New Boiler Temps

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macdabs
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Post by macdabs » Sun. Feb. 06, 2011 8:57 pm

I just fired my new DSC# 3 Boiler to start heating my slab. I started with a good wood fire and got the boiler upt 190 once and switched to coal. Loaded with coal last night woke up with the boiler at 4- 5am at 100 degrees. It seams no matter how much coal or draft the boiler will not run much over 140. If I load up with wood stacked I can get back up to 180, but the burn time is short. If I shut all the zones the boiler still will not climb much at all and the ash pan looks good with no coal wasted. My question is what is the average operation temp of a coal bolier this size 180? 160? 120? Do I need a damper on my flue ? It seems like the coal will not burn hot enough to heat the boiler. If I load up with wood every two hours I can keep the temp at 155 . I burned 4- 5 gallon buckets of coal not counting the wood today with temps averaging 120-130.
I am using ep bender nut for coal any ideas or sugestions are much appreciated.

Thanks,
Mac


 
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LsFarm
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Post by LsFarm » Sun. Feb. 06, 2011 9:06 pm

Hello Mac, how big is your house, ? how many feet of tubing in your slab??
Is the slab insulated around the perimeter, and underneath?
What are the dimensions of the slab? 40'x60' ?
How well insulated is the building on the slab ??

How cold is the slab, and can you measure any temperature increase?

You may just be trying to heat too much, too quick.

When I first got my slab heat for my 40x60 shop hooked to my hand feed boiler,, I was amazed at how is sucked the heat out of the boiler.. I had
the hottest fire I could make for like 10 hours getting the slab from 30* up to 60*.. It take a LOT of BTUs to warm up a cold thick slab.

A photo of your plumbing, circulator will help.

Greg L

 
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tsb
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Post by tsb » Sun. Feb. 06, 2011 9:10 pm

Mac

After the Super Bowl, I'm sure you'll get lots of suggestions.
In the mean time, fill in you location. There might be somebody close by.
Yes you do need a barometric damper to burn coal in a boiler. Most of your
heat is going up the chimney. The stack should be warm, but not hot.

Also post the footage and size of the slab tubing. You'll get all the help you
need, just a bad night to get started.

Tom

 
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coaledsweat
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Post by coaledsweat » Sun. Feb. 06, 2011 9:23 pm

macdabs wrote:Do I need a damper on my flue ?
You need a barometric damper on your flue. Can you measure the stovepipe's temperature?

 
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oliver power
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Post by oliver power » Sun. Feb. 06, 2011 9:41 pm

coaledsweat wrote:
macdabs wrote:Do I need a damper on my flue ?
You need a barometric damper on your flue. Can you measure the stovepipe's temperature?
I'll second the barometric damper. When I bought my Kaa-2, a barometric damper was supplied as part of the pakage from KEYSTOKER. It must have been part of the package for a reason.

 
macdabs
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Post by macdabs » Wed. Feb. 09, 2011 3:32 pm

I installed a MPD since my double wall pipe was to hot to touch and the draft was so strong not to mention the wind. What a treat that was to get up on 4/12 pitch snow covered roof. My wife will be looking for the rubber back bathroom floor rug that kep me from sliding off the roof. :roll: Well the garage air temp has been 54 so the slab is 60 plus. I reloaded the boiler with a wood fire got up to 180-200 added coal in the front. Fire temp went down to 160 . Waited two hours later packed it with coal throttled the damper back came back temp was at 120 and dropping . I checked the fire stirred the coals loaded more ,emptied the ash pan went to bed. Now the secondary loop pump and the floor zone pump are the only pumps running . Even if I shut all the pumps down the only way I can get to temp is with a very strong wood fire and this boiler has a box on it that likes wood like a OWB . Could it be the Ep bender nut coal? The coal will bridge itself and it seams like it insulates the heat between the grates and the boiler box. I loaded it very heavy today and checked it on my lunch hour the temp was 85 and half the coal at least a bucket was gone and the ash pan was filled . I have a 30,000 BTU pellet stove in my basement that uses a bag of pellets a day heating half my home to 70. Any suggestions ?

Thanks,
Mac

 
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Post by franco b » Wed. Feb. 09, 2011 4:03 pm

Obviously the heat is going somewhere. Probably up the stack. Put a magnetic thermometer on the smoke pipe as it leaves the boiler. Until you supply more information everything is just a guess. My guess at this point is that you have a poor coal fire. I say that because a proper coal fire should supply every bit as much heat as the wood fires you used. With that massive fire box the boiler should be practically jumping off the floor getting up to heat, instead it can't even heat its own water with the pumps off.

With a large fire box combustion air can easily bypass a major portion of the grate area leaving just a small area burning.

Some pics of the grate and fire box would help.


 
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Freddy
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Post by Freddy » Wed. Feb. 09, 2011 5:12 pm

macdabs wrote: Could it be the Ep bender nut coal?
I was reading through your posts and found one that mentioned the coal is Bituminous. Most of us here are burning Anthracite. Bit coal has a longer learning curve than Anthracite and personally, I have no idea how it's done! I do know that it's tricky and if not done right, it's very frustrating. "Done right" means not only done correctly, but done in a proper device. My gut it telling me that your boiler, while advertised to burn coal, isn't a great coal burner. Coal stoves burn coal. Wood stoves burn wood. You can usually burn wood in a coal stove, but most combination stoves (or boilers) are not all that great at burning coal. Add that to burning Bit, and I think therein lies a lot of the problem. That being said, I'm sure there are people here that can get you burning far better than you are now. In order to do that they will need some information, such as:

Good pictures of the boiler outside and more importantly, inside, the grates, the walls, the shape. A description of the dimensions of the firebox.
Description of the chimney, type, size, height.
Does it have a barometric damper?
Does it have a Manometer?
What controls the incoming air, and does the air come in over or under the coal? Or both?

