Need Help Burning Coal in a Harman SF 260

JB Sparks wrote:efo141, any chance you could take a pic of your friends blower set up

Jeff, I am on vacation in Wi until after the 1st but will try to post a pic for you after that. I can tell you it 's a simple set up. This blower http://www.drillspot.com/products/433877/Dayton_1 ... PSC_Blower then a few holes in part of the org. draft assem. use the same wires used for the elect. draft damper.

Thanks efo, I'll look forward to the pics.

I'll hang in there with you as will others on the forum. Harman under rates their boilers. The SF260 is more than adequate for the task. I wish I lived near you so I could help in person.

Take to heart the part in my last post about shaking down until you see embers from the entire grate area. I think you may not be clearing the ash adequatley. Also, you can expect the temp to drop when you first add coal. Ideally you want to add it in stages as Smitty said but many folks don't have the time. Coal needs air to burn. Don't clear the ash and it smothers it from below. When you add fresh coal you are sort of smothering it from above. Coal is not wood. It takes some time to get going. Get your coal going as vigorously as you can before adding fresh coal. If that means opening the ash door to allow lots of air in, do it. A word of caution here. Opening the ash door and forgetting it would be very bad. It would over fire the unit and could do damage. But temporarily to speed your loading process is ok.
if I were in your shoes, this would be my routine. First thing in the am, check your fire. Open the ash door to let in lots of air to get your coal rolling. Make the coffee. Do your poking (to the fire Bob, you should already be out of the bedroom)and shake down. Put a light layer of coal on the fire. Go check your coffee, it's probably ready now. Check you fire again. Hopefully it's glowing and the new coal is catching. If that's the case, add more coal now. If not leave the ash door open alittle longer. Once you fire is vigorous, add coal as others have described and mound it up. Two 5 gallon buckets of coal is about 80# and that's what you should be loading in the boiler.
When you get home in the evening, do the same thing except you should be able to take more time loading the coal. I'd also do an mini shake down just before bed and top off the coal bed.
Some pics of your boiler, piping, gauges, valves, vent pipe and damper, etc. would be helpful.

Looking forward to hearing your next report.
By the way, what coal are you burning?

Packard bill thanks for the ideas. Yes my circulator is a Tacco 007. I will get more into the flow and the ideas that you have after like you said let’s get a clean, deep, full burning fire bed.
JB Tonight I did as Coalkirk said and pushed down on the bed. Need to come up with a good tool to do this. Would be neat if some people could post some pictures of there weapons . Right now all seems to be well . I will try this again in the morning and see what happens. The reason that I went to the boiler was because my stoker is a Harman Magnum and it is in our family room. We have not heated the house during the winter with the baseboards since the first year that we lived here (20 yrs). Have been saying for a number of years that I would love to be able to use the baseboard hot water. It is much better, the whole house is now the same temp and I am heating the hot water. Also now we don’t have all the fans running to move the air around. Much quieter too. Now if I can keep this thing going. Also you have mentioned the bypass valves on your hot water tank. I have some question on this but not at this time.
EFO141 very good on your friend’s setup and coal usage. I have some questions about the fan install but not at this time. My head is in info overload and very tired.
Coalkirk as stated above I tried your process and at least tonight it seemed to work. Over the next few days I will try to get some pictures. I am burning nut coal.
Thanks
Bob

KTM250 wrote:I am burning nut coal.

What brand of nut coal? Hope you have good results in the A.M.

Here's a coal poker on ebay.
**Broken Link(s) Removed**

Quick update. This morning things went ok. Tonight I went 12 hrs before I touched it and got it going but thought that It was going to be a wood restart. I still am not doing something right with the poking and and shaking. I still do not have a large area of embers falling in the pan. Looks like parts of the bed is not burning. I need a different type of poker. Coalkirk I looked at the link on e bay and I will see what I can come up with. Now once I have something like that, do I pick certain spots and push it down in the bed as far as it can go? I will post some pictures of what my bed looks like after 12 hrs and then after I poke and shake.

Thanks Bob

First, Happy New Year!

