Is there a 10 hour battery backup for stoker stove?

If I considered a stoker over a habd fired, as I could get away with a power vent as opposed to class A chimney, is there a battery backup that is rechageable to run stoker & power vent for up to 10 hours?

Yes, but at the cost about equal to your stove and chimney. Motors use lots of electricity, so lots of big batteries, lots of battery maintenance, and inverters, wiring etc etc.

AND if the batteries were not up to the task [less than a full charge] and the vent blower shut down overnight you may be at risk of Carbon Monoxide poisoning.

So a battery backup for the combustion fan, and pusher motor for a stoker is fine, providing you have a regular natural draft chimney. This way if the batteries die, the fire just goes out, and the CO still goes up the chimney.

Getting cold is OK, getting dead is not.

Greg L

LsFarm wrote:So a battery backup for the combustion fan, and pusher motor for a stoker is fine, providing you have a regular natural draft chimney. This way if the batteries die, the fire just goes out, and the CO still goes up the chimney.

Greg L

If I'm 4' below grade, & 4 ' above, can I still use a dirrect vent, w/o need for class A chimney?

NO, the draft is created by a tall column of rising hot air, 4' is not even close to being enough. You need a chimney to extend at least 3' above your roof peak, so usually a chimney is at least 20' tall.

Don't try to cut corners on the chimney, any form of fire in your house is capable of creating carbon monoxide [CO], and therefore capable of killing you. A good chimney is most important, much more than the stove type, design, features etc. Just about any steel box with a shaker grate will burn coal to some degree of effeciency, but without a good chimney you are playing CO-roulette.



Greg

ron54 Alaska kodiak can be used with a class A or masonry chimney can be used on Alaskan vent system why did you not ask the dealer about this yesterday at the fair you should have ask him alot of questions about the stoves and chimney and all of there stokers can be used with a power vent but as Greg said no power no exhaust system the CO Gas will have to go somewhere in your house your dead

I'm looking at retrofitting an old motor with PTO, hooking it up to my little Kubota 7100HST to generate enough power to run the AHS S-130 and the fan in the plenum.... I'm not sure how much power I'd need, but I have some time to figure it out. This of course only works if one is awake... when the power goes out. If I'd need to, I could rig up some type of alarm to alert me when the power goes out for a significant amount of time - to get the tractor up and the power going.

Any thoughts are as always... appreciated.

coal berner wrote:ron54 Alaska kodiak can be used with a class A or masonry chimney can be used on Alaskan vent system why did you not ask the dealer about this yesterday at the fair you should have ask him alot of questions about the stoves and chimney and all of there stokers can be used with a power vent but as Greg said no power no exhaust system the CO Gas will have to go somewhere in your house your dead

I really din't know what to ask. The issue I have with the Kodiak is the round grate setup, as opposed to the shaker on the Harman & Hitzer. My concern with the kodiak is coal getting stuck in grate, and having to go in with 100 lbs of coal trying to find & poke out.

If I rule this out, my concern with Hrman is not having a gravity built in Hopper to hold enough coal for a long period of time. Remember this will be my only heat.

Hi Pret, I'm confused, do you mean that you are going to rewire a motor to make into a generator [technically an alternator] to make 110V a/c current to power the S130 boiler??

Unless you have all the parts and you only need to put in some time, I"d skip all that and just buy a small generator. I think 2500 watts [20amps] would be more than enough to run the two motors on the S130 and a few other items associated with running the boiler.

There are quite a few small generators available in the 25-3500 watt output, and you don't need to have one built to last a century, just to run for a few hours at a time when [if] the power goes out.

I have a full-farm generator, 11K output that runs off my smaller JD diesel tractor, but it is not something I leave hooked up all the time. It is a bit of a wrestling match to hook up and hangs way out the back of the tractor so is awkward to leave on. It has come in handy when whe have several days of power outage, but for the short outages I have a typical 5500 watt Briggs powered generator that will keep the freezer and the fridges cold and if I unplug the frigdes, will run the well pump.

I'd lean towards an inexpensive smallish generator to run the S130.

