Sounded easy at first

I've burned coal for years. First hand fired, then I got a Leisure Line stoker. My house
is a big old grist mill with 2000 sq ft per floor. We heat two floors and the ground floor
basement is unheated. Old Houses
The stoker and hand fired stoves work well to keep the main living
floor warm and the heat rises to the bedrooms up stairs, but the bathrooms are cut off
from the heat unless the doors are alway open. It's tough to train quests and others to leave
bathroom doors open. Soooo I got the idea to build a small stoker boiler to heat the three
bathrooms and give the basement a little heat to help keep the floors warm. Can't be that
hard or time consuming. Oh yes it can.
Building the boiler was the easy and cheap part.

Fabricating is what I do for a living. The design was provided by a consultant that rents
office space form us. He dove right in and dreamed up a beauty.

A pipe design with removable and reflective side panels. The balancing tubes are internal.

The domed cap provides space for the bulk of the water and the domestic hot water.

The removable base gave me access to weld the pipes and inner welds and the ability to
determine the location of the smoke pipe.

The side panels have a polished stainless panel that faced the heat. The cap has a reflective panel also.

We insulated the body and skinned it with 409 stainless. Gave it a test fire and dragged it home.
This is where the fun and expense started.

Not only was the SOB heavy as all get out, but if fit through the door with only a hair to spare.

My fingers are getting tired. I'll get to the fun part in a few hours.
There seems to be an extra picture that i can't get rid of. No matter.

The stoker was the first real cash output. I got the grate from a well know stove maker.
The stoker blower and feed motor came from amazon online sellers. I made the stoker
framework, but the motors and grate were about $250.00. Ok, not so bad but we're just
getting started. Me and the local plumbing supply house became blood brothers. I'd stop
in every day after work, and they would tap a pint. I'm O neg but that did't cut any cheese with them.
The steel fittings for the supply and return lines, a circulator for the upstairs zones and one for the
basement dump zone, ouch this is starting to hurt. The zone valves, the aquastat, the over temp sensor,
the feeder low speed timer, the expansion tank, the auto fill, the check valve, the auto air bleeders, the
modine unit for the dump zone, yo this is really starting to get serious ! Now we have to get the domestic
hot water coil. Ouch !!!!!
The chimney in the picture has been there for 30 years unused. The mason that built the chimney for the
upstairs stove, made it a twin chimney for stability and you never know when you'll need another. He did
not cut the thimble. I figured, how hard could it be to cut in a 6 inch thimble ? Another blood bath. It only
took about two hours and a box of bandaids. I used a star chisel and a diamond wheel on a grinder to get
through the cement block shell. After that I laid waste to the clay liner with a ball peen hammer. Did a hell
of a job. I grouted the thimble with hydraulic cement. The stove pipe is more of the 409 stainless. The baro
damper is another $ 30.00 bucks.
Did I forget the baseboard units, the thermostats, the pex tubing, the shark bite fittings, the manual bleeders,
the pex support clips, wire ties, 24 volt transformer, copper tubing for the DHW, copper tubing to get to the pex,
boiler ball valves for drains, circulator isolation ball valves, JHC this is really getting serious.

I'll post a picture of the stoker with the next episode tonight.

Here is a picture of the stoker. It's a pretty basic carpet feeder. I bolted
the hopper to the feeder. This is so that if I have a flooding situation, I
can just unplug the feeder and blower motors, take off 6 bolts and the
whole feeder and hopper come off as a unit. If the water gets to the
electrical panel, we have more problems that can't be fixed by moving
anything.




But this post is to explain the " Time Vampire " aspect of this project.
Thanks to all the members that have posted topics and questions in the
boiler area here, I spent a good month just reading the ins and outs of
a coal boiler. Where to put the circulator, sizing the circulator, pex vs copper,
pex vs pex, flow rates, control devices, return loops, wiring diagrams, dump
zones, delta T , you name it, I read it. And I enjoyed every minute of it. All
the posts were helpful, but in the end, most decisions were made by what looked
about right and how it would fit in the space allowed. As you can see, the thrill of
threaded pipe fittings died out after the circulators.
So THANKS to all, past and present that post the helpful hints that make a project work.

Tom