Soot through the house

Hello once again!! I would like to thank everybody for their input to my last post. Since then I have come up with this latest problem: When burning coal I get soot throughout my house? I do not have a cold air return filter on the back of my blower fans and think that this might be part of the problem. I have just ordered one and waiting for it to come in sometime this week. I've been burning nothing but bituminous coal and I get tons of soot (fly ash) when I open the feeding door to break up the clumps of sticky coal. This soot blows out and goes all throughout my basement and into the blower fans on the back of my stove which blows into the heating ducts throughout my house. Everything in the basement and house is getting sooty!! My daughter was playing on the floor and when she got up was covered in black fine dust which I determined was soot that is blowing through the duct work from the basement. Everything in our cupboards are also covered with fine black dust. When we blow our noses guess what we find?...Yep more black dust from soot. Does anyone else have or ever had this problem from burning bituminous coal? If so is there any way to stop it if the cold air return filter does not remody this problem? I'm thinking of building a wall to separate the furnace from the rest of my basement along with cutting a hole in the existing cinder block wall and attaching a house fan to pull all of the soot and smoke from the basement or (room that I'm thinking about building) outside.

i have no such problem at all. neither i would assume, do most other people who burn it. in addition to soot falling off the loading door, make sure that your flue duct joints are sealed perfectly. do not take your heat distribution air from the furnace room! this is a bad idea for many reasons, even if youdidn't have a soot problem, you would still have ash dust all over.

I have my stove in the formal dining room; the stove is on clean white tile, and newly refinished oak floors, i would absolutely not tolorate any soot or ash dust period. there is a problem with your setup.
see pics: http://nepacrossroads.com/viewtopic.php?t=389&start=135

I'm sorry I was getting ahead of myself...First let me explain what type of furnace I have and how my system is hooked up. I have a Vogelzang Norseman 2500 wood / coal furnace. The furnace is located in my basement about 3' away from my outside wall. I have all of my stove pipe joints pop-rivited with 4 rivits at each joint. I have two 8" ducts at the top of my stove that tie into my old furnaces' plenum. I have two 550 CFM fans on the bottom back of my furnace that take the air from the surrounding area that blow around the fire box and up through the two 8" ducts. All of the duct work off of the furnace is aluminum foil taped for an air tight seal. There is soot and fly ash all over my basement from when I open the feed door when loading up on coal or when poking the coal that has stuck together from previously loading. This soot / fly ash is really bad after about 30 - 60 min after first loading when the coal is really burning.

Back picture of my furnace setup:

More pics of setup:

yet some more pics:

more pics:

last pic:

Hello Rich, what you are experiencing with your coal is exactly what I used to experience with my boiler. When I had a 6" chimney and flue pipes.

The problem is that bituminous coal has lots of volitiles in the coal. It is sort of like a bottle of soda. If you shake a bottle of soda, you get a lot more volume of bubbles, foam and mess than the original container held in liquid.

When you heat bituminous, the volitiles burn off first, making all the heavy yellow flames with inky-black soot. The volume of the gasses and soot burning off the coal is too great for the chimney to pull out of the firebox, so the smoke goes to the next best place, out the door and into your face and into your house.

I cured my problem about 95% by adding an additional 6' to the chimney and converting it and all the pipes to 8" from 6". Now I get very little soot and smoke out the door when loading and poking and breaking up the stuck-together coal.

Since it is not an easy thing to convert a chimney, make sure you have a clean flue pipe and chimney, Make sure the cap on the the chimney [if you have one] is clean and not clogged with soot.

If you are getting as much soot out the door as you are, just think how much is going up the flue pipes and chimney. Bitumonous soot is sticky, it will adhere to the sides of the flue like glue, and reduce the pipe dianmeter by an inch a side in a few weeks. From 6" ID to 4" ID! You will have to add flue cleaning to your regular maintenance routines.

The next thing to do is make sure that any dampers are not obstructing the flue, and that the chimney is only venting this coal furnace, You can't afford to share the chimney draft with another appliance, You are very short on draft.

Open the under grate air vent for several minutes to 'rev-up' the fire, then slowly open the loading door, giving the chimney every opportunity to develope some draft and air velocity to pull the soot away from the loading door. If the combustion fan is running , turn it off when the door is open.

You may want to open a window in the basement when you are loading the furnace, this will give an easy source of outside air to allow maximum draft. If you have a tight house, your chimney will have to pull hard to find air to take up the through the firebox.

That's what I can share from my bitumonous burning experiences and ideas to solve your smoke/soot problem.

Let us know how it works out.

Greg L

.

Perhaps a power draft inducer run when you first add coal might help. Here one specified for coal use. http://fieldcontrols.com/draftinducers.php

Yanche

in addition to what greg mentioned you will want to make a return air box w/ sheet metal and take return air from the living space not the furnace room. for two reasons, one you are sucking all the soot and ash from the imediate vicinity of the furnace that is leaking out, second, you are reducing the available air for the flue because of the neg. pressure near the furnace. seal the flue with furnace cement as well as riviting; however it will be beneficial to use T's instead of elbows to allow for easy cleaning.


i would also like to see a pic of your chimney outside if possible. you should have a high chimney w/ minimum 8" pipe for bitumionous, doesn't matter the size of the appliance.

maybe one of these would help



it is a smoke hood from AHS. It sits right above your door and sucks all the smoke and soot that comes out your door when you open it..
Just a thought...

ktm rider wrote:Snip... It sits right above your door and sucks all the smoke and soot that comes out your door when you open it..
...Snip...

Where does it exhaust?

Yanche

hopefully outside.

Berlin wrote:hopefully outside.

Or maybe into the firebox adding additional combustion air when you need it. Ot maybe into the exhaust flue?

Yanche

It looks like a 6" pipe off the back, so maybe into the flue, or it's own outside vent or chimney.

Greg L