New Boiler Temps

I went up to the house was happy as a clam told my wife we should be good for the evening. I watched the crazy flying Alaska and Gold miner shows

Great minds think alike! I was watching both shows too.
It was very windy all night. This will create or pull more draft burning down your firebox quicker than usual. This is where a baro will certainly help. I'm not a boiler guy but I did read every post. Just sounds like your boiler is too small for your heat load. Hopefully I am wrong. And your fiirbox should not go dead overnight. Did you have it filled to the top?

BOILER 2 Home Owner ZERO

lets recount: Home owner = Finally after discovering the boiler would not heat up with or without the load connected - you clean it like it should have been and then it works just fine.

macdabs wrote:UPDATE......
9:00 noticed the temp was at 180* coming to the house so I shut off the oil boiler switched over to the DS to feed my house . Mac

So with the boiler loaded with about your estimate of 110 pounds of coal at 9 - you forgo the opportunity to go look if it needed a refill before bedtime - what; thinking "oh it could never burn all that" and what happened ? 7 hours later it has out of fuel -

macdabs wrote:The coal bed was gone with a shovel of unburnt coal with a small glow. The fire was about out I shook the grates for a pan of ash Mac

SOOOOOO it kept the dwelling warm while it HAD fuel -- and now your disappointing because it burned only what you feed to it - and went then naturally cold ?????

macdabs wrote: Then I thought 110lbs should last till morning and I was so happy to see the temp. at 180* so I went to bed thinking YEA. Mac

All you did was prove that a cold boiler and all near piping needs to heat soak and that initially takes extra fuel - you also proved that you need to fire at shorter intervals - because your load is exceeding your firing schedule.

now tell me --- How is this the boilers fault?

You do have another option. "Loose the Manual Pipe Damper"! Sounds to me like you had a good fire going. All your heat was going up the chimney. Without going back through your posts, don't you have a barometric damper in the pipe? You're so close.....Loose the manual pipe damper. Install a barometric damper. Get your fire going good again. Then fill to the top of the fire brick, and even bank a little higher. You can then lessen the below grate air, resulting in longer burn times. For anthracite, close all above the grate air. Sounds like you have a raging fire, which burns the coal up quick. The heat comming off that fire is going up the chimney. You want that same heat to be absorbed into the water. You need to heat the water, not the outside air. A barometric damper will take away the exaust fumes, leaving the heat in the boiler. An open manual pipe damper will allow all the heat to escape up the chimney(least path of resistance). Try this. I believe the score will be; Boiler: 2, Home Owner: 1

I spoke with Amos at the factory and he claims the mechanincal damper is all he recommends. The boiler at 200, 000 BTU I would think could handle the heat load of my house when I have a 119,000 BTU oil boiler that has used 550 gallons of oil since oct. The home is well insulated cedar ranch with the basement 14 ft below grade and foamed and cedar wrapped. Six inch outside walls insualted above grade all airtight Anderson windows. The house was also at temp when I switched from the oil to the coal boiler. Am I mistaking on the heat output of the claim that the boiler is capable of heating 200,000 BTU? When I switched back to my oil boiler it took 15 min. to satisfy any zone calls for heat and averaged 160 before shutting off at 180* .

I am going to call the dealer today and ask for someone that is using a DS boiler ,he has dodged the question several times .

mac

you write of having to go "OUT" to check on the boiler - so I deduce the boiler is in an outhouse or other shed

Have you probed the loss of energy in these transmission lines - maybe its huge.

Or maybe your still in the learning curve of hand firing and your crashing in the apex.

And why are you pumping 180 degree energy bearing liquid in these mild North American temps - that should not be necessary unless its super cold or your home radiation is undersized.

Disclaimer: First and foremost I must admit that to date I have burned zero pounds of coal in my life, but I heated a home exclusively with wood (a stove, not a boiler) for three years, and burned wood for supplemental heat for 17 years, so that is the level of my relevant knowledge. That said:

It wasn't very cold last night, yet it appears that you completely burned through 110 lbs. of anthracite in only about 10 hours, taking it all down to ash.

110 lbs. x (13,000 BTU/lb. x 0.8 eff) = 1,144,000 BTU's output at 80% efficiency

1,144,000 BTU's / 10 hours = 114,400 BTU's per hour of boiler output on average for 10 straight hours.

But since the house and the boiler were actually cold only about 10 hours later, the actual boiler output likely had to be greater than 114,400 BTU's per hour, and perhaps it was much greater. Your boiler was firing sufficiently enough (and then some) to heat many (if not most) decent sized homes on the very coldest few days of the year. Did you throttle back on the air control knobs for the night, or alternately does this unit have a bimetallic air inlet control that needs to be dialled down for sustained overnight running?

