Coalpail.com Forum

With all this warm weather I am curious as to what most people run their feed and timer at on their Keystoker boilers. I was running 160/180 on the aquastat, 14 turns back on the feed, and I had 2 sets of 4 pins on the timer. That has worked fine since November. On Sunday my temp was running a little high so I went to just 1 set of 6 pins on the timer so I reduced 2 pins for every 30 minutes. Yesterday my wife got home and the house was 80. I had her check the temp on the boiler and it was 250ish. The dump zone was running which why the house was so hot. I went home and turned on all the zones to drop the boiler temp and shut her down for a bit. I removed 2 more pins so now I am only at 4 pins for every 30 minutes and I reduced the aquastat to 150/170. 5 hours later the boiler temp was back up to 230 with no call for heat or hot water. The Keystoker owners manual says to not adjust the feed once set just adjust the timer but I turned the feed back 2 more turns.

Do these settings seem typical for burning rice?
150/170, 4 pins every 30 minutes, 16 turns back on feed. as it gets warmer I will probably drop the aquastat to 140/160.

Thanks!

I use 4 and 4 in the summer no pins in the last 2 months..?? burning rice

how many seconds is 4 pins?

Also, the goal is to have the fire NEVER go out, but be as small as possible is there was no call for heat for a couple days. You want the fire barely going after 12 or more hours of idling.

I would leave the feed rate and adjust the timer. Reducing the timer is essentially reducing the feed rate.

example:
If you push 1 lb every 4 seconds or 1/2 lb every 8 seconds, you still pushed 4 lbs in both cases.

Hope this helps.... I still have to reduce my timer a bit for summertime use. So far, I haven't gotten over ~200/210 and that was only once. Usually hovers around 190F, but we use hot water during the day so that probably kicks the temp down in the boiler a bit.

I timed it and the 4 pins make it run for 75 seconds so right now I am at 2 1/2 minutes per hour. I agree that reducing the timer does the same as reducing the feed but the manual says to just reduce the timer and not the feed but I am little leary of going down below 2 1/2 minutes per hour which is why I also reduced the feed rather than removing more pins. We have no call for hot water during the day. Guess I will just have to keep an eye on it. At least I know my pressure relief valve works.

I run about 40 seconds every 15 minutes, so I run just about the same as you except mines the KA-4.

Do you have your baro set with a manometer? If you have too much draft it could cause the fire to burn too hot when you're at idle.

Based on the size of the fire at idle for 1/2 a day, I think I can get it down to 30 seconds every 15 minutes with no problem. I may try it soon as we are seeing some days ~50F outside.

Over the summer I will see "How low can I go?"

Also, do you have the little auxillary fan running? I do not, I may have to hook it up for summer use though. That may allow you to reduce your timer some more.

Keep us posted.

My summer setting are aqua stat 130/150, dif at 15, feed nut 15-16 turns, 5 pins every 15 mins. That gives me an ideling fire about 1" across the grate, the fire should be higher up the grate.

In colder temps., the fire should be within 2" from the bottom of the grate and about 4" across

Dave

Vtec
Yeah I have the small fan the runs 24/7.

Well I took a 1/2 day yesterday so I could go home and check the boiler temps. The new settings kept the fire going with a minimal fire and temp was right at 170. Everything looked good and I was happy with my changes. This morning I went down and the boiler temp was around 200 and the stoker was running. I wasn't too concerned with the 200 temp but the stoker shouldn't have been running. I opened up the timer box and it was about 5 minutes past my pins but for some reason the timer didn't shut off the stoker. I manually turned the timer a hair and I heard it click and the stoker shut off. I think this may be my problem because when I had my over heating problem the other day the stoker was running when it should not have been also. On another post right now some people are complaining of issues with the timers supplied by Keystoker. Mine is only a few months old. I will have to get out the Grainger catalog and see if I can replace just the switch or better yet replace it with something more modern.

Does anybody have a link to a digital type timer that I can swap in?

huntabsarokee wrote:Vtec
Yeah I have the small fan the runs 24/7.

Well I took a 1/2 day yesterday so I could go home and check the boiler temps. The new settings kept the fire going with a minimal fire and temp was right at 170. Everything looked good and I was happy with my changes. This morning I went down and the boiler temp was around 200 and the stoker was running. I wasn't too concerned with the 200 temp but the stoker shouldn't have been running. I opened up the timer box and it was about 5 minutes past my pins but for some reason the timer didn't shut off the stoker. I manually turned the timer a hair and I heard it click and the stoker shut off. I think this may be my problem because when I had my over heating problem the other day the stoker was running when it should not have been also. On another post right now some people are complaining of issues with the timers supplied by Keystoker. Mine is only a few months old. I will have to get out the Grainger catalog and see if I can replace just the switch or better yet replace it with something more modern.

Does anybody have a link to a digital type timer that I can swap in?

ahhhh, that makes perfect sense now. Isn't your boiler under warranty? You should be able to get a new timer under warranty. Even if you want to switch to a digital timer, at least get your mechanical one replaced to have as a backup!

nice troubleshooting!!!

Yeah I already called Keystoker and he said its under warranty and they have spare motors and switches. Sounded to him like the motor. They are about 50 minutes away so I am checking with my local dealer where I got the boiler from to see if they have a spare motor.

I would think with a mechanical timer they would be pretty reliable so its odd to hear on here that people are having quite a few issues with them lately.

My dealer has a spare timer so since it is under warranty I will just swap out my old one with his new one tonight. He did say they had 3 or 4 of the same timers fail this winter so hopefully the new one is a good one.

keep us posted. Sounds like a bad batch of motors. Hopefully, this is isolated and this is the last we'll hear of bad timers.

Well I picked up the timer on my way home from work and when I got home the old timer had quit some time during the day and the fire was out. Luckily it was warm out. I swapped timers and fired her back up and everything is fine. Yeah it looks like there was an issue some where since I have read on here that quite a few had problems with those timers in addition to the ones my dealer told me about. I think I am going to pick up a spare motor and maybe a switch for my timer to add to the parts bin.

I am still running 4 pins every 30 minutes and no problems keeping a fire.

awesome, once summer is here, I plan on "tweaking" my timer setting to the minimal possible without the fire going out.