Greg L

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I am a Network Administrator and know that big UPS’s cost a lot. I remember hearing regular stokers run 130 watt. If your power venting it might be double that, maybe more. You can go to http://www.apc.com/tools/ups_selector/index.cfm and use their calculator. You’re getting into a $1200 battery to get 10 hour of run time @ 300 watts. Where you can put a lot less into a 5000 watt generator that can run a lot longer, and can run almost everything in your house… your powervent and stoker(or furnace),fridge, freezer, wellpump, lights. It’s a must for a girly man.

If you want to go cheap, you can keep a kerosene heater around for when you loose power. They stink when your burning, but they are cheap and give you some nice heat without any power required.

ron54 wrote:

coal berner wrote:ron54 Alaska kodiak can be used with a class A or masonry chimney can be used on Alaskan vent system why did you not ask the dealer about this yesterday at the fair you should have ask him alot of questions about the stoves and chimney and all of there stokers can be used with a power vent but as Greg said no power no exhaust system the CO Gas will have to go somewhere in your house your dead

I really din't know what to ask. The issue I have with the Kodiak is the round grate setup, as opposed to the shaker on the Harman & Hitzer. My concern with the kodiak is coal getting stuck in grate, and having to go in with 100 lbs of coal trying to find & poke out.

If I rule this out, my concern with Hrman is not having a gravity built in Hopper to hold enough coal for a long period of time. Remember this will be my only heat.

well the samething can happen with standard rocking grates as well with a big piece of unburnt coal all of the grates are made to cut threw ashes and small pieces of coal so no matter what grate you have they can get stuck the round grate is two pieces the top piece is round with fingers and slots in it the second piece is like a big fork it locks underneath the top round one it has a slot cut in the middel once it is in place you move it from side to side it cuts the ash and then the ash falls in the ash tray on the bottom the round part of the grate is dish like in the middle so the ash fall towards the center the fork cuts it and drops it in the tray

One of the big plusses of using a UPS is the instant change over. Most of the time we have an outtage, the power only stays off until I start the generator.

I run my DVC 500 (130 measured watts) plugged into a APC-1500 - gives me 1-2hrs of run time - just enough time to get over 90% of the glitches we have here. I'm not really worried about the house loosing heat in that time period - or for that matter the fire going out, but more protecting the stove against the heat of improper shutdown or power surges (DVC-500 has a CPU)

If you can't fill in the run time gap with a generator - you could toss the on board UPS batteries and rig up either an external deep cycle marine battery or better yet four golf (6v) cart batteries. You can get *vast* run times with external batteries. There's info on the web about doing this - Big VA used UPS's can be had for cheap on Ebay - the bigger the UPS - the heftier the charging circuit. (have them toss the batteries for you - save on shipping)

I run one of the lighting circuits in my house on one of these - the only way you know the power went out is when you hear all the UPS's beeping around the house. That's when the neighbors call and want to know why you still have lights....

Hi Greg, sorry so long to respond. I'm still waiting for some load specs on the air handler I'll be installing in a new construction.

I am trying to determine the best - and best meaning the most economical in the long run - means to ensure that #1 I don't run out of heat in an unlikely 24+ hour power failure and #2 that if power fails, my family is protected from CO poisoning.

Here is what I'm considering - one or two deep cycle batteries charged by a volt regulated truck alternator powered by an old lawn mower. No, I don't have autos on blocks in my front yard, barely visible through my uncut grass - but I do enjoy tinkering and cantankering things out of 'nothing'.

Talking with Darren at AHS, the S-130 coal gun draws about 6.5 amps. I'm waiting to hear back from the air handler manufacturer to determine its draw.

I haven't researched power enough yet to be able to calculate the longevity of a fully charged 12 volt deep cycling battery under this type of load. The air handler I'm looking at is an American Standard 2/4TEE variable speed. Anybody know the draw on this baby?

I'm also considering (as opposed to the POJ on blocks route) purchasing a small marine/RV generator because they're built to be operated for extended hours and last for many years.

Any bites on this one? Pret.