Coalpail.com Forum

so tonight around 3:30 im woken up by the sound of my oil boiler kicking on . instead of rollin over and going back to sleep im curious and need to know whats going on. I run out to the shop, all the relays are picked up, stoker is runing but fire looks weak. real weak. like it had been idling all night. (makes sense the house fell almost 7*) im puzzled as to why. after babysitting it for an hour now, the fire is coming back and things seem to be coming back to normal. except for me lol. my only guess is the honey well relay didnt pick up and when I slammed the door to the shop it finally closed. anyone have a similair problem?

i think my grates my be plugged or partially plugged. after an hour and a half of running non stop fire still looks weak. should be a little pre-mature for that tho right?

Are you burning different coal or make any adjustments to the red nut recently? If not then it may be what your saying about the holes being plugged up. How does the ash look........is there more unburned coal than usual..........how wide is the fire? Can you take a pic of the fire and post it?

Also make sure it is feeding coal properly. Poor feed will give you a little fire even if run non stop.
Feed could be affected by an obstruction, someone turning the feed nut out of curiosity (kids?) and the set screws can become loose on the shaft. The loose screws would be most likely if you ever had a hopper fire and they got hot.

These are some things to consider along the way as you trouble shoot the problem.

Time for a quick shut down and clean-out so you can verify proper operation of the stoker, and make sure the grate isn't clogged with fines.

i am into a more recent load of blashack. seems to be a little more wet and oily than last load but I didnt think that would make much of a difference. time for a brief shutdown. double checked my feed, right where it was at 14 turns back, stoker seems to be working right. everything seems to be back to normal.

Wet coal can cause feeding problems...especially if it contains a lot of fines.

At six I turned the feed up one turn everything seems back to normal. fire looks great and the boiler is handling this long heat call very well lol. still spooked a lil on what happened

thanks everybody for the quick responses. I think im good to go, im just a little gun shy to leave it un attended all day. I don't think were going to get out of the teens today. kind of a funky hic-up. ive cycled the thermostat a couple times to make sure everything works, and it does. oh well I guess

That fire looks fine to me and you said everything was back to normal......good deal! Just keep a close eye on it..........could've been a fluke.

ya I think the honeywell relay didnt pick up till I slammed the door. maybe that coil is on its way out? (brand new) like I said kinda spooky. hopefully when it happens again ill be home to find it.

How many ton have you burnt so far? If you haven't done a cleaning as of yet, I would do it. Even knowing it's running good at least if it happens again you could rule dirty boiler out.

Check the coal level bar on the stoker. This regulates the level of coal fed onto the grates by the pusher bar. I had problems this winter including a series of outfires. Finally looked closely and found one side of the bar had loosened and vibrated down. This restricted the coal feed to an insufficient amount.

I tapped the bar nut back up and tightened it and all is well. Third year I ran the boiler so yearly check next year will be to make sure those bolts have proper torque on them.

And draft is OK? Little black fan OK? Any manometer abnormalities?

I had the opposite reaction recently with a lot of wind. Draft went wild with the wind. Over temp fire kicking my safety dump zone a few times. My coal is Jeddo and seems QUITE hot this year. My little black fan has "stuck" twice this year. 3M oiled it back to life both times. New one just arrived from Keystoker per my request-$114 and will get changed this weekend. The other can be a back up.

everything has been fine since yesterday morning still not positive on what caused problem. just got my manometer yesterday im going to hopefully install it this weekend. little black fan is ok, stoker is level, and tight, and air tight. I was going to shut it down and clean it but the fire seems to be great, and there is no ash on the bottom of the stoker (removed secondary fan) but I guess that dosent mean that the holes arent plugged or somewhat plugged. im still blaming it on a electrical issue, maybe a poor connection, I went thru everything to rule it out everything looked good but just for peace of mind I double checked everything. the fire looked as though it was a warm october day, and had been idling all day. just like 3/4, or one inch of fire, close to the top of the grate, but after I checked on it after a half hour everything was back to normal, fire really picked back up, everything came up to temp and has been running like normal since. edit- also checked the bolts for the bar on the stoker they are tight feed looks even across stoker as well