New to coal

Well, after thinking it over, I am leaning twords installing the efm in the basement. I have an 8 ton capacity bin in the basement near the chimney (gotta get the oil tanks moved out of there), a taller chimney (8” flue approximately 30 feet tall) and the bacement has a walk out, and garage door. The reason for changing my mind is to save the money on insulated burial pipe. For less than a quarter cost of the pipe, I can install a used stoker stove in the garage and not have any worries about freezing if I decide I don’t want to heat the garage for a few weeks. I love looking through the forum and seeing what others have done. Lots to learn.

That sounds like an IDEAL setup for a stoker boiler. By installing in the basement you will save a lot on the installation, and burn less coal.

Keep us posted.

I will testify to what Rob said as well. I run both a remote install on a previous house that is now a rental and a basement install at our current home. The basement install wind, hands down.

If you want to save fuel and be comfortable with warm floors, put it in the basement. You will be very glad you did.

Well, I know it’s been a while, but I didn’t want to be someone who didn’t give an update! I got the oil tanks out of my coal bin (which was quite the project because I had to stand them up virtually to get them out) and placed one outside with a temporary line to the current boiler to keep my hot water functioning. Got the boiler set in place, now I have to build the “doghouse” over the screw where it enters the bin. Got a bit to do yet. Any suggestions on what is already done is welcome.

On an EFM you don't need a dog house. Besides that, you have a concrete block wall there. You would have to remove a lot of those bottom blocks to make an EFM type dog house. I would just make a removable wood cover for that auger hole.

-Don

Hello Don! Thank you for the feedback!! I wasn’t going to build it the full width that is shown in the efm manual, just the width of what is there now, and go out to the end of the tube. (I am by no means questioning you, I’m just trying to learn!). If I just block it off with Flat wood around the screw, would I still be able to get it out if I have a problem? My plan is to fill my bin to 5’ deep, which would be roughly 8 tons. Do you think I will encounter any problems doing that? Thanks!!

I don't think you will gain anything by adding the dog house. Your main problem is the boiler is very close to the wall. I would move it out a foot or two and use a longer bin auger.

How long is the bin auger you have there? It looks really short.

-Don

Don, the bin auger is 34” long. I ended up building a hood over the screw, then attached it to the wall. Just to be sure it would work, I disassembled it in place, and I was able to remove both augers, and pipes. (Barely) I’m one step closer, I had 12 tons of rice (8 tons in the basement efm bin, and 4 tons in my outdoor bin for the stoker stove in my shop) delivered by Rossi coal near Hazleton. They were nice to deal with. 185 per ton delivered.

Nice! It's great having a coal supplier that delivers the coal right into your bin with a high lift!

34" bin auger? That's kind of short. I thought the standard EFM bin auger was 48", with an optional 60". I could be wrong though, it's been a while.

Nice to have that coal just sitting there, waiting to be burnt.

-Don

Moving right along now! I had the day off, so I finished all of my black iron plumbing, and put the jacket on. (I also added provisions for a second zone I could add later) Only things left are my wiring, and finishing off the copper portion of the plumbing. I’m running a 1” copper line for the bypass between the inlet, and outlet. I know this keeps the boiler temp even top to bottom, but do I need to add a valve to throttle it down so the circulator still pushes water through the zone rather than just pushing water around the smaller loop?

I did not put a valve in my bypass but I have a converted gravity system with cast iron radiators. With 140 or so gallons in my system, Ive never seen a need to throttle the bypass.
If you have HWB or radiant zones, you may need a valve...

You must have a really stiff neck after taking those pictures :^0.

About your boiler bypass; I found that having a regulator like a flow metering valve was waste of money for my coal stoker boiler. It is more important to have mechanical boiler controls in my opinion to provide the user with better control of the boiler and fewer problems and in my case twice burned by the "wonderful digital controls they sold with my kaa-4-1" twice as shy.
It has been 4 years since I junked the digital controls they sold me/sent me and I have not had one hiccup of a control problem since.

Once you start heating your humble abode you may find that you are making much more heat than you need especially in the warm parts of the heating season UNLESS you have dedicated dump zone, domestic coil or rely on other heating during those "short" periods which will cause it to idle more and dump more until it really gets cold and you have to open doors and windows making sure the cat does not get out before hand.

The way your dog house is set up makes it perfect for a simple sloped bin or a barrel that you can set over it to shovel the rice coal into when the heating season gets shorter and the pile gets further away as the pile will only pull the coal directly above it into the auger.

The base of the auger is the "Draw Point" in mining machinery terms and it will create an inverted cone as the pile declines in size over a short period of time and then you have to get in the bin to move more coal over the auger like Stoker Don does in his garage while Kitty Cat supervises the operations.

If you have a fines dumping lever its more important to make sure you pull the lever every week to make sure the burn pot/tuyer is not smothered with coal fines so the combustion air keeps flowing.

I’m not sure I understand. My heating is one zone with approximately 170 feet of baseboard. My thought was if I didn’t have something to restrict the flow through bypass pipe, it will short cycle the water through there instead of the baseboards. Also, I do not have a dump zone. Is this needed? I plan on running this boiler 365 days a year using the domestic coil for my hot water. I will not have any other source of heat, or hot water so it has to work. Is this not going to work in the summer?? My grandparents had only their efm for heat and hot water in their home, and I don’t think they had a dump zone, and I never remember any talk of it being difficult to keep going in the summer.

My father in law's EFM does not have a dump zone... The timers on EFM's are typically wired through ZR on the triple aquastat. Using ZR prevents the timer from activating the stoker when the temperature is above high limit. My keystoker uses a dump zone and is not wired through ZR because if it misses a single 10 minute timer cycle, the fire goes out. An EFM can sometimes maintain a fire after several hours without running (with decent draft)...

It should work just fine in the summer. Both my Keystoker and my FIL's run all summer without issue ..

I have never hooked up a dump zone on an EFM either. You can if you want, but it is normally not required.

The valve in the bypass pipe is not usually needed either, but for the small cost I would install it.