Coal Consumption on New Start up

Well the 520 has been cranking along for a month now, no outfires, plenty of heat in house and domestic water. I have gone thru about 1 1/2 ton in a month and the weather has not really been cold, I would say daytimes avaeraging mid 40 and nites just at freezing.
I am set at 4 teeth, the lowest it will go, 4 1/2 air. Baro set at .02 the lightest it will go. Temp is down as low as I can get it with my set up. running about 145 degrees. I am not sure what my timer is set at as it is old and I can not read the numbers on it, so I just left as it was when I bought it. It does run about 2-3 minutes, I think about every 20 minutes or so.

My pump is on teh return side at my furnance and the lines run appx 150 to teh furthest exchanger. Pump runs non stop, I did not want to have 150 of cold water dumping back into the tank and then having to put a delay on the fan to wait for hot water to circulate back to exchanger. Since water is circulating nonstop I did not put a loop on my main outside of furnance. I do have the high end closed cell pipe buried below frostline.

Does this seem like too much coal to be using?

Unit is great and will still save me $ over LP and electric. Plus wife is happy with heat in house, set at 70 now used to be 64 day and 60.

I'm going thru about 120lbs a day for the last month. That's 3600lbs or 1.8Tons. 5700SQFT. Temp is set at 72F

I looked at a few of your older posts and ran across this one:

Questioning BTUH Calc

I am heating nearly 5,000 sq ft of home with alot of tall ceilings. My trophy room alone is 1,200 sq ft with 14' tall ceilings. There are other tall ceilings in the house as well. It is a newer home with proper insulation and I live in Winchester, VA, 2 hrs south of Harrisburg, pa.

Considering the "volume" you are keeping at 70 degrees, 1.5 tons per month in the middle of winter seems pretty good! How much LP & electric were you using previously?

As I recall your EFM is in a detached garage...any change the garage is unheated and the boiler is uninsulated?

mooseman100 wrote:I am set at 4 teeth, the lowest it will go, 4 1/2 air.

Do you need the air at 4.5 to get a proper burn? Don't use more air than necessary to get a proper fire & ash ring.

mooseman100 wrote:Since water is circulating nonstop I did not put a loop on my main outside of furnance.

I don't understand that statement.

Rob you are correct I am heating a lot of volume. The garage is only heated by the UNinsulated 520. I do have a fan blowing across the unit to heat up the room. I am sure with thefan blowing across the furnance it is pulling some heat off.
I have about a 2" ring around the fire ring while it is burning.

Previously I went thtru about $2500-3000 per year to heat, not including my water heater which is probably another $30/ month, just my wife and I. SO even 8 tons of coal @ 210/ ton and I am ahead.

The circulation statement I was trying to make is I have only 1 line coming off the top of the unit going into the house ans 1 line returning to the bottom of the unit. I see pics of guys who seem to have a line coming off the supply side on top going back into bottom of furance. Also see guys who have a "T" using both side of the return. I did not do any of that.

Ver yhappy with unit, just trying to make it as efficient as I can.

mooseman100 wrote:Rob you are correct I am heating a lot of volume. The garage is only heated by the UNinsulated 520. I do have a fan blowing across the unit to heat up the room. I am sure with thefan blowing across the furnance it is pulling some heat off.

mooseman100 wrote:The circulation statement I was trying to make is I have only 1 line coming off the top of the unit going into the house ans 1 line returning to the bottom of the unit. I see pics of guys who seem to have a line coming off the supply side on top going back into bottom of furance. Also see guys who have a "T" using both side of the return. I did not do any of that.

I understand now, thanks for clarifying. That loop is called a boiler bypass...it is used to protect the boiler from thermal shock and to help prevent stratification when the boiler sits idle. With your constant circulation setup, it is not necessary.

145 degrees is pretty low for a constant operating temperature...during a heat call the water returning to the boiler is probably 10-20 degress colder. If it were my boiler would probably run it at 160 degrees with a 10 degree differential...but maybe that's just me.

My trophy room alone is 1,200 sq ft with 14' tall ceilings.

My trophy room is 12,000 sq ft with 140' ceilings and my trophy for last place in the local Otisberg county fair Tiddly Wink contest in 1978 is somewhere amongst all the other junk.

I am heating an OLD farmhouse with limited insulation to 72 and burn an average of .85 to 1 ton per month during the entire heating season (7 or 8 months I run the unit).

In the winter months like JAN FEB I probably burn 1.25 ton per month. Temps here average mid 30's during the day and lower 20's at night for those months.

I don't think you are too far off on your usage. I run 3 teeth 4 air.

As Rob mentioned you MAY want to run your boiler temp a bit higher to see if the higher temp gets you a little more savings on usage. Although its hard to say maybe.

Good luck.

I understand the temp drop of water coming back into the furnance. But why would it matter what constant temp is. Whatever the temp drop is it should remain constant. Say I have a 20 degree drop, so a 145 supply with a 125 return, why would that burn more or less coal than a 175 degree supply and a 155 return. So the furnance will have to run just as hard to bring it bacl up weather it is 145 or 175. Is my logic wrong or has the crack pipe not been kind to me again?

My suggestion of running the boiler a little warmer wasn't to save coal, if anything running it warmer may burn more. My concern was dissolved oxygen in the boiler water...below temperatures of 140 it is harder to control. There is another thread running that has some information regarding this: Can You Get Condensation Inside A Solid Fuel Boiler?

One other thing I would check would be the barometric damper. Make sure the draft settings are right.

Here are some reasons for using the bypass loop on your return line:

Reasons for Using Both Return Lines and Bypass Line

ValterBorges wrote:I'm going thru about 120lbs a day for the last month. That's 3600lbs or 1.8Tons. 5700SQFT. Temp is set at 72F

X2, I'm using about the same amount with my AA 260M.