Wow, I'm Sure Burning Through More Coal This Season

This season from October through December I'm on target to go through a tad greater than 600 lbs. more coal than my average of the previous two seasons to this juncture. It's certainly turning out to be more of a real winter.

So far this season I'm on target to burn through about 3,950 lbs. of coal from October 1st through December 31st.

Does that usage correlate with your degree day formula?

Carbon12 wrote:Does that usage correlate with your degree day formula?

Yes, but on December 7th I began burning my fresh new load of Blaschak pea, and whereas my previous Blaschak batch was holding tightly to 1.43 x HDD's, this new batch is disappointingly holding closer to 1.53 x HDD's. My batch of Harmony coal was good for 1.34 x HDD's over an entire season. Wish it was still available.

Think there is any advantage to burning buck instead of rice in my KA6? Advantage as in using less buck than rice on a degree day to degree day basis? A pound of coal is a pound of coal, no?

lsayre wrote:

Carbon12 wrote:Does that usage correlate with your degree day formula?

Yes, but on December 7th I began burning my fresh new load of Blaschak pea, and whereas my previous Blaschak batch was holding tightly to 1.43 x HDD's, this new batch is disappointingly holding closer to 1.53 x HDD's. My batch of Harmony coal was good for 1.34 x HDD's over an entire season. Wish it was still available.

I too was burning UAE for the last 2 seasons and this year started with Blaschak.I needed to increase my firebox by 25% and add another 60 lbs of Blaschak coal to be comparable to the classic UAE

The UAE coal is history boys, might as well get used to the alternatives.

I have also burned extra coal, and my dad says the same thing. I do think this coal has less heat than the Kimmels I am used to, but the weather is probably accounting for most of the difference I have observed.

Carbon12 wrote:Think there is any advantage to burning buck instead of rice in my KA6? Advantage as in using less buck than rice on a degree day to degree day basis? A pound of coal is a pound of coal, no?

You won't burn less, but if the stoker has clinker problems at high feed rates buck would help. Sometimes buck is a little less money, and usually has less fines.

I'm on track to burn more coal than typical also. For one I started a few weeks earlier than I usually do and of course November and December have been colder than normal. I look at it this way. I'm saving even more this year than if I was burning oil. Probably gonna burn between 6 and 6 1/2 depending on how the rest of the winter goes.

lsayre wrote:This season from October through December I'm on target to go through a tad greater than 600 lbs. more coal than my average of the previous two seasons to this juncture. It's certainly turning out to be more of a real winter.

Larry,

I too am burning more coal this season. It appears that when I changed my hysterics setting to 1 to prevent the explosions, my boiler takes a lot more time to recover from heat demand. I will vacuum out my stove pipe over the weekend in hopes to improve the performance. If it doesn't help I'll email Darren at AHS for his opinion. After reading some of the posts I'm also wondering if this year's Blaschak is not burning as hot as previous year's. Did you make any adjustments to your AHS 130 this season?

Well, silly me with my hand fired Hitzer 50-93 am right on schedule usage wise--I had to buy some extra bags early cause last season ended real late here on the hill--still heating around 2000 sq in an 250 yr old farm house & these 3 ton of Blashack are burning the same as they have for the past 6 yrs--one change this year was getting a stove/nut mix & loving the heat output & ash content.

[quote="freetown fred"]Well, silly me with my hand fired Hitzer 50-93 am right on schedule usage wise--I had to buy some extra bags early cause last season ended real late here on the hill--still heating around 2000 sq in an 250 yr old farm house & these 3 ton of Blashack are burning the same as they have for the past 6 yrs--one change this year was getting a stove/nut mix & loving the heat output & ash content.[/quote]

Right on partnah! I think the girly stoves burn teeny weeny batches a billion times a day and they need adjustments in the extended cold, where smucks like us, dump, shake, and load and get back to the easy chair.

freetown fred wrote:Well, silly me with my hand fired Hitzer 50-93 am right on schedule usage wise

Well yeah...instead of turning the stove up on cold days you just sit closer to the stove.

Rob R. wrote:Well yeah...instead of turning the stove up on cold days you just sit closer to the stove.

plus FF's got those three big dogs to keep him warm....
when you only have a little 10 pounder like me you have to run the stoker longer and hotter on cold nights!!

Definitely lifting more buckets this year. Don't want to whip a dead mine mule but I sure miss U.A.E. I miss it most on cold nights when the BTU's of U.A.E. is certainly not in the coal I am burning. Someone on this forum ought to be smart enough to invent a portable calorimiter so we could take it to the mine and have an instant readout as to what we are buying before the "test firing" Mike

rychw wrote:Did you make any adjustments to your AHS 130 this season?

Yes, but only to set it back to Blaschak settings (vs. Harmony settings). 125 degrees SV on the ashing, and 10 degrees of hysteresis.

For Harmony I was at 100 degrees SV for ashing, and 5 degrees of hysteresis.