How to install an Alaska dual feed model 140

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wvoellin
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Hot Air Coal Stoker Stove: reading rs-96 stoker

Post by wvoellin » Mon. Jan. 03, 2022 8:16 pm

Hi I am looking for thoughts on heating a 3000sq ft ranch home with an semi-open floor plan. The house has a reading RS96 coal stoker stove. It's current set up is in the basement in a utility room and heat is ducted into a main family room. It helps supplement the heating but doesn't heat the house on its own except on warm days. I been thinking about installing a new/reconditioned . I was looking to connect it to my existing forced air furnace ( Propane Goodman 120 BTU) . I was wondering how to do this correctly. Is it ducted to the cold air side and thus utilizes the furnace fan to push the heat through the house but I assume if doen this way I will need to run the furnace fan constantly. Our heating season is October to April.

Thank you in advance for your advice.

 
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Rob R.
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Post by Rob R. » Tue. Jan. 04, 2022 8:52 am

Welcome. The Alaska 140 is a pretty serious unit and seems like a reasonable choice for a home as large as yours. They key will be distributing the heat evenly throughout the house.

Have you contacted Alaska or one of their local dealers for advice on the installation? The installation manual may have a diagram for connecting the 140 to an existing system.

 
LTStorm07
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Post by LTStorm07 » Wed. Jan. 05, 2022 5:23 pm

In my old home I had the exact setup you're asking about as it was a model 140 dual feed with a furnace. I did not set it up since I purchased the house a year after it was installed, but it worked great. I actually had 2 thermostats, one for oil and a coaltrol or the Alaska. I installed the coaltrol myself to replace the Alaska controls. It was a parallel setup so the return was tied into both units and the supplies were tied together as well. I used a damper to control which one could run. I never had to run the oil furnace since the Alaska had a 1500 cfm blower on it and the coaltrol really took care of things. People had no idea house was heated with coal and it never overshot either. Any questions let me know! Current home I chose to install an EFM 520 boiler + water to air heat exchanger instead of a stroker furnace since a boiler is even easier to integrate imo.


 
wvoellin
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Hot Air Coal Stoker Stove: reading rs-96 stoker

Post by wvoellin » Sun. Jan. 09, 2022 9:29 am

Thank you guys for responding.
Yes I have contacted one dealer but they wouldn't connect the unit to my exiting hvac system and said he could recommend several 3rd party hvac guys. I have had some bad experiences with contractors recently. So that is why I was looking into best practices for installing a parallel heating system installation.

So the key to a parallel heating system is damper controls . Which makes sense since heating systems are paralleled into the hot and cold air ducting. Questions you can only run on system at a time and are the damper controls manual?? I assume the dampers function is to prevent the running system from back feeding into the other heating system?

Thinking about the install of a boiler + water to air heat exchanger in theory seems like it may be a better option. If I understand it correctly the way it operates is that the exchanger heats up the furnace plenum so the fan kicks on to move the warm air? How much/often does the furnace fan run?? Does you boiler provide domestic hot water also??

 
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Rob R.
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Post by Rob R. » Sun. Jan. 09, 2022 10:25 am

Thinking about the install of a boiler + water to air heat exchanger in theory seems like it may be a better option. If I understand it correctly the way it operates is that the exchanger heats up the furnace plenum so the fan kicks on to move the warm air? How much/often does the furnace fan run?? Does you boiler provide domestic hot water also??
The water to air heat exchanger is installed in/near your plenum, and the furnace fan is controlled by your thermostat - the air is heated as it goes through the heat exchanger. The furnace fan will run like it does now.

Yes, you can get domestic hot water from the boiler.

 
LTStorm07
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Posts: 106
Joined: Tue. Sep. 11, 2012 8:32 pm
Location: Stillwater, PA
Stoker Coal Boiler: 1980 EFM DF520
Hot Air Coal Stoker Furnace: Alaska Stoker II
Coal Size/Type: Rice
Other Heating: Heat pump / Propane

Post by LTStorm07 » Sun. Jan. 09, 2022 11:12 am

You are correct on your assumptions - the dampers I used were manual since I had dual plenums and powered ones would have been very pricey give the size needed. There are a few installs on the forums of folks who had done this if you wish to see examples of this. Typically it's in the form of a manual damper that you slide in and out of the plenum that isolates the appliance.

As far as operating both at the same time - maybe you could but I have no insight as I've never see it and when thinking about it, it requires some advanced duct design beyond my skills if it is possible. In real world usage, you would never need anything else running with the 140 as it is a heating monster. Single feed is enough for many average homes, dual feed is crazy with it's heating abilities. In my old home I would only have to light the 2nd feed once it was going to be single digits, but once lit, it actually idled back quite a bit since the home's required btu load on it was not much over what a single feed net output was. This was a 1950s cape cod home with 2000sq ft. 2nd feeder, get out the hotdogs and marshmallows for a roast on your air supply vents :yes: . My Model 140 was installed by the folks at the main Bloomsburg Alaska store since they're only 20 minutes away. It's nice to talk to the owner and all of the guys there certainly know their stuff. Always had been helpful to me over the years considering my 140 had gone through 2 floods. Although they certainly a busy place!

In regards to the boiler + hx, it can be installs various ways depending on your specific needs. The most common I've seen is to install it on the supply plenum of whatever forced air device and then use the furnace fan to push through the exchanger and distribute the heated air. They also do this with outdoor wood boilers most of the time - I have a lot of family members and friends with OWBs and they're all installed this way. As for controls, tstat triggers both furnace blower and hx pump + boiler. The boiler feeds the exchanger and the furnace fan blows until the tstat is satisfied. With this setup, the furnace fan doesn't automatically turn on due to sensing heat since everything was controlled in unison and furnace fan didn't need to run anymore than if it was just the furnace on its own.

I do make domestic hot water with my boiler through an indirect fired hot water heater. It's actually just another zone on the boiler that triggers a pump on that loop and the boiler fires to heat indirect tank. Most coal boilers have a domestic hot water coil built into them that specify how many GPM of hot water it can sustain based. I chose to not go this route since I already had a tank style hot water heater. Another option is that if you have electric hot water, you can actually use a plate heat exchanger to heat the incoming cold water of the tank so that it's heated before it hits the tank and the electric elements never need to come on unless the water has been sitting in the tank all day and slowly just cools down.

If you poke around the forums there are a lot of pictures of installs everyone has done over the years and everyone is glad to lend a hand in potential design solutions / troubleshooting, etc. if you need. Just ask away, post pictures, etc. Some even are willing to lend a hand in person if they're close by. There must be a 100 of stoker / boiler installs posted over the years on these forums. StokerDon seems to construct a new boiler setup every few years, but he loves to try new things and think outside the box. :lol:

If you would like to see my install I actually just finished in my new home last year, check out this thread in the coal boiler section: VanWert VA600 to an EFM 520 install

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