New Yorkers, Make Yourself Known

We have been burning coal for three years with a Reading Lehigh. We are in Camden, NY. We pay $295.00 for a ton of bagged coal which includes delivery.

freetown fred wrote:Welcome to the FORUM j&m

Thank you, we are happy we found this forum!

Hello, all. I've been using A Consolidated Dutchwest FA264CCL for woodburning since the early '80s and am burning coal in it for the first time this year. Yeah, my learning curve was fairly steep (This site is a Godsend), but I do believe I'm getting the hang of it, and I love it. My biggest issue is finding coal (using bagged, haven't built an outside bin, yet). I started with a metric ton of Blashak nut, picked up some Cornwall nut and stove over in Cobleskill (Agway) and found I like the Cornwall better, also found I like to mix the two together when it gets really cold. Like I said, this coal burning is new to me but I'm sold. I'll use my wood early and late in the season if at all, I might just save it for emergency back up. I'm just glad I held onto the coal burnng inserts for my stove for all those years.

Fred, I'm just old, I don't know very many folks that would call me "mature".

Hello fellow New Yorkers!
I recently moved to the Hudson Valley and have been heating my new house with coal. First time for me, but I got alot of help from this site in getting started. I am using a Biasi 3wood5 boiler which is tied in tandem with a conventional oil fired heating system (see my avitar picture). The oil burner has not come on once so far this winter. I am burning bulk chestnut which I purchased from Corwall Coal, $254/ton delivered.

Hello all,

My name is Joe, and I'm in the Port Crane NY area, about 15 minutes from Binghamton. I just bought my first house back in September, and am already sick of the cost of oil. So, in conjunction with better insulating the house, I am looking at coal boilers. I plan to keep oil as a backup, so I am looking at boilers that I can attach an oil gun too in the event that I leave town for a week as I sometimes have to travel for work. I could keep my current oil boiler hooked up, and run a coal stove or boiler in parallel, but the cost of adding a second masonry chimney would be prohibitive (however, I do have all the square masonry blocks to do a second chimney as I was offered them for free). So far I have my eyes on the Leisure Line 110 boiler, but am still looking around at other models as well.

Thanks,
Joe

Hi Joe - Welcome to the forum.

If you already have an oil boiler in place I recommend adding a stoker boiler in parallel. You can powervent the oil boiler and use your existing chimney, disconnect the oil boiler flue pipe and swap it in when you want to burn oil, or you can be a renegade and run them both into the same flue (the chimney police won't like that, but it works fine).

You are about an hour away from a guy that rebuilds & installs quite a few stoker boilers, so make the call and get your questions answered. His name is Arnie, and his number is: 315-653-7883.

Thanks for the info Rob. Why do you suggest installing a boiler in parallel as opposed to getting something that I can attach an oil gun too? Also, I have never seen a powervent setup, but I assume that it requires stove pipe run out the side wall of the basement, which is where the power vent (electric blower??) would be installed??

I will give Arnie a call soon, thank you for the contact.

Joe

JRDepew wrote:I have never seen a powervent setup, but I assume that it requires stove pipe run out the side wall of the basement, which is where the power vent (electric blower??) would be installed??

You are correct.

JRDepew wrote:Why do you suggest installing a boiler in parallel as opposed to getting something that I can attach an oil gun too?

With two boilers you can set them up so that if the coal boiler has a problem, you flip a switch (or set it up to be automatic) and the oil unit comes online. That isn't possible with a dual-fuel unit. The other reason is the added mass of the oil boiler acts like a flywheel for the coal boiler and helps prevent large temperature swings. This isn't really an issue for the traditional coal boilers, but the LL110 would benefit from it.

Rob,

When you say the added mass of the oil boiler would help out the LL110 when it comes to temperature swings, is it the mass of the water that the LL110 can hold? Or is it that the steel/iron is thinner than other boilers?

Thanks again,
Joe

Water content.

Hi,
Western Genesee County here. Just installed a Hitzer 503 insert. Will be firing it for the first time tonight - 3/4/12.
I have pics. I will try to figure where on the forum to post them. Unless someone can point me in the right direction