AHS S130 Stoker Boiler

I'd line up a source for 5" black stovepipe, elbows and barometric damper. All are a little difficult to find. I bought my stovepipe and elbows at a large Ace Hardware store that also sells wood stoves. Fields 5" RC damper came from my local heating & A/C wholesaler. I'd also get some aluminum tape to seal the stovepipe joints. I used Nashua brand high temperature stuff. It was hard to find. I'll post the part number when I can find.

Hi Yanche I have been using this Hi temp tape works really well On There Two Years Now good for 600F
It is not cheap but it holds up

http://shop.doityourself.com/invt/u195412

New to the forum and have read a lot, but not new to burning coal. I used to burn a hand fired HB-Smith in the 80's until I put my addition on. The HB ended up to small and went with oil, don't have to tell you why. Have 2 AHS-!30's coming in mid Oct. if everything goes well one for me and one for the son. Looking forward to you AHS owners when the time comes to get up and running.Here is a pic of my son's boiler room and the AHS will be going alongside that blue little devel. Already have 22.5 tons of baged pea coal from kimmles.

Welcome to the forum mazzy. Love the plumbing, very nicely done.

Thanks Adam, that was part of my winter project. Building house for my son.

That plumbing looks amazing, very nicely done. How are you planning on connecting the AHS to that system?

I count 12 circulators I think. I'm assuming it's not radiant floor or you would have used pex. Is that all baseboard?

kirk,

Mine is all copper in the boiler room. I didn't start connecting it to pex until it was in the regular part of the house. I did it for two reason's one for safety and second I wasn't sure how the inspectors would handle it because of the low ceilings? Figured it was better to spend the extra money and connect it all with copper the first time rather then take a chance and have to reinstall it twice.

I plan on running the system in parallel but will be piping it so I can do either, parallel or series in case of vacations. And there is radiant flooring, if you look up into the top lefthand corner you will see a manifold with pex tubing coming out of it. This is the 1st. floor 1st stage heating, the rest of the house is cast iron baseboard (radiant heat for those who don't know that) and fan coil in air handler for 2nd stage heat for 2nd floor. There are 13 circ. you missed the one next to the expansion tank, this is the primary loop pump.

Rick,

I have been heating with the AHS for 2 years and NEVER had any explosion occur. I do not have a damper but a sealed exhaust system. In addition, the new AHS boilers have a vent in the inspection door to eleviate this problem. If you let the coal level in the hopper get too low and add too much coal all at once there will be an ingition of coal gasses. I have not had that problem because I keep my hopper full.

I have a friend that has had a couple of those backfires but they were traced to a faulty chimney and letting the hopper empty. You will be very happy with the boiler if you do the required tasks; install it correctly including stove pipe placement, empty the ashes and keep the hopper filled.

Rick

I think you are onto something here and it does make sense to me. I'm going to do some brain study here (with some help) from my old books, and they are old. Elemate the gasses over the fire, this sounds like a pretty good way of doing it. I don't have My AHS yet but I can tell you this will be tried first. I am a retiree of 42 Years as a master pipefitter/master plumber in Ma.& R.i. out of local #51 and not have had the pleasure of any coal boiler installations except my own HB- Smith In the 80's. After reading all the posts my intensions were to put an inducer on. (not a draft inducer) inline inducer after the baro. the one you cut into the stove pipe before it enters the chimney, but your idea sounds pretty good. Thanks Rick for jumping in.

