New & Nervous Koker Owner

When I first told my wife that I was contemplating getting a coal furnace, she immediately had thoughts of coal dust covering our house and sitting out on the porch playing the banjo. While I am a transported hillbilly, her willingness to adapt stopped at biscuits and gravy.

I have a few fears of my own. They stem primarily from my physical limitations vs. the operation and upkeep of a Koker. I am visually impaired. It's the little details of tweaking, if necessary, the Koker that worry me, i.e. removing chips from timer to adjust feed rate, etc. My wife and I are both spoiled, technology-dependent. She can be "my eyes" but "that beast" in the basement overwhelms her.

Pardon the length of this post but I want to explain my setup so as to assist you in answering my questions. My unit is direct vent. Also, the installer tied the 8"x18" duct outlet into a cold air return on the side of my existing propane furnace. He put a relay on my old furnace to engage it's blower when the Koker blower kicks on. I have twin returns on my old furnace. He tapped into both returns with 8" round and merged into one side of koker blower intake. This was done about 6' in front of where the 8x18 duct feeds the return.

My concern, which he says in unwarranted, is that my massive cold air returns will cool the hot air from the Koker too much. I know this setup is hard to picture and I'd be willing to send/post some pics. I am going to contact my original furnace installer to see if putting dampers in the cold air returns, in between where they feed the Koker and where the Koker's main duct enters the return, will help limit the mixture of cold air with hot. Again, sorry for the inadequate and confusing description.

Ash removal - We're located in the middle of the snowbelt in NE Ohio. Inevitably, my driveway is surrounded each winter by a 6' foot high, 15 foot thick wall of snow. I need to be able to dispose of my ashes using my garbage pickup service. I know this has been discussed on here at length, but indulge by "laziness" as it is difficult for my eyes to navigate all the threads. Best guess is that I'll burn 60-70lbs per day. How much ash can I expect? I've been told that no matter how careful I am in dumping the ash from the pan into a metal ash can, letting it cool, then into a garbage bag, that I will still get fly ash everywhere. (I can see well enough to to do this but not well enough to see if fly ash is "flying". A local man uses Toro leaf vac, mounted on a dump cart outside, to extract the ash outside. In the spring, he hauls the dump cart to the back of his property. He would do this for me but not cheap. I'd prefer just to bag it. I am open to suggestions to make that happen with as little mess as possible.

Power outage - I am in the process of getting setup with a portable gen, almost to th point of it being a standby gen. All I have to do is go outside, open the lid to a vented shed, turn it on, come in and trip the manual transfers, and I'm good to go. How long will a coal fire burn without the combustion fan. Having to rebuild a fire is another one of those "fears" of a half blind person. I thought of buying an inexpensive battery backup that would run the unit long enough for me to get the gen running. But, inexpensive battery backup is an oxymoron. My related "fear' is not being home during an outage, where the fire goes out, the power comes back on and the coal continues to feed. Is this a huge mess? Can it fill up the ash pan quickly?

Some of you are probably thinking I should have stuck with propane. But I'm willing to try anything now that my propane budget would have been $425/mo year round. I'm also skeptical about being about to heat my 2400 sq ft cape cod with 5 ton. (my installer said this was possible) We built in 1992 and just spent $1600 on beefing up our insulation. We used 1300 gal (120 mil btu) of propane last year (prior to re-insulating). When I read one of the posts where a guy used 4 ton on 1200 sq ft.....I got nervous. I know there are too many variable to make a fair comparison. But, I'd be interested in hearing from others with 2000+ sq ft homes.

Thanks for your patience and assistance. I'm looking forward to saving some $$ but a little rattled about making it happen w/out all of the above fears coming to pass.

T. McCann

Hello, and welcome to the forum..
Don't be concerned about the fly ash.. it isn't all that big of a problem.. once you figure out a routine for takeing the ash pans outside to dump the ashes into bags, you won't have hardly any, if any fly ash in the house.. The trick is to have two ashpans, and just slide the [partially] full one out, and put the empty one back in the furnace base. I say partially, because like handling any container, it is easier to spill it if it is full.. Now, you can take a water hand sprayer, like an empty spray bottle of houshold cleaner was in, and spray the top of the ashpan/ashes, this will eliminate 99% of any loose ash from leaving the ashpan as you take it outside. Or you can get a piece of tin, like from your ductwork, cut to fit the ashpan inside dimensions, and gently set this on the ashes in the pan, the idea is to not move the air over the ashes too quickly..

Once you have the pan outside, and the ashes are COLD, I'd try using a large garbage bag, fitting it over the top of the ashpan, THEN turn the ashpan over slowly emptying the ashes into the bag.... This should result in the minimum of ash leaving the bag..

You will generate about 2-3 large coffee cans of ash for 70# of rice coal burnt..by weight it should be about 12-15% of the coal's weight.

Your fire will burn and recover from probably 10-15 minutes of a power outage,, this is because of you having a direct vent instead of a chimney.. with a chimney, I'd say a fire would stay burning and recoverable for over 30 minutes, depending on the size of the fire and amount of fuel burning when the power to the combustion fan went out.. but with a direct vent,, you loose all or most air through the coal bed, so it will suffer from lack of oxygen quite quickly.

Don't be nervous,, you will do fine.. once you get your routine down, it will be great to save on your propane bill..

I'd probably buy and stock about 3 more tons of coal,, just to be sure you have enough for the first year,, 5 tons may be a little short.

