Coal Fired Hot Water FINALLY

I finally got my DHW coil and plumbing done. I'm glad I don't get paid by the job. I had to re-route all of the hot water lines from one end of the basement to the other. The last six weeks I've been pretty sick so this took a while. Work an hour, sleep two hours. I got tested for swine flu, mono, cancer and *censored* I never heard of before. The doc finally figured I'm dealing with some sort of bacterial infection. This last antibiotic finally kicked in and I'm feeling pretty good. Penicillin didn't touch it. Of course the side effects are pretty crummy. My hands are swollen, thumbs don't want to move much and I'm covered with a rash. Five more days of this *censored* and I should be home free. Anyway, the water is hot and limitless. Gotta love coal. Tomorrow I get to disconnect the wiring from the electric water heater and put it in the scrap pile.

billw wrote: Tomorrow I get to disconnect the wiring from the electric water heater and put it in the scrap pile.

Frame the wiring! So you always know where you are coming from
Glad to hear your doc finally gave you the 'good stuff'. Its just miserable being sick for long lengths of time.

Actually was thinking of framing next month's electric bill. Should take a real good drop.

billw wrote:Actually was thinking of framing next month's electric bill. Should take a real good drop.

Our electric bill dropped $30 a month when we stopped using the electric clothes dryer, and started hanging the cloths on lines in the same room as the stove was in. NICE!

Billw, congrats on the DHW install, I would definately take a copy of your electric bill. I'm betting you'll see about a 60 $$ drop. Glad your on the mend, nothing worse than working when you don't feel well.

Chris, I see you opted for one of those cheap coal fired clothes dryers. i have one too, works great.

you'll appreciate the side benefit of your EFM hot water heater, on these nights where it gets down to 29 degrees the coal boiler is already warm and ready to please, no guilt needed to turn on the heat in May or June or August.

Congrats on gettin' her hooked up. Your wallet is going to love it!

Yes you will love the endless hot water I know my family does. I even run hot water thru a heater core from a car in my wifes clothes dryer. This along with the DHW saved us over $65 a month on our bill. Since I burn all year round I am in the process of building a hot water absorption chiller to cool our house instead of A/C. I think it will only use about 1/10th the electric or less. We heat everything with it DHW, clothes dryer, pool, hot tub, green house, garage, and house and some day cool the house.

coalpower wrote:in the process of building a hot water absorption chiller to cool our house instead of A/C.

I would be interested in knowing how that works. Four A/C's running in this hot weather is going to make for a big electric bill this month.

coalpower wrote:Since I burn all year round I am in the process of building a hot water absorption chiller to cool our house instead of A/C. I think it will only use about 1/10th the electric or less.

What do you plan to use as a refrigerant and how do you plan to make it flow? Pump it? With what?

ok your electric bill went down 65 bucks

How much coal do you burn in the same month?

What did it cost to build all that coal and wet infrastructure?

payback is?

Time invested?

Maintainability?

Here's been my experience so far this summer.
I'm running at 3 teeth which is 7.5 lb per hour. The aquastat settings are lo 140, high 180. The boiler is pretty steady at 160.
The timer is running the stoker 5 minutes an hour. Anything less and I get an outfire, especially on hot, humid days. Total coal use for four months, June to September should be approx 1,800 lb. I rounded up to 1 ton because I'm sure on Saturdays when the clothes are washed the stoker is coming on more than just the timer but not positive how long. I paid 160 a ton last year. So total cost is 160 for four months or 40 a month. The other 8 months there should be no extra run time for hot water because it will be on for heat.

I'm saving 25 a month in the summer (4 months) and 65 a month during heating season (8 months) for a total of 620 a year.

Total cost of install was approx 450-500. Payback time is less than a year. It took me a couple of days to re-plumb the hot water system. Mostly because the new water heater is at the opposite end of the house.

Maintainability is easy. I'm getting a full ashpan every 9 - 10 days. I started taking it out every Sunday because sometimes I forgot about doing it so I put myself on a schedule. It's easier than cleaning up a mess. I'll have to clean the boiler one more time a year but that's no biggie. I plan on cleaning it at the end of September and again in May.

The only drawback is the basement gets hot now. It used to be cool in the summer, now I'm leaving the windows open. Maybe next summer I'll install a temp controlled fan to keep the basement cooler and maybe insulation on the boiler.

ADDED:
The mixing valve I bought doesn't have degrees on it, just hotter/colder. I should have looked around more before I bought it. When I first started it up I had it on hot. The water in the sink was steaming. I have it set to where it is comfortable but I would have liked to be able to set it at 125 degrees. Oh well, maybe next time.

That's a great result and some good cost tracking on the work. But there is no free heat in winter to be relocated to the domestic hot water load. If you have ( about 30K ) load in the 4 summer months as stated -- that load or more ( because the family will use more hot water in winter) - will still apply to the 8 heating months. Your not the first to make this false "free heat" assumption. Boilers produce a finite amount of energy - it can be used in many ways but you don't get free heat! Idle load is a load - DHW production is a load - heating a garage is a load - heating the house is a load. These all require horsepower to sustain. The only benefit you may derive is IF -- and let me repeat -- IF the load and boiler as so mismatched that you would have to add a parasitic load to the boiler to scrub off excess energy from an idle fire that's too large - to prevent loss of idle fire. But then its simply a trade in energy use -- cost of production didn't go down -- it just is better utilized. This sort of plays to my ti rations on the soap box of economical use of fuel vs simple less effective install methods - but I digress.

So your saving 20 bucks a month - 12 months a year -- maybe!

The important factor here is more that your happy playing with your engine and load -- 20 bucks here or there cannot replace that.

Thermo mix valves are not graduated in degrees because they react to the variable temperatures

place a gauge in line and use it to adjust -- new valves come packed with a one time use temperature reacting tape to get them close to code set point of 120 degrees for Domestic hot water.

below is the latest install I did -- note the gauge above the valve on the supply leg -- out of shot are two more tattle tail gauges --one on the tempering tank on one on the supply from the boiler leg.

I understand what you're saying about the loads on the boiler. In the summer the 1 ton per four months is used entirely for hot water production. That includes keeping the boiler water at temp. During the winter the additional load for DHW shouldn't come near requiring an additional ton of fuel every four months. At least I think so. I wouldn't have the foggiest idea how to calculate the additional load for DHW during the winter months.

Thanks for the idea of putting a temp gauge in the hot water supply. I like it and undoubtedly will install one as soon as my other projects are done. If you have any other ideas on how I can operate my system more efficiently toss them out. I love running things as efficiently (inexpensively) as possible. I'm thinking next summer of wrapping the boiler in an insulation blanket like a water heater. During the winter I like the idea of the heat bleeding into the basement. It has kept the dampness down. My tools all of a sudden stopped getting surface rust on them.

How big is the tempering tank on that system you just installed? I didn't install one on my system. Letting the cold water warm up to room temp before going into the boiler sounds like a good idea.