Coalpail.com Forum

have been burning coal in old foxfire wood with coal grate hand fired boiler, house is 100 yrs. old with old cast iron radiators and black iron plumbing in basement, I would like to zone upstairs and downstairs, maybe additional zone for bathroom, bought used efm 250 and am ready to setup and run for this season, I am looking for any suggestions or help things that I shouldnt do.

Hello ted, welcome to the forum.

A few questions:

Have you already hooked up the EFM, or are you getting ready to do the hookup and plumbing?? I can't tell from your first post.

If you are getting ready to do the hookup and plumbing, here are several more questions:

You said you have cast iron radiators, and black iron pipe, is the whole house on one zone or loop?

Is the current boiler steam or hot water??

If it is a steam system, are the radiators plumbed with one pipe or one pipe in and one pipe out [a water return pipe]

If this is a two pipe water system, then it won't be too bad to replumb for more than one zone, but it is a fair amount of work, probably requiring getting inside some walls and below floors.

Let us know a bit more about your current system and we can help

Is the EFM a Model 520? I've heard of an EFM 350, but not a 250.

How big is the house?

Greg L

Your in the right place when it comes to EFM questions, these guys helped me big time hooking up my 520 boiler.

thanks again for any advice and help, house presently has hot water system, propane , I hooked up the foxfire wood coal handfired system next to it about 10 years ago, It has two separate thermostats , and circultors, runing into common two inch main pipe with branches off to separate cast iron radiators, each radiator has separate pipe in and out, all the second floor units were replumbed in the walls with 3/4 copper to basement when I redid all the rooms over the years. So basically every thing is accesible from the basement which is open at this point, the piping in the basement is all pithced for gravity but is hung down below the joist so I would like to redoe it up between joist so I can use the space house is aproximately 1200 square feet upstate ny area I bought the used boiler last year but didnt get to hook it up. It also has domestic water coil, would like to use that allso I have propane hot water heater now I have not used the propane unit for backup in at least three years as it hasnt started very easy, it would start with a bang so I would like to do away with it I think it is a df520

Hello ted, below is a link to EFMheating's website and a copy of the owners/instalation manual for your DF520.

http://www.efmheating.com/manuals/DF520%20Manual.pdf

It sounds like your house has most of the plumbing done. You probably will be able to just put the EFM in the same location as the handfeed boiler, or where the propane boiler is. The plumbing hookup should be pretty simple.

Make sure your chimney is in good shape and clean if you have been burning wood. The EFM stoker boiler requires a good draft to function properly and keep fumes and smells out of the house.

If you can separate the supply and returns you will like having separate zones for each floor. A separate zone for a bathroom is a real luxury.

Once you get your stoker boiler hooked up, you won't believe how nice it is to be free of the chore every 10-12 hours of feeding the boiler. With an EFM 520 in a 1200 sqft house, you should only need to empty the ash pan every few days to a week. Keep the coal supply [coal bin] dry, you don't want wet fines clogging the feed to the auger.

Check out the forum for EFM boiler photos and already asked questions. I think you will find a lot of information.

Greg L.

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