Iron Fireman for Ky Coal?

I hate being bipolar
Its Assume

now I am not telling you to go buy what you cannot afford -- been there - done that -- Got the tee shirt

Stop and think about that nice propane tank you have in stock for material

Turn it on its side - cut the side [now bottom] out and flip that over - welding it back into the top to make the concave roof of the fire box extending the sides down around the fire box for mud legs add stay bars between the sheets

akkk

take a look at this old girl -- let the ideas flow

http://kewaneeparts.com/Data%20Sheets/Data%20Shee ... irebox.pdf

Look guys, a firetube boiler is a great design for certain applications and has its benefits for those applications; it also has its drawbacks for other applications. This particular application would be best served by a boiler with vertical wet baffles or horizontal watertubes for ease of maintenance and keeping an acceptable efficiency level for a long period of time with minimal screwing around.

You say potato -- I say potato

I'm thinking I'm going to go with sting on this one..... Punching out the firetubes on a horizontal tube boiler shouldnt really be that big of a deal..... No worse than the ash removal procedure and hauling in of wood to my current wood boiler. (which is a vertical firetube boiler with turbulators.... Though the turbulators are attached to a crank mechanism that allows you to jostle them up and down to clean the firetubes conveniently.)

Here's a thought, would that work on making a vertical firetube boiler? On my Gasification wood boiler, the turbolators all hang on a rack. There is a handle external of the boiler. when you move the handle back and forth, it moves the rack and slides the turbulators up and down the firetubes about 3".... It's a simple matter of grabbing the handle and moving it back and forth. I do it with each load of wood. Only takes a few seconds........ Can be done with the boiler running......

I you have a boiler there can you stick the stoker in its firebox and call it a day?

No, the design of my current boiler is not condusive to installing that coal stoker. It is a downdraft style gasification boiler.. No place to install it.

I think this attachment is the design I'm going to use. Use sting's idea of cutting the bottom out of the tank and inverting it for use as an upper firebox. Then horizontal firetubes. Low cost, hi efficiency, and fairly easy maintenance.

Take a look at this thread, Gentleman Janitor Info

There are a few good photos of a boiler vessel that would be pretty easy to build from your propane tank and some plate steel.

Greg L

Wow.. that setup doesnt even look like it would work.. Apparently the base is designed in a way that channels the exhaust down over those baffles before coming back up the back to the chimney collar.. It would be easy enough however.

Works great, provides lots of surface area for heat transfer, a base to collect the flyash and soot, Look on the first page of the thread, it shows the
base..

Greg

Ok. Sounds good. But, doesnt the fly ash accumulate on vertical surfaces too? If that were the case, this style looks like itd be a royal pain to clean.. Or maybe not? How likely am I to need to clean vertical baffles like that?

You'll clean horizontal firetubes every 2 to 4 days, I think you'd clean the vertical surfaces of the wet baffles half as often.
And, you could make up a sliding rack, like a 'foos-ball' ? sliding bar, either with bars vertical above the bar, with
fingers up between the wet baffles, to slide over the surface of the baffle.
or like Harman has, a sliding bar above with 1/4" chain hanging from it.. have the slider exit the side of the boiler top
if you use hanging chains, or from the base if you use vertical standing rods.. just slide back and forth once a day.

The soot would land in the base, where the airflow reverses from down to up to the flue exit.. just build in a good
door with gaskets and latches, so you can open and shovel out the flyash.

All the above depends on your coal.. and how much air you have going through the fire. more air, pushes more flyash
up out of the fire, and up the chimney.

with a tall firebox like this gentleman Janitor, you can install the heat reflector like europachris did on his EFM/Hybrid

That isnt the worst idea.. I think what I going to do is do the baffles like you show, plus a series of water tubes between the front of the firebox and the front baffle. Have a plate with holes in it that slides over the water tubes and is operated by an external handle. The a similar mechanism for cleaning the baffles. Should be very efficient.

Steel is ordered and on the way. Will have a baffle AND watertubes, with external cleaning handles...

Double pass steel baffle, and 12 horizontal 1.5" water tubes....

1100 lbs of steel just landed here.... My checkbook made a very loud sucking noise...... Now to just put it together.......

You might want to start a new thread for this "New boiler project". There are a some really good threads from start to finish of projects like the one you're getting ready to do .