Getting Coal From Truck to Basement Bin

My bin is in my basement in the same room as my boilers. Now that I no longer have access to an auger we literally hold bags up to the shoot on the truck and fill and carry to the basement. Needless to say, it sucks. Leaf blower idea or anything really, that can get the coal about 20 feet from where the truck can park in my driveway, through a PVC pipe or piping of same nature and through the basement window and into my bin would be awesome. I just need to figure out how to make it happen...

Could you make a more convenient opening into your basement? Cut in a new window? Is the bin closer to driveway or away from driveway? I did that to my set up. Saved a bad back load of work!

Unfortunately that's not possible, unless I just make a new location for the bin in a different room in the basement, which is what option #2 is because carrying the bulk loads will NOT happen again. The ideal solution is an auger or some feed system. The alternative is I can take a different room in the basement that is already partially finished and turn it into a coal bin room, knock out part of the large window that is on the exterior wall by the exterior access to the basement, and put a shoot of some kind there. The truck can back right up to that location. The truck cannot get to the front of the house by where the current window access and coal bin are, because the front yard is just slightly steeper than the mountain the Olympic skiers have been sliding down these last couple of weeks. If I can figure out how to post pics I'll put some up later and maybe some ideas can be provided once it's been seen.

Carbon12 wrote:My gripe is that the only place they can dump the coal is 150 feet from the door to the boiler room. Down hill and around the corner of the house to the opposite end of the house.

Yes, that is a logistical problem. I can't get the pickup truck to the backside of the house and had the same exercise routine but not quite as far...carrying the buckets from the back of the pickup truck across the yard, down the bilco steps through the basement to the other end of the house.

I built the outside bin that holds close to 2 ton back there at the basement window by the stoker and the loader barely makes it through to fill it. The coal bunker about 300' away is where the bulk is stored until it is loader'ed into the bin and it is then vac'ed inside to the day bin.

Maybe something like this will work? All you need is the blower.

That's pretty much exactly what I had before, except the utility auger I had was much smaller, say a 4 inch. I found "Jet Flow" has exactly what I need, the perfect accessories and everything, but can't seem to find anywhere near me that sells them??

Can it be shipped to you?

Internet Sales: http://harvestend.com/

Nice! They have all of the components I would need, I just wonder what the truck freight will be to get it to me... that's the problem and why I was trying to find something local. I'm contacted them though to get an idea of the total cost. Thanks much for the link!

This place is a jet flo dealer. Isn't it reasonably close to you?

http://rydersupply.com/

Unfortunately they are not a Jet Flow dealer anymore. I called them yesterday and they got a good laugh that the web directed to me to them, given that they then informed me they haven't sold Jet Flow for about 3 or 4 years now.

Rats! I was going to go there.

Once the snow is gone, I'm going up to the roof to do some measuring. If the distance isn't prohibitively long, I could have the coal truck back up to the garage, (it's a low roof), auger the coal off the truck to the peak of the garage roof and then gravity flow down a PVC pipe to the coal bin. If I can do that, the coal bin will be right where I want it to be able to gravity feed through the basement wall right into the coal hopper on the boiler. I wonder how long it would take to auger 2 tons of coal using a 4 inch auger??? 6 inch might be better, but a lot heavier and more costly.

Carbon12 wrote: I wonder how long it would take to auger 2 tons of coal using a 4 inch auger??? 6 inch might be better, but a lot heavier and more costly.

I have not timed my Westfield 4"auger but it's moves rice at a good rate see this thread; Post by dh1200s - Auger Links Have a few pics of my Westfield 4 " auger and the 1HP motor I used.

Folks at http://www.grainaugers.com/productDetail.aspx?x=w ... UnYFrf4%3D could point you to nearest dealer...........Dick

The auger would work great, I'm sure. Throwing out $500.00-$1000.00 to solve the problem will be the unpleasant part.