It seems likely that much of that heat had to be going needlessly out the stack, and that a barometric damper may be the answer here. Running the stove all night with no barometric damper and with the MPD left wide open (combined perhaps with too much air feed under the coal as well) seems like a recipe first for generating way too much heat (I.E. the greater than 114,400 BTU's per hour output that you achieved) and second for letting much of that heat go right up the stack.

What can I say. We've all given good advice. Don't take this the wrong way. But, from what I'm reading, You're not listening........

The answer here doesn't seem like a need to make more heat, but rather to make much less heat per unit of time. Burning straight through a whopper load of 110 lbs. of coal in one night means that the draft of the chimney is at least adequate, and it is quite possibly excessive, and certainly not insufficient. It needs to be toned down via a barometric damper, and also manometer monitored for safety and to assure sufficient draft of 0.04" to 0.05" of water column. Then the stove itself needs to have its air supply toned down. The trick as I see it will be to burn only half or less (perhaps only a quarter, depending on the outside temperature) of the 110 lbs. of coal overnight.

We need pictures of this setup...
Chimney, stove connections, how it is loaded, inside and outside pics as well...
I agree that a good deal of heat must be going up the flue...
I have a DSM Basement #4 not a boiler but rated 130k btu/hr...
I have both a Baro and a MPD due to my wind situation...
My fire box is 16x20 and will hold 120-135# without loading the hopper...
Your firebox is 19x26 and you only put 110# in it...
If your fire brick is 8" tall there should be at least 185# of coal in that boiler when properly loaded...
If you stuff it I bet it would hold 200# easy...
You are burning hard coal not bit right...
So once the stove is setup and loaded properly it will do the job...
Are those remote boiler lines well insulated...
How long of a run is it...
The building that the boiler is in how insulated is it...
How much space is this building...

Easy on the troops.....don't over-analyze this install. It is not like a 'Moon-Mission', many questions will answer themselves, and I can assure you, none of us are smarter than the old timers who developed this equipment.

Forget everything that pertains to your knowledge of 'low mass boilers'. I makes no difference. Forget outside temp sensors, don't spend a quarter of a million on computer controls.....trust the advice, and enjoy pure comfort......
PS: Don't rattle the gorilla's cage, he might get lose.....

macdabs wrote:I spoke with Amos at the factory and he claims the mechanincal damper is all he recommends. The boiler at 200, 000 BTU I would think could handle the heat load of my house when I have a 119,000 BTU oil boiler that has used 550 gallons of oil since oct. The home is well insulated cedar ranch with the basement 14 ft below grade and foamed and cedar wrapped. Six inch outside walls insualted above grade all airtight Anderson windows. The house was also at temp when I switched from the oil to the coal boiler. Am I mistaking on the heat output of the claim that the boiler is capable of heating 200,000 BTU? When I switched back to my oil boiler it took 15 min. to satisfy any zone calls for heat and averaged 160 before shutting off at 180* .

I am going to call the dealer today and ask for someone that is using a DS boiler ,he has dodged the question several times .

mac

Both dampers are mechanincal. One is manual. The other works off atmosphere.

CapeCoaler wrote:We need pictures of this setup...
Chimney, stove connections, how it is loaded, inside and outside pics as well...
I agree that a good deal of heat must be going up the flue...
I have a DSM Basement #4 not a boiler but rated 130k btu/hr...
I have both a Baro and a MPD due to my wind situation...
My fire box is 16x20 and will hold 120-135# without loading the hopper...
Your firebox is 19x26 and you only put 110# in it...
If your fire brick is 8" tall there should be at least 185# of coal in that boiler when properly loaded...
If you stuff it I bet it would hold 200# easy...

Do the math on the firebox size.....
The stove was only half full of coal.....
A barometric damper set properly with a manometer will keep the boiler from overdrafting the firebox.
This firebox full of coal should hold just over 200 lbs. of coal. 19"x26"x 9" deep.

macdabs wrote:UPDATE......
Everything was burning good this was at 7:30 last night. Went up to the house for a 1/2 hour came down the boiler temp was at 160*. Nice red bed of coal with the blue flames dancing so I loaded the stove left the MPD open since the stack temp looked good and the temp outside was warm. Went back up to the house watched TV till 9:00 noticed the temp was at 180* coming to the house so I shut off the oil boiler switched over to the DS to feed my house .

OK, so in essentially 1 1/2 hours your stove made it from fire started to running full heat.

MPD is wide open - so essentially you are running with no damper of any kind.

macdabs wrote:Went backed down topped off the stove for evening loaded a nice bed in the middle temps were 190* at the boiler. Now this would be about 110 lbs of coal I have loaded at this point.

