VA-600 Air Adjust

Good job man! Glad that an entire family were able to stay warm and enjoy Christmas. I'm sure that they were thankful for your help. I am blessed to live only about 30 minutes from Mark's Plumbing. Joe, the owner, is the Van Wert guy. I thought that he was the only guy on the planet that knew Van Werts............and on a high level might I add. But that was until I joined this forum. There is truly a wealth on knowledge here.

I just changed my pot worm and pipe, but it wasn't the problem. I'm not mad however, since the auger was about 10-12 years old. The problem was the fines/dirty coal per my video above. It appears that you are having the same problem. The solution seems to be to sift your coal before adding it to the barrel. I bought 1/4" chicken wire at the local hardware store, and it works perfect. The 1/8" wire that people use is for rice coal. You're burning buck, so you'll need 1/4" wire. Tomorrow, I plan on building a fixture, almost like a slide with 2X4's. I'm hoping that I'll be able to shovel the coal on the top of the fixture with wire, and by the time it slides down to the bottom before entering the bucket, all the fines will have already fallen through. I'll post the fixture, if it ends up being a success.

Mike

I guess I spoke too soon. After a full day or so of burning, the firepot is back to having unburned coal! This is with a new pot auger and fines removed. I was told by Joe in Shenandoah to check and see if the old pot auger that I just removed has a collar on it. It didn't. But lo and behold, the auger that I changed about 10-12 years ago does have a collar on it. I don't think this has anything to do with the problem I'm having. If it did, then I would have had this problem way back when I installed the auger without the collar. Apparently, this collar stays inside the transfer head, but sometimes gets stuck to the auger and come out with it. See pics of the last two augers that I changed along with today's ashes and firepot.

Man I hate to see that kind of ash in the pan. Currently going through that with my boiler as well. Hopefully once I swap out the stoker I just rebuilt it fixes it. Have you tried adding more combustion air to see if you can clear it up?

Yeah, I have had the air maxed out with no noticeable difference.

Good afternoon to all and Happy New Year's!

I have some good news today. I hope that, once again, I'm not speaking too soon concerning my stoker. But I think I solved the problem. The good Lord gave me a great work day yesterday without any distractions, and I was able to takes things apart and look at them closely. So first, I took the pot auger out to make sure that it actually was a new one that I bought and not a used one. It was indeed new. I didn't mind taking it out, because I had to do that anyway to get the collar back into the housing. After taking the bin auger and pipe back off and inspecting them, I took the transfer unit into the garage for rework. After that, I began to take the fan and gearbox assembly off, because I needed to rule in or rule out that the problem had to do strictly with air. When I got the assembly off, I noticed unburned coal in the bottom of the fan housing. I stuck my hand up into the top of the air duct and there was coal up in there blocking the air. You might ask, "How is it possible for coal to get there?" On a properly working Anthratherm, it's not possible. But then I remembered that the pot auger pipe that I took off a month or so back was eaten away by rust. The coal was therefore dropping from the big gaping rust hole of the auger pipe down into the air duct. Anyway, I cleaned out everything, and now the flame in the pot easily rises and touches the bottom of the water coil, and the air setting is only on # 4. Yay!!!!!! I checked the coal in the pot today, and all is good. It is burning evenly all the way around the pot. Ash is really good too!
Thanks to everyone again!

mjm4jc wrote: ↑

Sat. Dec. 31, 2022 2:14 pm

I stuck my hand up into the top of the air duct and there was coal up in there blocking the air. You might ask, "How is it possible for coal to get there?" On a properly working Anthratherm, it's not possible. But then I remembered that the pot auger pipe that I took off a month or so back was eaten away by rust. The coal was therefore dropping from the big gaping rust hole of the auger pipe down into the air duct.

Glad you figured that out. It should run a lot better now!

-Don

Rob-----I always like to give an update to keep everyone informed and to give closure to the initial problem. It's just good forum etiquette.

Don----I'm glad I found the problem too. Hope this will be a reminder to all that the pot auger pipe is suspect when the coal is not burning on one side of the pot like mine was.

Thanks again to all for the help.

Happy New Year!

Mike