Does It Seem Reasonable to Burn This Much Coal? Opinions?

Post by **stoker-man** » Thu. Jan. 13, 2011 6:01 am

We used our unit for only one season and that's what it took (9 tons). I can't add anything to that.

Post by **Rob R.** » Thu. Jan. 13, 2011 1:40 pm

stoker-man wrote:We used our unit for only one season and that's what it took (9 tons). I can't add anything to that.

That is very impressive for a building of that size. Did you heat it at all on the weekends? If you ran it from mid November to mid May and assumed 13,500 btus per lb of anthracite...that is an average input of about 56,000 btus per hour over the entire season. As a means of comparison, the math on my 3,500 sq. ft home works out to ~41,000 btus per hour over the same period. Naturally we keep it a lot warmer than your warehouse, and don't turn it down on weekends.

Getting back to the original post, it sure sounds like a draft control is worth a try.

-Rob

Post by **stoker-man** » Thu. Jan. 13, 2011 6:06 pm

I found out that it didn't pay to cut back on the heat more than a few degrees during the night. At 3 PM, I would go back to 50, if I remember correctly, but at 2 AM, it would go back to 60 so it would be 60 when we came in at 7. It wasn't every day that the unit ran for 10 hours straight, just the very cold days. The windows were a huge loss during the night, but also a great gain on a sunny day. Same goes with the black rubber roof. In the summer, it stayed about 95 in there all day long. The highest I ever recorded was 107 in that heat spell last summer. I ran at full bore, 11 teeth, all the time.

CoalBurner5 · Post by **CoalBurner5** » Fri. Jan. 14, 2011 5:35 pm

I've burned through about 6 tons at my new house. The house is large 5,500sq ft. Boiler is in the basement (without jacket) and the basement is cinder block only. I'm going to hopefully stud it up and insulate it this week. The one thing I keep telling myself is that this is one of the worst winters in the northeast since 1985. So keep that in mind when you start to worry about how much coal you've used.

Here is an idea. How about we start to get a lot of feed back from people about how much coal they've burned so far this winter. So that everyone (especially new burners like myself can get an idea of how much we will use in a normal winter).

How about we get the basic's?

1.) Square footage heating?
2.) Do you have your jacket on boiler?
3.) Where do you live?
4.) What type (rice/buck)?
5.) How much?
6.) What type of heating unit (forced air,hot water baseboard, hot water radiator, in floor radiant)