 
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Post by oliver power » Wed. Feb. 09, 2011 5:43 pm

My experience while playing with bit coal, is that it liked to bridge also. Friend of mine runs a paper mill, which has two big industrial bit burning boilers. The grates wave like water in the ocean, which breaks up the bridging coal.

 
macdabs
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Post by macdabs » Sun. Feb. 13, 2011 7:45 am

Week one is over and I am still very disappointed on the boiler temp output of my DS Machine boiler. I installed a manual damper that helped some, switched to hard nut coal Friday that helped increase burn time and heat output.
Once the boiler door is open to refuel with the pumps on or off so nothing is calling for heat the temp will go down to 80 and take a good hour to see 115-130 with hard or soft coal. It is like the boiler itself takes all the heat and has no recovery . It is almost the same as a shutdown or starting a fresh fire. I tried opening the bottom ash door to increase the draft also the top door. If I add coal you can figure on a two hours before it will see 160. I can get 4-5 hours max out of 2 buckets of coal and have a fire at 160 for two to three hours if I am luckey..

Could my problem be the air intake is sitting on the radiant slab and not producing a cold air draft?

 
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Post by Rob R. » Sun. Feb. 13, 2011 8:09 am

How are you controlling the water temperature going to and from the radiant slab?

 
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Freddy
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Post by Freddy » Sun. Feb. 13, 2011 9:19 am

The problem could be...and I might even go so far as to guess that it is.... air control.

If you are going to burn anthracite coal you need exacting air control. Step one: Barometric damper. Step two: a manometer. Step three: air coming from under the coal. Step four: a deep bed of coal.

You are not the first person to have trouble with the learning curve & you won't be the last. It is however going to be a job to maintain a hand fed boiler of this type. You will probably end up shutting it down once a week to clean out the ash. A combo boiler just is not shaped properly to burn coal with the least effort. In order to burn wood, the burn chamber is shaped so logs will fit and the grates are shaped to support logs. When you burn coal in it the physical shape makes it difficult to shake down the ash, so, every week or so you may end up shutting it down to clean it out. You see, once the ash builds up it hinders air control. A dedicated coal boiler has a burn chamber and grates that are shaped in such a way that they are more "self cleaning". You just can't get that in a combo boiler.

Looking at it from another direction, you can burn wood in any coal boiler, but it would require you to cut the wood into small pieces & it would be a real pain to keep it fed. The point being is that any combo unit is a compromise.

 
macdabs
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Post by macdabs » Sun. Feb. 13, 2011 9:26 am

I have a secondary loop with a circulator pump on the boiler with a aquastat . Using a taco relay with a switch to feed two zones . I have a mixing valve to supply the one zone with a pump for the slab. The other zone is stubbed out for a future snow melt or dump zone. I also have two high pressure pumps to pump to my existing boiler at the house . I have the slab regulated at 120 degrees on the mixing valve. I can shut any supply or zone off or I can choose to heat either the shop slab or the house or both. When the boiler is burning good and the temp is up on the boiler everything works fine. The problem is you open the firebox and even if you are not calling for heat and have the system off the boiler takes forever to recover before the coal bed gets burning good. This is even with all the zones off the boiler has trouble creating enough heat to heat itself. It acts like your attempting to heat a cup of water with a match .

I think the 79 gallons the boiler holds is to much for the firebox to heat . What upsets me is the dealer bragged about the stove , and now he knows nothing about the operation, performance or can tell me who is using one. I have burned coal with a handfired Harman that you could not get near to reload from the amount of heat the thing put off. I messed with the Samson valve that came with no instructions I documented temps and settings when the stove would get up to temp and nothing is ever the same.
The only reason I went with this stove over a stoker was the ability to burn wood in the spring or fall. Did I make a mistake ? Is anyone else burning with a DS machine boiler ?

 
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Post by Sting » Sun. Feb. 13, 2011 9:34 am

macdabs wrote: even with all the zones off the boiler has trouble creating enough heat to heat itself. It acts like your attempting to heat a cup of water with a match .
ok -- you have eliminated any possible distribution piping problems

now concentrate on the appliance operation.

 
macdabs
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Post by macdabs » Sun. Feb. 13, 2011 10:02 am

Sting,
The plumbing portion I had twice as much in material than the boiler itself. Could it be the boiler is just made to push a gravity system to get a 200 BTU rating with some one tending to it all day? The instructions are a single sheet of paper showing the boiler inlet and outlet ports and domestic coil nothing on the settings for the samson control valve or the required chain length or setup . I have messed with it in small increments with not much change or luck. My flue pipe is double wall SS from the stove to the cap and I do live in a windy area so I installed the MPD tuesday . Should I keep the air vents cracked open on the door burning coal? I was told to keep them shut unless I was burning wood or just loading the stove .

mac


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