EFM 350

joethemechanic wrote: ↑

Tue. Dec. 15, 2020 6:13 pm

Wow 16 tons is a lot. I heat 1/2 of my shop roughly 4500 ft to 50-ish degrees, and my apartment and office to about 65 to 70°. On about 8 tons in a winter . The other side of my shop is about 4500 ft and the one long wall is into the bank. That side isn't really warm but it stays above freezing and I usually don't run any heat in there unless I'm going to work over there which isn't often.

You know it's funny but when I try to run it those low settings like two clicks it seems like I burn more coal

this building had zero insulation. the walls were block and the roof was really bad, large wooden garage door, back of the shop was over a basement garage with no door, the coal quality sucked. i lived next to a coal breaker, the nut coal was fine in the hand fed stoves but his rice coal was not so good, full of rocks, high ash content. learned what good coal was after i met a few forum members.

painted a car in jan once when it was single digits out, burned a ton of coal in 5 days with 2 stokers and a hand fed stove trying to keep the shop at 70 degrees to prime and paint.

Moved the return manifold so there was space to service the domestic hot water coil in the future. going to start running pex returns and supplies for three zones this week.

ocd

lincolnmania wrote: ↑

Tue. Dec. 15, 2020 6:49 pm

ocd

Damn, ain't that fancy

I wish mine looked half as good

how many watts is the motor on the efm?
can i use the circuit for the oil furnace? it's a 20 amp circuit, not sure how many watts the blower fan on the furnace is, will be using that with the heat exchanger for half the house until i can get the rest of the radiators installed.

another question maybe rob knows. the primary circulator? wire it to a switch? does the primary circulator get turned off in the warm season?

Man, that looks like art instead of pipes. Nice!!!

lsayre wrote: ↑

Tue. Dec. 15, 2020 8:07 pm

Man, that looks like art instead of pipes. Nice!!!

Thanks!
the one inch pex is a little harder to handle, can't keep short pieces straight. will be working on that this week, was hoping to get the boiler fired up before the storm but i have to install the 8" pipe and baro damper, wire the boiler and at least 2 zones (5 cast iron rads and the heat exchanger) and run the return header for the cast iron radiator zone and run the supply and return for the heat exchanger.

working slow and steady and hoping it all works well.

If you did not pipe in a boiler bypass I would plan running the primary circulator continuously. It will keep the boiler temperature very uniform.

There should be no issues using the same circult as the furnace. The EFM motor uses very little power.

Just off the top of my head that motor for the blower/stoker is pretty small maybe a quarter horsepower. I'm thinking it might draw about 3 amps on a 120 volt circuit. Just to be sure though next time I walk downstairs I'll clip the inductive amp meter on it and tell you exactly

Okay, my blower stoker motor is drawing 2.57 amps and that is about five clicks of feed and the air is about half.

Full feed and full combustion air it's probably going to draw a little bit more maybe another amp.

joethemechanic wrote: ↑

Tue. Dec. 15, 2020 11:50 pm

Okay, my blower stoker motor is drawing 2.57 amps and that is about five clicks of feed and the air is about half.

Full feed and full combustion air it's probably going to draw a little bit more maybe another amp.

Thank you. I have always wondered how much power that 1/8hp motor used.

Rob R. wrote: ↑

Wed. Dec. 16, 2020 6:30 am

Thank you. I have always wondered exactlyhow much power that 1/8hp motor used.

That could even be a little bit on the high side. My motor bearings are a little noisy, and the auger for the fire pot was a mangled mess after the welds broke and the screw collapsed down the shaft. I heated it with a torch, stretched it back out and beat on it with a hammer as I was welding to get back into place.

So anyway the auger isn't the greatest, and the motor might be working a little hard to turn it

a little update.
had to wait for funds to get more supplies, got the electrical supplies and some more pipe fittings.
got 4 tons of coal yesterday, the bin is full again.
must be nice to have a 8' basement ceiling....mine is only 6'

Glad to see you back at it!

I was a little worried that you got sick of it. Or sick of us!

-Don

Been trying to keep the 1" pex pipe away from the plumbing which is cpvc. am trying to have at least 1.5" of clearance.

the spot i'm working in this morning is tight, the pex is up against the cpvc.
think it will be ok if i space the pex away from the cpvc with a wooden shim, the most i'll have is 1/2"
otherwise that run will need a few more elbows.