Yellow Flame, A Christmas Stoker Boiler

I have a Yellow Flame boiler for about 20 years that I heat a 6000 sq. feet apartment building with.
Works great and sure beats oil.
If you need parts check with Marks Supply, I think they purchased all the inventory when Yellow Flame
went out of business.

Mark’s Supply
230 S. Main Street
Shenandoah, PA 17976
Call at
570-462-0748
Email
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

[email protected]
That is a great and rare find, I am sure you will be happy with it.
Norm

I have a Yellow Flame boiler for about 20 years that I heat a 6000 sq. feet apartment building with.
Works great and sure beats oil.
If you need parts check with Marks Supply, I think they purchased all the inventory when Yellow Flame
went out of business.

Mark’s Supply
230 S. Main Street
Shenandoah, PA 17976
Call at
570-462-0748
Email
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

[email protected]
That is a great and rare find, I am sure you will be happy with it.
Norm

Way to go SD, you've come a long ways. :nice:

Thanks for sharing the ride with us.

Now get busy on that Indirect, BoilerMate.

Don, you did a great job. Sorry to see that that the pex snake bit you on the back of the hand. Even though I missed the inaugural firing, I'd still like to come see your boiler sometime soon. I've still got some beer for you!

----OFF TOPIC ALERT!!!!----

BTW Terry Yuengling Bock is in the stores now.

Umm,,, Bock.

CoalKirk,

I'll send you and Woodhog and invite, I don't know of any other locals?

I'd like to see that Yellow Flame that normpurc is using to heat 6,000sq ft! That's got to be a 4 or maybe 5 grate stoker!

OK, I'm a believer, the house was 74 lastnight, I was on the verge of opening a window-stat! This is very strange to me, no fire in the basement at all, just water cirulating from the garage. I am doing some re-adjusting of feed rate and combustion blower settings. The 20"x18" coil with 1650 CFM blowing through it puts a good load on the boiler.
I guess I should sell the Alaska 140 now. I can move the Harman back into that spot and use it's blower.
I sold my Keystoker A125 last weekend so I had to changed my avatar. I was going to use a photo of the Yellow Flame but I like tsb's avatar!

-Don

Stoker Don,this is now a 25 page Killer! Congratulations!! You may again never know who you inspired to give coal the try that gives back! Your Photo Documentation really supported this Thread so well. You also have definitely been Pex'd! Thanx Again,And Carry On!

I had to school myself on how these 24 volt AC relays work. This is what I came up with.

This type of relay consists of a 120 volt to 24 volt transformer and a relay activated by a 24 volt solinoid coil. My blower that I need to activate with the house thermostat gets neutral (WHITE) and ground connected directly and gets hot (BLACK) switched through the relay at the normaly open connection.
The thermostat acts as a switch connecting the secondary of the transformer (24V) to the coil on the relay, that in turn connects hot to the blower.
I found out the hard way that I can't just hook the same thermostat up to the transformer secondary out in the garage that will power the zone pump via a long run of thermostat wire.

My solution was to connect thermostat wire to the "C" and "G" terminals on the blower relay run those wires out to the pump relay in the garage connect the white wire to the "G" terminal. disconnect the relay coil from the "C" teminal, connect the red wire and the relay coil wire to the unused "W" terminal.
This connects the 2 relay coils in parallel and devorces the transormer associated with the pump relay from the ciruit. When the thermostat calls for heat, both coils see 24 volts AC and activate there respective motors (blower and pump).

Well, That's about it for this boiler project! Everything is plumbed, everything is wired and working. I still have the occasional leak that pops up in the threaded pipe section. I will deal with those one by one. The indirect water heater will have to wait for the perminent install next fall. It is very tempting to play with but it doesn't make any sense to start taking apart threaded pipe and adding more pipe for a temporary zone.

Later I will post a whole load of photos of the installed parts.

Thank you all very much for your help and support in this effort. I said in the begining it would be fun and I was right!

-Don

Hey Don I am interested in buying the alaska from you. Is it still for sale? How old is it?

thnx
Mike

OK, This project is finished for the time being. The last thing I did was to roll some silver paint over the raised lettering on the doors. It reads "SO SCH MFG CORP" stands for Southern Schuykill Manufacturing Corporation.

The PEX snake is gently hung from the ceiling with 4" "U" clamps, the thermostat wire from the basement to the pump relay is run along side the snake.
The differance between inlet and outlet temp in the heat exchanger is between 10 and 17 degrees. It never reaches 20 degrees differential. I think that means it is working well!

I never get tired of look'in at this!!!
My advice to anyone thinking of adding a coal stoker boiler to there heating system, JUST DO IT! It's not that hard, the people on this forum will help you get there. Hopper fed stoker boilers have very simple mechanicals and can be put into working order with few to no parts. I've seen them on craigslist from $0 (yes sometimes they are listed for FREE!) up to $4000. You can get refurbed under fed stoker boilers in the $4500 to $8000 range that will last a lifetime.

With this one I didn't have to buy any parts. I took it apart, cleaned it, painted it and put it back together. I didn't have a hot water heating system so I put a liquid to air heat exchanger in the hot air ductwork and 2 heat exchangers with blowers hung in the garage. So now I have ONE heater that heats everything and only ONE hopper to fill.

Once again, thank you for all of your help.

-Don

CoalKirk stopped by last Saturday to inspect the Yellow Falme. Woodhog was going to stop by too but I think he got lost on the way. CoalKirk and I had a good time drinking beer, eating sauseges with roasted peppers and talking about coal, stokers, boilers, heat exchangers and plumbing.

Not only did CoalKirk bring beer, he brought COAL! A nice 5 gallon bucket of buckwheat! I let the hopper run nearly dry, by Sunday morning it was nearly empty so in went the buckwheat.

This is what it looked like.
You can see that the flame looks much hotter. I didn't change any settings for the buck coal. I now realize that one of the reasons the Yellow Flame has such a big blower is so it can burn barley coal. Barley coal is the consistancy of sand, to get air through it you need a big blower. To burn Buck, or even Rice, the blower needs to be choked down to avoid fusing the coal and warping the grates.

Thanks for the beer and Buckwheat CoalKirk!

-Don

Don, even though it isn't that hard once you get into the job, it seems very intimidating at first. Not everyone has the same skill set or confidence level. With that said, you sure did a nice job.

StokerDon wrote:The differance between inlet and outlet temp in the heat exchanger is between 10 and 17 degrees. It never reaches 20 degrees differential. I think that means it is working well!

That is very close to where it needs to be...those gauges aren't exactly 100% accurate either.

If you really wanted to you could throttle the circulator a little on the outlet side, it will slow the flow and might even decrease power consumption? less gpm = less KWH? Makes sense to me but might not pan out in practice.

Rob,

I understand about the gauges not being accurate. I used 2 pairs of gauges, one pair at the boiler and one pair at the heat exchanger. The thinking here is that even though they may be off a bit, if each pair was made at the same place and the same time, they should be off the same amount and in the same direction. Possibly wishfull thinking but that what I'm go'in with.

I can only think of 2 ways to throttle the pump. Connect a bypass, or plug it into a Variac and lower the AC voltage to it. I could also swap in a smaller pump.

I like the Variac idea, I could turn the voltage down until the temp differential is 20 degrees. Then I would know were the lower limit is.

-Don