Mazzy

This is my first post, so excuse the long description.
I have an AHS S260 Coal Gun Boiler that I have had running since April 2008 throughout the summer for heating my pool. I will be using it to heat the pool and the house during the winter. I have not experienced any issues at all with the boiler except once a minor "puff" after I filled the hopper with coal after it had run low.
My issue is the draft tends to be too strong. I am in the Springfield, Mass area and it is usually not very windy. 18,000 gallons of water being heated about 2 degrees each day only takes about 3 hours of run time using my 250k BTU heat exchanger hooked up to this 260k BTU boiler. Therefore I have over 20 hours with no heat demand. During these idle times the natural draft will make the boiler water temp rise to 240-250 degrees. The boiler conditioner and other chemicals I put in to adjust the boiler water to the recommendations, along with being a pressurized closed system must allow this to go way above normal boiling temp of 212 F. My high limit is 180 degrees, yet it climbs to 240-250 without the fan running.
I have ordered a Tee and Field Control Type M 6" Draft Control in hopes of regulating this draft better. I have this in an aluminum shed next to the house and garage and the Simpson DuraVent DuraTech Class A chimney goes straight up from the exhaust port on the boiler through the roof of the shed. Total pipe length is only 7 ft, will be about 8 ft after I add the Tee with the baro in it. I just got a Dwyer Mark II Model 25 Manometer.
My question is this: Where do I hook in the Manometer to check the draft? I have heard over the fire and in the pipe. I could make connections to do both. Do you need a pitot tube?
I really like the AHS Coal Gun. The Fuji ThermoAsh controller works well, only moving the grate minimally when necessary to dump cool ash. I load the boiler with 300 lbs of coal usually once a week and empty the ash bin at the same time. Other than this weekly check, there is nothing else I do. As the load increases in the winter, I am sure this check cycle will go down to 3-4 days for filling the hopper and emptying the ash bin.
Any help you can provide on how to get the Draft Control set right and the manometer would be great. I am very new to all this, but so far have been impressed with the AHS Coal Gun. I have a very efficient natural gas hot water heater (Heat Transfer Products Voyager SSVH-199) which I am hooking up in tandem with the Coal Gun Boiler. The 199k BTU hot water heating currently provides domestic hot water and radiant floor tubing heat for 6800 sq ft, which is great, but my natural gas bill can run $500-$600 during peak heating. Coal is less than half the cost, so the Coal Gun will heat the water in the hot water heater via a heat exchanger and the natural gas will only turn on if it drops below the set temp for the hot water heater meaning the demand is too great for the Coal Gun alone to keep up with. I have a Johnson Controls A149 that I added to check the water temp in the hot water heater circulator loop (always running to circulate the water in the hot water heater) and turn on another circulator pump to my added heat exchanger to allow the Coal Gun boiler to heat the water without the fluids mixing.
I wanted to use 1" PEX to bring the boiler water to the hot water heater but I cant use PEX if the water temp is 240-250 degrees. I think I will still use copper for the supply to make sure I am not running very high temp water through PEX, but I would like to use it for the return line back to the return header. Until I can get a handle on this high draft, I am stuck with copper and the distance between Coal Gun in the shed next to the house and Hot Water heater is about 60 feet. Copper is pretty expensive these days so if I can use PEX wherever it is safe to use it, I would prefer that.
Ray

Draft should be measured in the stove pipe immediatly above the unit. The draft control should be located as far from the unit as possible.

I know it does directly apply to your short stove pipe but for some ideas on how to install it into a chimney thimble with a damper check my post here: 5" up to 6" Flu Pipe

Perhaps a 6 inch pipe concentric with your 5 inch pipe outside your shed would be the way to do it. The 6 inch would have the baro inside the shed. The 5 inch would stop short of the roof line just like in my baro installation. Let us know what finally works.

How about a heat dump solution? An Aquastat control that dumps heat to the pool whenever the water temp exceeds the regular Aquastat high limit set point. Or an injection pump that mixes the boiler water with pool return water to lower the temperature that gets pumped to the house. Too many pumps but it would work. Just trying ideas.

I agree with Bob as to the baro and manometer locations.

It is 6" insulated Stainless Steel Chimney Pipe the whole way since the exhaust port on the AHS S260 is 6". Even the Tee is the the same pipe. The 6" Type M Draft Control should fit right in according to Field Controls when I called them. Thanks for the best locations for the baro and manometer. I would have put the Tee and Baro right off the exhaust port rather than higher up. The top of the shed is only about 8 ft so I can't put the baro too far away and still keep it in the shed which is necessary.
I see this on the Field Controls site
**Broken Link(s) Removed** and it did not mention about further away from the boiler being better. Is there a reason why it works better being further away? Or is this just to minimize any ash around the baro, obviously the farther away from the boiler it is the less ash. I believe any ash the does not make it 7-8 ft up my chimney will fall back into the ash bin I would hope. I have not done any cleaning of any kind. Do you ever find that things clog up with ash or coal (burnt or unburnt), because I have not experienced this yet in my 4 months of running this through the summer.
I will let you know if the baro solves the high water temp issue. I would expect that it should from what I have read in multiple posts in the forum. Great forum by the way.
Ray