If parts of the bed are not burning, that strongly suggests parts of the grates are choked with ash. You need to take your poker and push down all over and then shake vigorously with short choppy strokes. Maybe someone with a trident boiler could make a video opf their shakedown procedure including showing in the ash door while shaking so Bob gets a good look at what level of shaking is required.

Good Mornin' and Happy New Year. Well, a 12 hour burn...that's good news....some spots not burning...what coalkirk said. We'll make you a fireman yet.
My poker is 3/8" rod with a tight J-hook at the bottom. The J bend prevents the poker from going between the grates when you poke down through the coals and ash. If you get a clinker or a lump of slag, you can also hook it and rearrange its position so it falls through the grates.
Glad to hear you had a decent fire. A little more practice and it willl be second nature.

Ok here is some pictures. First one is after about 12 hrs. Bed was shaken and coal added at 5 last night. More coal was added at 9 pm. Temp outside in low 30's. So I guess it depends on your definition of 12 hr burn time, is it from the time I shake and add or when I last added coal.
Second pic is after poking a shaking. Third is what my ashes look like. I was still unable to get many embers down into the pan.
Bob

Here are some pic's of my setup. As you can see I haven't got the oil boiler completly hooked backup. Also the hot water tank had some leaks that I had to fix. Haven't got that closed backup. Been spending all my time trying to keep the coal boiler going. If anyone would like better or closer pic's let me know.
Bob

Hi Bob, If pic #1 is after 12 hrs. of burn, the remaining fire is still "hot" meaning the boiler is still drafting and want's to make heat (high fire). This tells me that the water temp in the boiler is low and that your draft controller is opening the draft (which it should do when water temp setting has not been satisfied).

The second pic is after shaking and poking. Looks like the front is cold and left and right corners are cold (this may be indiginous to the firebox design) so you'll have to take extra care in those areas when shaking/poking. (I would have gotten rid of the burned up ash in the front and corners,you can use your shovel there if you have to).(maybe it's my OCD)

Third pic is of ash. Ash looks real good. Completely burned coal without any black(unburned pieces).
So, I think your fire is good, as long as you thoroughly shake and poke and stoke her up to a good depth with fresh coal.
Now, you have to slow that water flow down to allow it to pick up energy (btu's) while it's in the boiler. This will allow your boiler to come up to your temp setting and the draft control should close down so it's not in "high fire" mode. What is you boiler temp set at?

KTM250 wrote:I was still unable to get many embers down into the pan.
Bob

My opinion is then that are not adequatley poking and shaking the fire. I'm suure some hand fired guys will chime in but I say keep doing it until you get embers from all sections of the grates droping itno the pan. Fabricate some kind of poker and be sure to poke the fire down, especially in the corners where ash tends to accumulate on Harman grates.
I think you are making progress.

What coalkirk said. You've got to get embers or there is still ash on the grates.

Packard, you want me to slow the flow down. I am pumping away from the boiler (if you look at the one pic you will see my circulator after the expansion tank) so what would you suggest for slowing it down. I can throttle the ball valve on the return line to the boiler or the one on the outlet. The other questions is how much should I close it? The boiler temp is set to 165.
Coalkirk, I will keep trying different technique's. I still need to come up with a good poker. I will keep my fingers crossed and starting Saturday the temps a suppose to go down into the teens. This will be a better test. I still believe that if the temps were lower the other night I would have had to add some wood to keep it going.

Bob

KTM,

Happy New Year!

Your fire looks pretty good, ash is pretty good.

The only thing that looks odd to me as previously pointed out is the front of the firebox looks cold. I poke the corners real good and shake until I get red coals droppping into my ash pan. Something else I do and might or might not be recommended is I'll rake hot coals from the middle to the front to keep a nice even bed going. Once I've done my poking and shaking, I get the bed nice and hot (opening the ash door) and when it's going good I spread the coal around evenly and top it off with fresh coal. Once I do that I poke a little bit to get a small bit of flame coming through (making sure I've got good air flow) and close it up.

Keep at it. I'm getting mine fired up tomorrow as soon as I get home.

Jaeger