Pictures of Your Boiler

Guys,

This was my fall project , coal is cool. More pictures of the refurb are here ....Install Photos and First Fire in EFM520 waldo

Great looking set up Waldo. Nice job!

Recent boiler installation. Gentleman Janitor GJ52. (built the chimney behind it as well)

Good, solid boiler in great shape, 10" extended base lined with 2" ceramic fiber to reflect heat back into the fire (for burning bit coal) and one zone (passive hot water heating as well) - zone is 24x24 heat exchanger in a forced air furnace. will be heating about 6500'sq. Jacket has been built, but not installed.

Never had a coal feed issue on any stokers I've played with. This GJ stoker is killing me w/ coal grinding problems (have a thread about that).

Nice install! I like your choice of color. The little door on the side to allow easier access to brush down the heat exchanger should come standard on all new boilers having the separate base. It makes mid winter brush downs so easy

Digging up a bit of the past with my pictures We inherited this great Wagner coal stoker when we bought this house back in July. To be honest, being coal heat was the top reason we bought it. I grew up with coal heat (hand fed heatrola) and vowed of I ever found a home for sale that had coal heat, I'd buy it. Lo and behold, this one popped up. After years of spending $3000+ on oil for the heating season, this will cost us roughly $1200 per year to run year round (heats hot water, too). I spent a few hours cleaning it today so I had the opportunity to take some pictures.

MarkG thats cool. Antother piece of history saved. Welcome. Matt

That Wagner is a beauty. Thanks for sharing.

How do you take the ashes out? I don't see a door

Scott, I think you have to dig a trench under the base. Like this:

Rob R. wrote:Scott, I think you have to dig a trench under the base. Like this:

Scott,

Mine is the limited edition, ashless stoker

All kidding aside, Rob is correct and his pic above is exactly what mine looks like. It's hard to see in my first pic, but if you look closely, you can see the metal door covering the ash pit. The bucket sits on a small, three wheel "cart" with a handle that rolls down the ramp into the pit. When it's full, just pull it back out. This stoker wasn't put in when the house was built. It was originally oil heat, then around 1956 this unit replaced the oil burner. The previous owner also provided me with three motors for it (one used, two rebuilt), a new circulator pump, a new worm, and I found a burning pot and other miscellaneous parts laying around so I think I'm in pretty good shape with this unit

Ahhhh! Limited edition, secret compartments, spare parts. What more could anyone ask for? Nice boiler by the way. You have one of the few Wagners on the site. Take some more closeups of the stoker mechanism and post them if you have time. Any literature? That would be way too much to hope for.

I will definitely take more pictures and post them. I'm actually searching for literature on this unit but no luck so far. I've been in communication with another member on here who told me that he might have some old literature so my fingers are crossed. If there was ever a person who would have kept literature on this stoker, it would have been the guy I bought the house from. He was very meticulous about it and kept a log of when it was oiled and cleaned dating back to around 2000 when he inherited the house from his aunt and uncle. He was very knowledgeable in terms of how the unit operates but nothing beats good literature if you can find it. I would, and will, definitely share any on here if I happen to stumble across any. Even the good ol' interwebs has turned up nothing, but somebody somewhere HAS to have something laying around.

UPDATE: Got the GJ stoker out and the Allen stoker in. For burning bituminous, it works great!

Running right now on 4 teeth feed (out of 12). I could probably bump it to 5 feed, but, then I'd pickup too fast and exceed the BTU loss from the 24x24 heat exchanger too quickly thus wasting coal. 240ºF Max Stack temp steady-state. H20 temp 160-170

Will be bin fed soon w/ auger ash removal as well. Burning KY pea stoker BITUMINOUS coal in Plattsburgh, NY

Are there air holes in the base below the fire viewing door

Looks like a great setup. What size is the flue pipe on the GJ?

Drilled the air holes in the base extension. Only time you get any smoke from a bit stoker is for a few minutes after shut down. Without any secondary air I was getting this smoke, with holes drilled at a downward angle through the base (and 2" ceramic fiber insulation board) I have virtually eliminated all smoke during shutdown. The ceramic fiber surrounding the retort helps too - it's over 1100º while the outside (2" away) is around 100.

Flue pipe size is 8", but I upgraded that to 10" (needed to anyway, chimney draft requires a larger baro).