Start this off by saying. I'm burning Pea coal.
My AHS260 is in my garage. I can't do gravity feed. There's no easy way to to build a bin outside and get access to fill it up.
I've been using 1ton grain bags and moving them in an out of the garage with a pallet jack, and bucketing the coal into the hopper. Needless to say, it's getting old, and I just recovered from shoulder surgery.
Can't build a bin inside the garage, no way to get the coal up into the bin easily, because I have to move the coal 38' into the back of the garage.
So I was thinking about using the large 330 gallon ibc totes.
By Using the spigot on the bottom of the tote, which is 2.25" diameter.
Option A- creating a coal vac to suck it out the bottom of the tote.
Option B- inserting a flex auger into the spigot and augering it out.
Moving coal auger/vac from ibc tote
- McGiever
- Member
- Posts: 10130
- Joined: Sun. May. 02, 2010 11:26 pm
- Location: Junction of PA-OH-WV
- Stoker Coal Boiler: AXEMAN-ANDERSON 130 "1959"
- Hand Fed Coal Boiler: BUCKET A DAY water heater
- Hand Fed Coal Stove: Warm Morning 414A
- Coal Size/Type: PEA,NUT,STOVE /ANTHRACITE
- Other Heating: Ground Source Heat Pump and some Solar
Vacuum coal from topside with proper wand...not from IBC tote small bottom valve outlet.
Auger is simple for mostly vertical lift.
Auger is simple for mostly vertical lift.
- swyman
- Member
- Posts: 2355
- Joined: Mon. Apr. 13, 2015 9:50 pm
- Location: Blissfield, MI
- Stoker Coal Boiler: Axeman-Anderson 260M Leisure Line AA-220 Boiler (FOR SALE)
- Coal Size/Type: Lehigh Pea
I have built 2 different vac systems through the years. First on was for transferring corn in a boiler. This worked very well for the couple years I used it. When I switched to coal I was first using buckwheat. My system had a wand that would fill a 30 gallon barrel above my hopper. The following season I switched to rice as my boiler would burn both. It would take approx 9 minutes to fill the barrel with buck and only 4 minutes with rice. Now I have pea and have a auger. I didn't try it but with the setup up I had, the larger coal would have been tough to transfer in an acceptable amount of time. I only had a single vac and I know you could add more to increase lift but get expensive buying big shop vacs.