Chimney draft

The hopper is always supposed to have a lid on it.
I have a coalgun 130 with a masonry chimney no cap.
I run my water at 160 and my grates been at 105-115 ..which is less than manual.recomends but thats were it runs right.

Your hopper.lid.looks.pretty leaky

lamina1982 wrote: ↑

Sat. Nov. 26, 2022 3:34 pm

Your hopper.lid.looks.pretty leaky

I can try it only would take a cpl min to confirm it

It says right in the manual not to operate it without the hopper lid... Under the heading, "Warning, risk of fire"

Ooooo... Making progress again I'm thinkin.

Lightning wrote: ↑

Sat. Nov. 26, 2022 4:13 pm

Ooooo... Making progress again I'm thinkin.

I hope too brother….I took advice from another post in this thread and even tho there is foam around the lid I did a temporary seal after I filled hopper to the top… also used high temp silicone to seal where hopper meets the fill tube…. Of course wind died down so I will let this sit till tomorrow at this time and see what I get….also grate temps are slowly coming down also

Around 6 I had a high fire yet again and I turned up the ash temp high and turned timers for ashing up so I put it under load so combustion was happening and it Ashed constantly for a good 5 min or better dropped the fire and naturally ash temp shot up so I set ash temp for 150 turned on my basement loop on for a hard demand ….. 6 huge cast iron radiators are down there …. Let it go went out to eat and came back around 8 grate temp is down to 170 and I’ll post pics of what I got….. it has to be the coal because what else is there to try?? Shitty part is I have to wait a bit as I have 5 ton packed in my bin to get blashack coal delivered…. I even went as far as putting a wet rag on the probe and temp instantly shot down …. When I got the boiler I redid the whole unit any replaceable part I put on it … from bearings, grate rollers, probe, etc…even tho fire gets high it never gets into the tube just right to it…. I am at a total loss except for pulling fire out and start over but the fire is truly established because I can see it from the bottom and top….. ready to wave the white flag !!!!!

What will help you is a chimney extension from Rockford Chimney Supply.

I added 3 feet to my chimney to make it 19 feet tall and it made a huge difference and prevented the down drafts affecting my burn as it has a rain cap as well.

Once you have that extension on the chimney you should no longer be in need of a draft inducer.

The stainless steel chimney extensions are sold with a mounting base that you attach to the concrete chimney collar with tek screws. In your case you would need an adapter from them to mount it on the clay tile.

Why do you have your Dwyer Mark II Manometer on the low port????

I have My Mark II set up using the high port and it is very accurate in providing the accurate Hg. readings which are the negative pressure gradients to monitor the draft/vacuum.

The weight on my barometric damper is slid all the way to the stop and locked and has been for 7 years.

Your coal may just be of a very high carbon content which the coal steel smelter mills always want.

lzaharis wrote: ↑

Sat. Nov. 26, 2022 11:24 pm

What will help you is a chimney extension from Rockford Chimney Supply.

I added 3 feet to my chimney and it made a huge difference and prevented
the down drafts affecting my burn as it has a rain cap as well.

The stainless steel chimney extensions are sold with a mounting base that
you attach to the chimney collar with tek screws.

Why do you have your Dwyer Mark II Manometer on the low port????
I have My Mark II set up using the high port and it is very accurate in providing
the Hg. readings.

The weight on my barometric damper is slid all the way to the stop and locked
and has been for 7 years.

I’m up for trying anything like a chimney extension but I was having too much draft according to the manometer… I seem to have the draft under control according to the readings…. I think? At idle I’m now at .02 when before I was at .08 and full burn at .08 and now .05 ….. wind gusts were pulling 1.0 and a hair above and now a real hard wind spike I’m at .05-.06

I’m using the high side because the day before I was pulling draft that hard when I used the low side it was pulling it off the scale…. Wind gusts were as high as 1.0 …

Found this article about draft. https://www.woodheat.org/wind-chimney.html
Seems some type of cap to help diffuse wind may help.

The Manometer has to stay on the high port to monitor it. Wind gusts will always do that
and you cannot use it correctly the other way as the wind gusts have nothing to do with
your boilers combustion system.

With your damper set correctly the damper flap will open when the boiler shuts down in
high winds and there will be no need for a draft inducer.

You have an outside chimney like I do and mine is tile lined 8" by 12" adding the chimney extension
stopped the down drafts and added the height I needed to clear the roof peak of the home.

lzaharis wrote: ↑

Sun. Nov. 27, 2022 12:28 am

The Manometer has to stay on the high port to monitor it. Wind gusts will always do that
and you cannot use it correctly the other way as the wind gusts have nothing to do with
your boilers combustion system.

With your damper set correctly the damper flap will open when the boiler shuts down in
high winds and there will be no need for a draft inducer.

You have an outside chimney like I do and mine is tile lined 8" by 12" adding the chimney extension
stopped the down drafts and added the height I needed to clear the roof peak of the home.

I added a draft inducer because on startup I would go positive and it would force out the damper a bit until full burn then it started to draft hard and was fine I have inducer wired with combustion motor it only runs when combustion takes place…. Here’s the catch I have a 6 inch square flue chimney … not known to me at the time they don’t even spec for a chimney that size?? None the less after combustion is done I think size shouldn’t matter? It still needs to draft properly… I can switch sides of manometer since everything seems to be drafting as it should …. But if add on is what’s needed I’m game! I really would love to try another coal supplier just to confirm if it’s the coal… I did try two buckets of coal from a different supplier and was hard to tell because my draft was all over the scale… I believe what your saying with the add on but I can’t wrap my head around it tho, wouldn’t a bigger/longer chimney cause more draft? What seems to be happening is that there’s a slight constant draw/draft on the boiler to keep it from “going to sleep” however the manometer shows .02 draw at idle?? That’s where confusion comes in

Have you checked for large clinkers in the fire pot? Raising the ashing temp can sometimes cause clinkers which could raise your fire like you're seeing.

It does sound like you have a large clinker on your firebed, do you have a long
piece of rebar that you can use to poke the fire all the way to the bottom of
the rolling grate?

You need to read the page from www.woodheat.org that jkohanski linked
to that talks about chimneys in greater detail.

One of the first things I would do on Monday is call Rockford Chimney Supply and
tell them about your chimney and that you use an induced draft coal boiler.

Make sure you send them a picture of your chimney in an e-mail so they see the
section of tile sticking out of the block so they can tell you what you need.

What about the hopper lid we discussed earlier?