wood. Being that it is a stoker, some of the ash will still be black.

One thing that needs to be mentioned to people new to stokers, Never put wet coal in the hopper. This will cause you more problems than you can imagine.

Also, never dump coal right out of the bag into the hopper. Bagged coal is usually wet.

-Don

 
Dajones319
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Post by Dajones319 » Sat. Feb. 09, 2019 10:51 am

How do you suggest drying it? I dumped 80lbs in it last night around 7pm and it looks like based on the hopper that it’s already burnt through it. I only anticipated burning through 40-60lbs a day. Not almost double of that.

 
Dajones319
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Post by Dajones319 » Sat. Feb. 09, 2019 10:54 am

I knew that burning the coal would definitely be a learning curve. With the wood burner you mostly control your burn by air and since we’ve done it my whole life I could do that in my sleep. Lol


 
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StokerDon
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Stoker Coal Boiler: Gentleman Janitor GJ-5, Van Wert VA-600, Axeman Anderson130 X3.
Hand Fed Coal Furnace: Harman SF3500 reduced down to 3 grates connected to its own plenum
Coal Size/Type: Rice, Chestnut and whatever will fit through the door on the Harman
Other Heating: Noth'in but COAL! Well, Maybe a little tiny bit of wood

Post by StokerDon » Sat. Feb. 09, 2019 11:57 am

You are currently burning a lot of coal because your stoker is not cycling off when you don't need heat. Typically, stokers are controlled by a thermostat. This means when your house is warm enough, the stoker only runs just enough to keep the fire lit. When there is a heat call, the stoker ramps up to meet the demand.

I'm not that familiar with your stove but I bet thermostatic control is something that could be added.

-Don

 
Dajones319
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Post by Dajones319 » Sat. Feb. 09, 2019 12:23 pm

It is, it was an extra hundred or so dollars. But I’m thinking now that it’d be worth it. Would thermostatic control take all the guesswork out of it as far as controls?

 
csstoker
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Post by csstoker » Sat. Feb. 09, 2019 11:15 pm

That is a lot of coal for 1.5 setting. Just curious, if you turn the dial down, will it go below 1 or does it stop at 1?

If it stops at 1, from what it sounds like you are saying, I would turn it down from 1.5 to 1 (feed motor rheostat) and turn the fan (distribution blower) speed up to high. That will reduce the amount of coal that you are using, and suspect will maintain about the same temp. in the house. If it is still too warm, then turn the fan down some.

If you can turn the dial below 1, then sounds like 1.5 is really more than 1.5.

Let us know please

 
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Post by Dajones319 » Sun. Feb. 10, 2019 4:51 am

Thanks for replying!

It goes down to .5, I turned it down to like 3/4 just below 1. One of the main things Alaska told us to look for is a sulfur smell or moisture in the hopper. We have neither at the setting it is at and the house temp went down to around 75. If it gets too hot we could open the door to the attached garage in the basement anyways.. Which is perfectly fine. I just need to see where I could get the most heat with the lowest coal usage.

I’m just trying to figure this out, I knew it’d be a learning curve, I don’t know too much about the coal yet. With the wood burner it was easy. The burn was just controlled with the draft at the door and on the chimney pipe. Lol

 
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Post by BostonBob » Sun. Feb. 10, 2019 9:30 am

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Welcome, this is my setting for my Gnome 40 Alaska stoker, it’s 11 degrees this morning windchill at 5, House is 70 degrees, I go through about 3/4 or so of rice coal a day, when it’s a bit warmer I do turn the feed dial down a bit, oh the house is about 1400 sqft ranch style, hope this helps

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BostonBob
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Post by BostonBob » Sun. Feb. 10, 2019 10:30 am

Also the way these stoves control heat is by the timer of the coal feed (0-5) and the blower motor low to high, the combustion blower runs continuously at the same speed so that is not adjustable, it also takes the stove a little time to adjust to feed rate changes. I dump my coal into a large bin and let it dry some then fill a couple 5gal buckets and place them near the stove, as I use the coal from the buckets the heat will dry the coal in the buckets as I rotate them

 
csstoker
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Post by csstoker » Sun. Feb. 10, 2019 10:36 am

looks like I need to pay more attention to detail. :-( I just looked again after seeing BostonBob's rheostat pic and the lowest setting on mine is also .5, not 1.

It's good that you don't have moisture or sulfur smell. If you were to feel the coal inside the hopper, it is probably moderately or even very warm- which is not a problem. Since heat rises, any moisture in the hopper coal as it dries is going to vent up towards the hopper lid, hence the possibility for sulfur smell or moisture on the lid of the hopper- as you read through the forum, you will see you don't want to pour wet coal into the hopper but it sounds like you may be doing good with maintaining low dampness of coal that you put in the hopper from the perspective of sulfur smell and moisture, but drier coal is needed for other reasons also. The other concern with the sulfur smell (or worse) could be that your stove is trying to vent the burn box through the hopper because you don't have a strong enough draft exiting through the stove pipe, but you could confirm that by seeing what your flame is doing ( is it leaning at all toward the hopper vs. straight up or towards stove pipe), as well as where on the grate the coal is burning- your pic looks like you are good there also.

There is a bit of a learning curve, but this forum is great and there is a lot of experience and knowledge on the forum. Read and ask questions and you will be in good hands.
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BostonBob
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Post by BostonBob » Sun. Feb. 10, 2019 11:30 am

csstoker, the Gnome 40 is only 40,000 btu, also is a direct vent, with the vent blower in the stove, it works great a little loud but I’ll deal with the fan noise vs the natural gas bills ( $32 last month !) LOL
if I ran this stove at 1 1/2 it would heat me out of that part of the house


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