The return air entering your furnace is not 'cold' it is about 65* or so,, so if you don't have too high a velocity caused by two fans forcing the air through the Koker too fast, you should be fine.. does the air volume/velocity coming out of your heat vents feel about the same as with your Propane furnace??? If it is significant'y higher volume/velocity, you may want to set the speed on your fans slower, most of these furnace fans have several speeds that can be set with the wiring..

Hope this helps.. Greg L

Greg

Thanks for the assist.

I have promised my wife that I would "try" and have the ash bagged before it leaves the basement. The spray bottle sounds like a great idea.

The installer tied the relay to the low speed setting on my other blower. The air movement seems to be comparable. I still think there is some "backfeeding" happening, which is why I'm going to consult with another hvac guy.

If I have at least 10 minutes, I should be able to get the gen up and running. It depends on how much snow I have to brush off the gen shed. This is going to be an interesting season with all this new equip coming online simultaneously. Next year, I will hook up the hot water coil. I'm waiting for my 17 year old elec heater to die naturally, trying to squeeze every last drop out of it I can.

3 ton of extra coal? So much for the payback spreadsheet I showed my wife. Plus, space is an issue. Fortunately, my neighbor is getting a K8 and has room for extra coal if I need it.

Thanks again for the advice.
T. McCann

If at all possible DON'T transfer the ash from the ashpan to the trash bag in the basement,, there is inevitably going to be an 'OOPS' and dust and ash will be everywhere.. At the very least use huge trash bags, insert the COLD ashpan into the bag completely, tie the bag shut, THEN invert the ashpan, being VERY careful not to poke a hole in the bag with a corner of the ashpan.. a bit more time consuming. If carrying the ash pan outdoors to do the tranfer is not an option.

As for the additional coal,, I misread your first post and was thinking oil, not propane.. you probably will be OK with the 5 tons.. but make sure you have more available, your retailer hopefully keeps coal in stock..

Check on eBay for a good used UPS [power supply] with a car battery for the unit it will give a lot more time than with the original battery, and provide hours of backup for the direct venter... and keep your fire alive 'till you can fire up the generator.


Greg L.

McKoker,
Welcome to the hottest forum going!
I also live in the snowbelt (Claridon Township, Geauga County)in N.E. Ohio and I have also recently had a Koker installed in the basement, connected into the cold air return of my "too expensive to run" propane furnace. Maybe we were separated at birth. I can certainly relate to your nervousness; I've been reading everything I can find simply to get smart enough to start the coals burning when my wife says "don't you think the house is too cold?"
Anyhow, I'm certainly willing to work together on our learning curve. We'll figure this thing out. We just need some cold weather to get us going. If you want to work on this together, PM me and we'll talk.
-Len

we have a little keystoker hooked up in the basement of our drafty circa 1900 Vic.(approx 2400sq ft) . our first year we just used it to keep the basement warm. used 3-4 ton. Last year when the oil started rising, We cranked it up to full throttle and turned the oil burner down to 60F. Kept the house livable & came in under budget for oil( which isn't saying much, our oil bills are appalling). We used about 5 ton. This year we want to try and ressurect the steam boiler that's been sitting in the basement , unused, since before we bought the place ( we figure it got decommissioned 20+ years ago). If we can do that, the oil burner will be relegated to backup heat & hot water.

What Greg said is true - don't empty the ash pan in the basement. Fly ash will go everywhere. I don't care how careful you are. Make sure you have two ash pans and you'll be fine. The one thing I would add is to invert the ash pan in the bag outside and then wait about 30 minutes for the ash to settle and then carefully remove the pan from the bag. Wetting the ash is a good idea but you'll soon find that the ash pan is a chore and you'll want to get it over with as quick as possible. Honestly wetting the ash doesn't help all that much either because you can only get the top layer of ash wet and what is underneath is like talcum powder. I would also advice any new stove owner to paint the ash pan with a rust preventive paint. POR-15, Zero Rust or even Stove Bright will keep the pan from rusting. Check out some old stoves here and you'll see how they rust. The ash is very acidic and corrodes everything. I would even think about painting the inside of the stove with a black high temp paint.

Greg: How do you hookup a car battery to a UPS - did you mean inverter?

UPS: uninteruptible power supply,, an automatic power supply used for computers and other equipement you want to have no interuption of power for.

Yes they contain an inverter, and usually a battery charger, and you plug the UPS into the power supply and plug the appliance. or computer into the UPS.. The switchover to inverter power is automatic, as well as back to house power when it is restored.. the better UPS units have battery sensors and other features..

Greg L

I started a topic on UPS units last year, do a search and you should find it.. lots of good info.

Congrats on the new Koker!

I too have one ordered but it will take another 4 months before I have it in my hands.

Sounds like you have a nice setup going for you.

I plan on handling the ash by simply placing the ash pan in a heavy duty plastic bag, tying the bag, dumping the ash pan in the tied plastic bag, let it sit for an hour then open the bag and remove the ashpan from the bag carefully, retie and put out with the trash!

Hi Mckoker, I bought and heated with a koker last season,not to worry.they are pretty basic operating.it takes a little getting used to but not real hard.i have an older home not well insulated and still needs windows. I bought 4 ton and used all of it,if your house is newer and modern insulated/windows 4 tons may suit your needs but having access to additional coal is a good idea. as for ash removal I would also suggest handling out side if possible there will always be some ash/dust .no problem if outdoors.you should be very satisfied with your results and the savings on propane bill.good luck!

Rich