Coalpail.com Forum

This is my first heating season with the EFM. I'm currently running 3 teeth of feed. It's been warm out and have no problem keeping the house warm. At what point do I need to increase the feed rate? I know there are a lot of variables from system to system and house to house but is there a ballpark outside temp that I should start considering bumping the feed rate up to 4 or 5?

I wouldn't run at any less than 4 teeth, but if the ash ring looks good and you can keep up with the demands of your house, there is no need to move up the feed rate.

i have a efm hot air furnace......i'm running it at 3 clicks right now.......when it gets colder I will increase it to 4 or 5 clicks (i heat a poorly insulated 3200 sq ft garage with a tall celing......only that bubble wrap looking foil insulation on the rafters) the old girl burns well except for when she has to idle alot on warm days and I get unburnt coal

You Might not have to 3 teeth is 7.5 lbs a hr 4 is 10 lbs per hr 5 is 12.5 lbs per hr 6 is 15 lbs per hr
7 is 17.5 lbs per hr 8 is 20 lbs per hr 9 is 22.5 lbs per hr 10 is 25 lbs per hr
It will depend on your house at the heat loss it has. You will know if the stoker starts to run more often to keep up with
the heat demand and how much coal you will be using. Also how many BTU's per lb that is in the coal that you are using .
The only true way to know how much coal / BTU's you will need is to do a heat loss calculation on your house .
You can get a ruff idea if you used oil before take the amount of oil that you used to heat with in the passed .
180 gals of oil = 1 ton of coal ruffled it should give you how many tons of coal you will need to heat with .
Also if you have to bump the Aquastat up more you might want increase the feed rate to maintain the water temp you want. There is Probably a hundred other factors that go into this but these are a few that might help you.
The Stoker will tell you just by how much more it has to run to keep up & how much coal you are going threw.

5teeth 4 1/2 air great setting for most heating demands when burning rice.

You'll know when to increase the feed when the boiler temp drops below acceptable levels and the stoker is running 100% of the time and the room thermostat is still calling for heat. Basically if your house is warm the feed rate is good enough, if it takes a long time to warm up your house then increase the feed/air. Too little can cause big problems like fire in the worm tube. A tight well insulated house might only need 3 teeth.