Now you are loading with 110 lbs of coal. Didn't change damper setting, still running with no damper at all...

macdabs wrote:dozed off woke up at 11:00 .Looked at my boiler temp at the house that the DS is feeding was a nice 180. Then I thought 110lbs should last till morning and I was so happy to see the temp. at 180* so I went to bed thinking YEA.

You are now 3 1/2 hours after starting fire, you've got 110 lbs of coal in the stove, MPD is still wide open, that is to say, no damper on the stove....

macdabs wrote:Woke up at 4:30 I heard the heat kick on for our bedroom noticed the temp in the room did not rise from the baseboard as usual. I got dress went down the boiler temp was at 80* . The coal bed was gone with a shovel of unburnt coal with a small glow. The fire was about out

You have burned up 110 lbs of coal in 7 hours. Fire is essentially out, MPD is still wide open...

macdabs wrote:Mac

Mac,

You are not running your MPD correctly. At your 3 1/2 hour mark, at least, you should have closed down your MPD. That 110 pounds of coal is like getting a freight train up and running. You got your fire up and running, but never back off the throttle and just let it run away. You pumped a lot of hot air out your chimney.

The barometric damper is not the magic bullet, with all due respect to those that feel otherwise... It will help you run your stove better since you are not using your MPD. But if you use your MPD, your stove will work fine. You have a lot of draft, if you didn't you would have woken up at 2:30 thinking you were were being roasted in an oven. 110 lbs of coal holds a lot of BTUs...

You have to find the correct setting for your stove and set-up. Just as an example, I have the exact same stove as someone else here on the forums and we swap notes all the time about how we run our stoves. He has his MPD set at about 45 degress which seems to be about the same for me with my MPD set at about 85 degrees, or nearly closed. I must have much better draft on my set-up then he does. Except for loading, when I open the MPD, I typically run between about 90 degrees (or pretty much closed) and about 45 degrees. If I'm at 45 degrees, my stove is running real hot....

dj

I am listning just frustrated. When I banked it last night I had the coal packed to the top of the door with less in the rear sloped so not to put the coals out. To get any more coal in I would had to dump it down the flue. I was going to put a barodamper on ,but after speaking to Amos he felt the MPd is all I should need and my flue could be the suspect for not making enough heat to bring the boiler to temp. Reason I added two more feet of double wall flue pipe to confirm the draft was fine even on the warm windy night we had last night. The boiler sits in my new shop the pex tubing is TPS with triple insulated wrap 250' in a 4'' flex drain pipe with a water line feeding the boiler . The pex pipe is also inside a 6'' schedule 40 and is 3-6' deep from my house to the shop. The temp loss is very little and when the snow was on the yard you could not even see a trace of loss and the feed and return temps are equal when just circulating the loop. My boiler in the house is a 119,000 BTU Utica with a .85 nozzle. The only reason I decided to heat the house was not due to the amount of oil I used per year, but the 3.15 per gallon and the fact I can choose to heat my shop or the home. The firebox of the DS has no bricks and concerns me, I also have no instructions on the samson control valve or setup for adjustment . There is no instructions except for a hand sketch drawing showing interface into a existing boiler and the inlet and outlet of the unit. I asked the dealer on the chain length and asked the factory no one could give me a answer except you had to play with it. I have no specs other than the boiler has a 200,000 BTU output. This is the reason I want to see a existing working setup. Is that to much to ask?

Two coal burners looked at the boiler and both are skeptical of the output and walked away frustrated as I was . I switched back to my oil boiler it took 15 mins to satisfy any heat call in the house shut off @180 to maintain temp. The DS is working to get up to 160* to heat itself. The DS boiler holds 79 gallons of water and my oil boiler hold half that if that. What am I missing?

The heat is going straight out the stack, that to me appears to be what you are missing. At the very least, if you do not want to regulate your draft with a barometric damper, you will need to close down the MPD (perhaps substantially) after you have established a good fire to stop all of your heat from going straight out the stack. You also may need to close down the air that is feeing the fire a bit once things are going well. As has already been stated, leaving the MPD wide open is the same as not having one installed at all. Do you have a thermometer to monitor your stack temperature?

As it stands now, you are running your boiler on high fire unnecessarily and going through 110 lbs. of coal in one night when that amount should last a day and a half to two days. That is way too much heat being expended over way too few hours, but to me it seems as if you still feel that your problem is not enough heat. That may be another thing that you are missing (or misunderstanding).

In 17 years of heating with wood, all I ever had was an MPD. On many nights I had mine closed down all the way. Mine permitted exhaust flow around it even when fully closed though, and my chimney is not your chimney, so your mileage (and more importantly your personal and family safety) may vary, and I would not advise that you close you MPD all the way.