The Bairmatic - Van Wert Project
Posted: Sun. Nov. 15, 2015 9:48 am
Two weeks ago I had no idea what a BairMatic stoker boiler was. I was up at Scrapper's place last night and look what followed me home!
The BairMatic is a one piece, no base boiler. The base part, and I guess the boiler part, are made of heavy 1/4" plate steel. A very heavy duty unit. Each side has a BairMatic stoker sized hole in it. You can mount the stoker on either side. This unit had an oil burner in it, so the is no BairMatic stoker with it. That's OK, I might have a Van Wert stoker or two lying around to stuff in there! The BairMatic has another interesting feature, It can be fitted with two round domestic coils. It will accept A Keystoker coil. I don't plan on using a coil but it's nice to have the option. One of the things I love about the BairMatic is the heat exchanger right above the fire. Look familiar? When Yellow Flame updated there boiler to get a bit more heat out of the coal before sending it up the stack, they kind of borrowed this design. The plates in a newer Yellow Flame look exactly like these plates. You can't see it in the pictures but the top of all these plates are pointed. This allows the flyash to fall off rather than accumulate, making them self cleaning. BairMatic used the "one piece boiler" idea to take the bottom of the boiler down further than they could if they used a conventional boiler/base arrangement. THE PROJECT:
Many of you know that I have been struggling with higher than normal coal usage with three different boilers that I have installed in my garage. Some say the boiler needs better insulation. Some say the PEX loop is to small. Some say the garage is a heat hog. It may be all three and possibly factors that I know nothing about.
The idea here is to build a similar stoker boiler to what I now have in the garage and put it in the basement. I will first connect it to the PEX in the basement and run a heat exchanger/blower in the garage. We will run it this way for a few weeks to a month and see what happens.
Since the BairMatic is a nice square boiler, it should be easy to insulate. I plan on going overkill with the insulation. 3.5" Roxwool R-15 with 1" foamboard R-7.5 as an outer skin. The insulation will be part two of the project. Then we will see how that effects coal consumption. This will also allow enough boiler run time to fix any leaks that crop up.
I called Scrapper a few weeks ago to see if he had an EFM 350 he could sell cheap for this project. Naturally, anything that says EFM on it is not cheap. I told him what I wanted to do and he explained that the BairMatic would work just as well as the 350 without the EFM price tag. In comparing the heat exchange area of the two, I think the BairMatic could actually be a better boiler design than the EFM.
Here we go! Another coal stoker boiler project and, as always, I'm gonna drag you guys along with me!
-Don
The BairMatic is a one piece, no base boiler. The base part, and I guess the boiler part, are made of heavy 1/4" plate steel. A very heavy duty unit. Each side has a BairMatic stoker sized hole in it. You can mount the stoker on either side. This unit had an oil burner in it, so the is no BairMatic stoker with it. That's OK, I might have a Van Wert stoker or two lying around to stuff in there! The BairMatic has another interesting feature, It can be fitted with two round domestic coils. It will accept A Keystoker coil. I don't plan on using a coil but it's nice to have the option. One of the things I love about the BairMatic is the heat exchanger right above the fire. Look familiar? When Yellow Flame updated there boiler to get a bit more heat out of the coal before sending it up the stack, they kind of borrowed this design. The plates in a newer Yellow Flame look exactly like these plates. You can't see it in the pictures but the top of all these plates are pointed. This allows the flyash to fall off rather than accumulate, making them self cleaning. BairMatic used the "one piece boiler" idea to take the bottom of the boiler down further than they could if they used a conventional boiler/base arrangement. THE PROJECT:
Many of you know that I have been struggling with higher than normal coal usage with three different boilers that I have installed in my garage. Some say the boiler needs better insulation. Some say the PEX loop is to small. Some say the garage is a heat hog. It may be all three and possibly factors that I know nothing about.
The idea here is to build a similar stoker boiler to what I now have in the garage and put it in the basement. I will first connect it to the PEX in the basement and run a heat exchanger/blower in the garage. We will run it this way for a few weeks to a month and see what happens.
Since the BairMatic is a nice square boiler, it should be easy to insulate. I plan on going overkill with the insulation. 3.5" Roxwool R-15 with 1" foamboard R-7.5 as an outer skin. The insulation will be part two of the project. Then we will see how that effects coal consumption. This will also allow enough boiler run time to fix any leaks that crop up.
I called Scrapper a few weeks ago to see if he had an EFM 350 he could sell cheap for this project. Naturally, anything that says EFM on it is not cheap. I told him what I wanted to do and he explained that the BairMatic would work just as well as the 350 without the EFM price tag. In comparing the heat exchange area of the two, I think the BairMatic could actually be a better boiler design than the EFM.
Here we go! Another coal stoker boiler project and, as always, I'm gonna drag you guys along with me!
-Don