there ain't nuth'in stock about my AA Mac!
Last year we put the AHS insulated fan plate and fan on it. This is the first year I have gone through Spring, Summer and into Fall with no problems with this Axeman.
-Don
there ain't nuth'in stock about my AA Mac!
I watched you video on youtube about the shaft problem. I was going to offer to make you a new one, but I forgot you can still buy parts for those. I'm used to my allen where when something breaks I need to make the parts I need. Any way the offer still stands if anyone would need some machine work done to fix there stokers I would be more then happy to help! Glad you got it going again Don.
Thanks for the offer!
We've done the math to death in this thread. First of all, don't focus on the teeth. You have to know how many grate cycles per ashing hour you are running. A grate cycle is one trip back and fourth. I am running 15.11 grate cycles per ashing hour.Retro_Origin wrote: ↑Sun. Oct. 23, 2022 8:06 pmDon have you ever done the math on the what the approx lbs/hr feed rate is for a constantly ashing run would be? for example:
1 click 6 lbs
2 click 10 lbs
3 click 15 lbs
or something along those lines?
Ok, but isn't there a fixed value of clicks to grate cycle? I thought I read 72 or something near that on a different thread. I do follow your point about it being an 'ash stoker' and I guess probably the best way is just to go for several weeks with a large amount 500ish lbs of coal in and then time the solenoid closed time to determine approximate lbs/hr of specific settings. Thanks!StokerDon wrote: ↑Mon. Oct. 24, 2022 7:26 pmWe've done the math to death in this thread. First of all, don't focus on the teeth. You have to know how many grate cycles per ashing hour you are running. A grate cycle is one trip back and fourth. I am running 15.11 grate cycles per ashing hour.
Some of us have tried to figure feed rate by ashing hours. Some of use have tried to figure it by fan run time. At the end of the day, the Axeman/AHS is an ash stoker, not a coal stoker. The fact that ash is inconsistent makes it pretty difficult to figure out how much coal one of these uses unless you measure what you put in.
-Don
My brain must work differently because I see this as being an entirely different experiment. My question is more about how much coal is being FED through the system. Not how much is burnt, the only time it's feeding is when it's ashing so really it's all about ashing time and has little to do with fan time. Like how at 4 clicks on a 520 is 10lbs/hr or whatever you can do math and say "Ok my timer runs 4min/hr that means in one day I'm PUSHING through 16 lbs(whether burnt or unburnt) as long as there is no heat calls or low limit violations" - in essence being able to quickly look at a clock wired in with the ashing and get a rough idea of how good of a day you had.Lightning wrote: ↑Tue. Oct. 25, 2022 4:06 pmIn my opinion, the most accurate way to determine usage without measuring what exactly it is eating would be by measuring combustion fan run time. But, the fan run time would need to be measured above a particular exhaust temperature because fire ramp up time is always variable based on the health of the fire.
So, for example... Let's say the fire has been sleeping for 4 hours and is getting lethargic. It might take 5 minutes of fan run time for the exhaust to come up to 250 degrees, then it might run another 5 minutes to get up to your set boiler water temperature. Then, in another example, the boiler only slept 30 minutes and needs to run after a short heat demand, but in this example we'll say that this particular heat demand is finished before the combustion fan kicks on. Since the fire is already healthy it only takes 1 minute for the exhaust temp to reach 250 degrees and another 5 minutes to reach your boiler water set temperature.
In both these examples, the same amount of fuel was used, but one was 10 minutes, the other only 6 minutes. The only consistency is that it took 5 minutes after the exhaust was 250 degrees for the the boiler to reach it's set temperature. So, we would only want to count the time after the exaust was 250 degrees.
In an effort to get an accurate usage based on time you would need to collect a couple weeks of data consisting of exact measurements of how many pounds the boiler used and how many hours the fan ran above 250 degrees exhaust temperature. Do a little math and bingo, a reliable usage based on combustion time without weighing coal anymore..
I plan on doing this as soon as I can but unfortunately it'll be a while because my bin is full lol.