The good
Coal heat rules! $1200 this year to heat this 150 year old stone house. Can't beat that.
Switched to a Behrens 62 Square Tub for the ash bin. Now I go two days on the coldest days before swapping them out.
This year I changed over to a vacuum system to deal with the ash. Nothing fancy, but it has worked out great. I have drastically reduced the dust clouds in the basement compared to prior years.
I've got a Rigid shopvac setup with two teflon coated hepa filters. The vacuum is hooked into a Dust Deputy mounted on the lid of a 6g plastic bucket. Inside the bucket is a plastic trash bag sandwiched between the lid and bucket. I vacuum the ash from the ash bin. The Dust Deputy gets 95% of the ash into the bucket. It also breaks up the clumps of ash, so it reduces the volume. It takes 1.5 buckets to empty one square tub. I keep four buckets on hand, which pretty much covers a week of ash. Once the bucket is full, I pop the lid and tie the bags closed. They stay in the bucket until trash day, when I carry the buckets out and just dump the trash bag into the street can.
That 5% that gets by the Dust Deputy does clog the shopvac filter after a couple bins. Hence why I have two. I take out the plugged filter and set it aside. When the second filter is getting there, I vacuum the dust off of the first filter into the Dust Deputy. Waiting until the second filter is about plugged seems to get more of the fine dust into the trash bag rather than bypassing it. The teflon filters last a long time in this application. The first is three years old, the second is new this season. I will probably replace the first next season.
The Bad
The tempering valve will not output 180* water when the boiler is any less than 200*. While that works, the standby losses noticably increase. Not much can be done about it though.
The long and narrow bin really is a pain. I can burn maybe a third of it before I need to start moving coal in the bin. And I need to move it when getting coal in there in the first place.
The Ugly
The melamine coated particle board did not work well at all. I've nearly emptied the bin a couple times this year, and the coating is flaking off. Don't take that idea as a good one
Future plans
The baseboards in the living room are going to be reconfigured. We are going to add wainscot and chair rail around the walls. That will require moving the baseboards. I am going to remove the section on the interior wall and add to the corners of the exterior walls. I am hoping this arrangement will kill off some of the drafts.
I plan on tearing out the coal bin and move to a palletized setup like Vermontday. What I have in mind is different, as I do not have a nice open and flat basement. The plan is to build a set of tracks along the wall the coal bin currently resides. On top of that will be a set of trolley cars with the bulk bag setup. I will need to use a wider shorter bag due to my basement window.
In operation I place the trolley on the tracks and up again the basement window to fill it. Once that is done, roll the trolley to the other end of the basement. Add the next trolley and repeat. I can fit 7 trolleys along that wall, which at one ton per bag should get me through a season.
Finally, I am going to split the system into zones, one for each floor. Going to use a Logo setup to control the zones. Again inspired by Vermontday. The Logo and 24V power supply have been ordered, and I already have the zone valves.
I am amazed my wife puts up with me