Coalpail.com Forum

You need to get a second drum or a small bin to "stage" the coal in and dry it out...orherwise you will continue to have problems.

I'll have to figure out how to drain the bags before I put them in the coal bin. Need to screen the coal before I put it in the bin.

Here is the rebuilt pot after getting some rope gasket:

Thanks,

Dave

Nice job. Did you ever get a new pot auger?

DF520 is running again. Switched over from oil back to coal today.

I rebuilt the pot, cleaned the chimney flue, cleaned the smoke pipes, cleaned inside the boiler, replaced the lower pipe, extended the lower pipe so only 3 to 4 inches of the auger extended into the coal pile instead of 8-10 inches, drilled bigger drainage holes in the bottom of the coal bin, updated the coal bin with bird house over the pipe made from cinder block like in manual, removed the draft inducer, and cleaned the blower.

The air flow is even out of the pot, the coal burns like it did when new, and I am not getting any smoke in the coal bin.

I'll check it again tomorrow, but appears to be working again.

Thanks for everyone's help!

Dave

daluds wrote: I am not getting any smoke in the coal bin

That could be the result of:

daluds wrote: cleaned the chimney flue, cleaned the smoke pipes, cleaned inside the boiler,

daluds wrote:The air flow is even out of the pot, the coal burns like it did when new

That could be the result of:

daluds wrote:I rebuilt the pot

daluds wrote:cleaned the blower

You've touched all the bases, but haven't quite pinpointed the original problem. Glad to hear you're up and running again.

I suspect the plates were loose allowing air out between the plates and top/bottom. There may have been a clump of dried fines preventing circular flow of air based on the pictures I took, so those would be my first guess. I also think the worm was too long in the bin causing excessive fines when it was full adding to the problem.

I created a "roof" on top of the pipe like the manual shows, but don't believe this is necessary and its causing uneven flow of coal in the bin so I have to keep it full. Make take this out, and just run with the shorter exposed worm from the pipe.

Dave

Rob R. wrote:You need to get a second drum or a small bin to "stage" the coal in and dry it out...orherwise you will continue to have problems.

I'll try this tomorrow. Switched back to oil again after having a lot of smoke pushed back into the coal bin, and coal not burning in the pot correctly. It was doing fine with dry coal so I'm assuming its due to the wet cold coal clogging up the operation.

However, I'm stumped. I'll check the blower too.

The wet coal is likely the source of all your problems. A large piece of coal or wood can also cause the auger to run empty and let gas blow back into the bin.

The blower is pretty simple...if it spins counterclockwise when viewed from the gearbox and isn't full of dirt/dust, it is probably fine.

Rob,

I picked up another "bin" to hold bags of coal to let them unfreeze and drain. I place the bags upright and cut small holes in the bottom corners of the bags and let them sit over night. The second bin is an inexpensive green xmas tree container, and holds 5 50lb bags upright. The first batch of 5 bags produced just short of 5 gallons of water which I measured by pouring into empty milk containers.

The DF520 is burning much better with the less wet coal now, but will keep checking it since I have started to dry out the coal before putting in the coal bin.

This seems like a science project. However with the green second bin, I can now say I burn "green" coal.

EFM should offer a coal drying attachment similar to the salad drying mechanism:



So it appears the uneven burning is due to wet coal building up on the far side of the pot from the feed pipe too. Thanks for all the help and suggestions.

Dave

EFM running great now with dryer coal...