Coalpail.com Forum

It seems as if having the boiler in the garage in the summer would be beneficial.

I would think u would have that ceiling insulated, what a extreme waste of heat.

lsayre wrote: ↑

Sun. Jun. 10, 2018 1:12 pm

It seems as if having the boiler in the garage in the summer would be beneficial.

Yes! To keep some heat out of the house during the long Summers we have down here. This is one of the reasons I would like to figure out why the garage boiler uses more fuel. It is nice running the garage boiler in Summer.

-Don

hotblast1357 wrote: ↑

Sun. Jun. 10, 2018 5:29 pm

I would think u would have that ceiling insulated, what a extreme waste of heat.

It's a garage, there are plenty of places for heat to leak out of. It's not a priority, down here there are only about 2 months or so when you would need garage heat.

Before we could even think about insulating the ceiling, someone would have to figure out how to get all the junk out from up there.

-Don

Ok, a lot different than up here, we heat garages for 8 months most of the time.

9.9 hours of fan run time over the last 7 days. Looking back through this thread it seems that the feed rate is somewhere around 12 pounds per hour on Pea coal.

9.9 times 12 is 118.8 pounds, 17.0 per day. The coal chip collector. A week's worth of coal chips. The chips go in the fire. A weeks worth of ash. After a week, the coal in the barrel isn't even half way down between the two ribs yet. From where it was filled to last Saturday to the bottom of the lower rib is about 268 pounds. Half of 268 is 134 pounds. That makes our 118.8 pounds sound reasonable.

If you remember, last week we switched the pump from running 24/7 to being controlled by the aquastat so it will only run when the water heater calls for it.

This has brought our coal consumption down to 17 pounds per day, heating DHW only. Early in the week it looked like it would come out even lower than that. The first three days the fan ran for about 45 minutes a day.

Then for some reason the second half of the week the fan ran for more than an hour every day. Anyway, glad to be down to 17 pounds per day!

Last week the Van Wert VA-600 in the basement ran 19.1 pounds per day average for the week to heat DHW only. Last summer the Van Wert ran most of the time at about 16-17 pounds per day.
Post by StokerDon - The Van Wert VA600 Project

-Don

That's some awesome economy Don, thanks for the update

The best I could do with my hand fed was roughly 30-35 pounds per day idling thru warm spells.

The thing that amazes me is that it does this with no timer. It just lays there dead for hours. Then it roars back to life.

-Don

It will sit a few days and do that.

You also switched back to pea coal correct? I think these animals really like pea coal, today is 17 days for me since the last fill up, still have a couple days left in the hopper.

Lightning wrote: ↑

Sat. Jun. 16, 2018 8:22 pm

That's some awesome economy Don, thanks for the update

The best I could do with my hand fed was roughly 30-35 pounds per day idling thru warm spells.

It's not apparent to the casual observer, but this IS comparing a 'forced air hand-fed' to a 'water jacketed stoker-fed boiler', is it not?.

Since coal can (and does) fall back down through the auger to the bin, the feed rate is highly irrelevant with respect to the burn rate. The only requisite auger criteria is for the feed rate to somewhat exceed the maximum burn rate.

The maximum actual burn rate is likely closer to 10.61 lbs. per hour of fan run time, or likely somewhat less overall due to ramp up.

12,250 BTU/Lb. x 10.61 Lbs./Hr. ~= 130,000 BTUH maximum burn rate as input

But there must be also some small level of consumption while at idle. Figuring this part out is the real trick. I've initially wild guessed it at 0.3 Lbs. per hour.

I would initially assume 10 Lbs. per hour of burning with the fan running and 0.3 Lbs. burning per hour when idling.

9.9 hours of fan cycle over 7 days = 1.414 hours of fan run time per day.

24 - 1.414 = 22.586 hours spent idling per day.

(1.414 x 10) + (22.586 x 0.3) ~= 20.9 lbs. consumed per day

20.9 pounds/day is likely setting an upper limit with respect to what you are actually burning.

24 hours x 0.3 Lbs./Hr. = 7.2 Lbs. burned per day just due to chimney draft

20.9 - 7.2 = 13.7 Lbs. burned per day for radiation loss plus DHW

13.7 x 12,250 x 0.80 = 134,260 BTU's/Day

70 gallons DHW/Day x 69 degrees of rise x 8.33 Lbs./Gallon ~= 40,000 output BTU's/Day required for DHW
(with zero loss due to radiation)

40,000 output BTU's / 0.8 = 50,000 input BTU's required per day for DHW

~134,000 - ~50,000 = ~84,000 BTU's per day lost to radiation due in large part to lack of insulation

84,000/12,250 = 6.9 Lbs.

20.9 - 6.9 = ~14 lbs burned per day for the case of everything highly insulated
(this is my ballpark of the best case scenario when using an actual 70 gallons of DHW per day on average)

The best and only way to know, is to measure what you put in the hopper.