Coal Effieciency

Im wondering what is more efficient, to run most of the day on a low setting or to run less often on a high setting? I plugged in a clock to the stoker power to track the time the unit runs. I think if the unit runs more than 18 hours a day its time to go up a tooth and air. Or should I wait till the unit runns all day and cant hold minimum temperature? What is more efficent?

Its true that you should match BTU output to the demand needed by feed adjustment,but the stoker should not have excesively long run times to try to keep up. On heat demands the stoker should run to the high limit without struggling. As I said before my favorite setting is five teeth, four and a half air.

R Y

[quote="Pa Dealer"]On heat demands the stoker should run to the high limit without struggling[quote]

I'm definatly going to bump tonight. I'm at 4 teeth 4 air. My Air handler is pulling the temp down about 3-4 degree's during a cycle.

Run the boiler at a lower temperature and you'll save coal. If you maintain a 180 degree boiler you will lose quite a bit to standby loss to the surrounding air. That's great if you want to heat up the boiler room like I do (my workshop is right next to the boiler room). For heating your house 140 degrees is probably enough, just turn the aquatstat low limit down to like 130 and try it. Leave the high limit at 180 or 200. The feed doesn't really make much difference in coal savings, your house will demand so many BTU's and that's how much coal you will use. Running the feed/air at 3/3 100% of the time or 6/6 50% of the time to make the BTUs is basically the same thing. Make sure you have a barometric damper hooked up and set properly.

Hot water baseboard or radiators has a BTU output based on 180 degree water.

RY

Agreed that I'll use less coal for standby with lower water temps. But my Air Handler calls for 180 degree water. Although it will work with cooler water. It works so much better than it did with my outdoor wood boiler. House was 70 degrees Sunday night when I got home for work. It was 77 degree's within an hour. Before coal it would take 3 hours to raise the temp 4 degrees. I'm on track to use 2 tons a month right now so I want to fine tune some, but I'm extremely happy right now. So is the wife.

Pa Dealer wrote:Hot water baseboard or radiators has a BTU output based on 180 degree water.
RY

Right, the point I am making is that the baseboards will still make heat with cooler water, just less heat which is fine for milder days. I leave my boiler settings alone, compared to burning propane coal is cheap.