fire is still going!

I went away for a long weekend and left the boiler lit, I filled the hopper and dumped the ashes before I left and after 3 days it's still going and the hopper is only down about 20 pounds. It amazes me that this thing keeps itself going on a timer. It's like when your kid goes to Kindergarten for the first time and you realize that she doesn't need you looking at it 24/7 to survive.

The guy I used to get my coal from in Middletown had a 520 EFM. He said his dad lit it in 1972 and it has been going ever since. It supplys heats and hot water to two businesses and three apartments. It has a 10 ton hopper and a basement the ash falls into. He said they service it twice a year and it has never been out. Thats 35 years!

That's the beauty of a good stoker design. Your EFM underfeed stoker will keep a small 'baseball sized' fire going deep down in the burn pot. The fire will look like it has burn out. No flames, no red spot. But call for heat, and the auger starts feeding fresh coal, the fan runs and revs up the fire, and soon you have a 6-8" diameter fire and 16" flames. Pretty neat.

I'm probably going to fire up my big boiler with the antique 'Iron Fireman' underfeed stoker, It will idle all day like your's on only a few pounds of coal, then keep the house and hot water warm at night.

During 55* days and 35* nights I can't run a hand load 24/7, but the stoker does fine. With propane now at $2.05/gallon. Coal is much cheaper.

I can't wait for the AA to be done and installed.. I'm slowly getting it rebuilt. I have some of it repainted, a few more weeks and it will be ready to plumb in.

Greg L

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LsFarm wrote:That's the beauty of a good stoker design. Your EFM underfeed stoker will keep a small 'baseball sized' fire going deep down in the burn pot. The fire will look like it has burn out. No flames, no red spot. But call for heat, and the auger starts feeding fresh coal, the fan runs and revs up the fire, and soon you have a 6-8" diameter fire and 16" flames. Pretty neat.

It sure is neat, when he showed me the firebox, I could barley feel any heat. I watched it and could have sworn the thing was dead and gone. A few minutes later it ramped up to a blaze in less than three minutes. I was amazed.

I have a mid 50's gentleman janitor model gj5. It's been going non stop since mid august with out any problems. I fired it up the first time just to see what it would do. It ran for about 20 min. to bring the water up to temperature and I was satisfied. I shut the power off to the stoker. I came back the next day, almost a full 24 hours later and just for laughs turned the power back on, in about 5 minutes there were flames again!

Hi there. Was wondering what type of stoker you have? We're looking for a coal stoker and weren't sure which one you were discussing here.
Thanks!

e. has a EFM 520 boiler. Not sure, but I think he is loving every minute of it.

http://www.efmheating.com/d520.html

http://www.efmheating.com/manuals/DF520%20Manual.pdf

And I have a gentleman janitor stoker. It's similar in design to a efm 520.