AHS S130 Coal Gun : First Fire

ValterBorges · Post by **ValterBorges** » Mon. Oct. 17, 2011 9:36 pm

I'm assuming the fire was perhaps somehow lost before the water temperature inside the boiler fell to where the blower was called upon to start up (as otherwise the blower should have revived the fire). Is that even possible?

Yes that happened to me when the neck got bridged and there was no supply in the chamber.

The other possibility is that you are setup wired like mine and the low acts a dump and the high is really the low end. It confused the *censored* out of me at first until I realized what was going on. When I set the high to 180 and the low to 160 on my setup it would dump at 160 and never turn on until 180 so guess what happens.

Post by **Rob R.** » Mon. Oct. 17, 2011 9:42 pm

What kind of bizare control are you guys using?

ValterBorges · Post by **ValterBorges** » Mon. Oct. 17, 2011 9:52 pm

will I need to remove the coal from the hopper and the fire chamber, or will it be OK to leave the coal in it for a few days?

A couple days shouldn't be bad, you just don't want it sitting too long moisture and the ash paste will corode your boiler.

Try lighting it from the viewport. I start a small chimney outside with the chimeny in the ash bin. I use small pieces of wood, and some cowboy coal, and some crushed up pea and hit it with the torch. Once that is going well I add a few more pieces of pea. Once its blazing red dump some in the viewport on top of the existing don't cover it. Add some more to the small barqueue chimney and keep moving it into the viewport once it's nice and red. Once you get a good melon sized amount, cover it a bit with the existing, once that gets red hot do it again working the melon size mount into the middle. After like 30 min you should be able to turn the blower on, but turn off the ash shaker. In an hour or so it should be running well. Then later adjust your stats, damper, and sv.

lsayre · Post by **lsayre** » Mon. Oct. 17, 2011 9:55 pm

ValterBorges wrote:Here is what I'm thinking based on what I hear.

If your hopper started out full and If your ash bin was full with unburned it's because the motor was kicking on and frequently to get that much in a day.
If the temperature in the ash was going down and the sv is set high and the difference between your high and low is small then it's short cycling and just a small amount of blowing is cooling enough to hit the sv-hysterisis and causing you to dump coal before its burned, if this happens too frequently then your hopper ends up empty and your bin full of unburned.

If you have a high and a low wired up then I would try to tweaked them so the the blower goes on when the water temp reaches 160F and shuts off around 180F and turn the sv down to 120F when it's 50-60 outside.

Try to get 2-4 in of WC in a manometer without the blower and 4-6 in with the blower on.

Make sure the baro damper is maintaining the 2-4 and if you have high wind it opens up.

Make sure you have ample combustion air supply especially in a well sealed house so you don't have negative pressure and end up with gases in your house.

If you have whole house fan or bath room fans make sure when you turn those and if you forget one on it's sucking air down your chimney.

Set up some CO detectors also.

I have 3 combination CO and fire detectors, with one in my boiler room, one at the top of the stairs from my basement to my kitchen, and one in the hallway to the bedrooms.

My manometer reads between 0.02" and 0.04", and the baro damper opens to pretty much hold it at 0.04". It seems to read in the same general range with the blower on or off as I recall. I'll have to pay more attention here.

At present I have the boiler room opened up to my adjacent basement for supply air. I'm planning to get an outside air supply set-up installed at some point. I don't think my house is too tight.

lsayre · Post by **lsayre** » Mon. Oct. 17, 2011 10:06 pm

I have my Honeywell L4006A1827 aquastat control set at 180 degrees, and the right hand side of my Honeywell L4081B1096 aquastat control set at 190 degrees. The left hand side of the L4081B is for my dump zone, which is set at 205 degrees. I also have a tapping at the front of the boiler with a Honeywell L6006 that turns my circulator off at 145 degrees and then turns the circulator back on again when the boiler is at 155 degrees.

McGiever · Post by **McGiever** » Mon. Oct. 17, 2011 10:10 pm

Was this factory wired the way you have described?

ValterBorges · Post by **ValterBorges** » Mon. Oct. 17, 2011 10:13 pm

With Ash Sensor
http://www.flickr.com/photos/67213576@N05/6255651927/

With Timer
http://www.flickr.com/photos/67213576@N05/6256182708/

.PDF | 202.1KB | Coal Gun Wiring Diagrams.pdf

ValterBorges · Post by **ValterBorges** » Mon. Oct. 17, 2011 10:18 pm

.PDF | 1.8MB | CG-Manual-091209.pdf

ValterBorges · Post by **ValterBorges** » Mon. Oct. 17, 2011 10:18 pm

.DOC | 64.5KB | Coal Gun Installation Check List 12.7.09 .doc

lsayre · Post by **lsayre** » Mon. Oct. 17, 2011 10:19 pm

McGiever wrote:Was this factory wired the way you have described?

I didn't change any wiring, though I did change the setpoint temperatures. Originally I thought the L4006A was for the high/high limit (emergency cut off safety) and the L4081B was for the high (or standard operating) limit. Darren at AHS told me just today in a phone call while I was at work that it is actually the other way around and the L4006 should be set to the desired operating limit, and the L4081B should be set at least 10 degrees higher than the L4006A. By the time I got home to make the setpoint changes the fire was out.

Yanche · Post by **Yanche** » Mon. Oct. 17, 2011 10:23 pm

The AHS design does not have a "keep fire alive" timer. It depends on direct radiation loss from the boiler vessel to lower the boiler water temperature to the aquastat low set point. This in turn will turn on the combustion blower. I have set back room thermostats on all but one of my zones. I do not use them when using my AHS 130, only when using my oil boiler.

My AHS boiler uses the grate timer method for ashing control. When AHS first announced the "thermograte" method, I thought it was control system for preventing out-fires. It is not, it is simply a ashing controller. A modern electronics implementation of the Axeman Anderson mechanical control.

What is needed is to use the thermocouple as a temperature sensor for a custom PID controller. One programmed with long time integration time constants. The time constants needed are many many minutes, on the order of the time for the coal fire to go out. The standard off the shelf PID thermocouple controller AHS uses can not be set to long time constants. It's has much, much shorter time constant capability, e.g., like that needed for a coffee pot plate warmer.

When I had my boiler back to AHS I had them install a thermocouple. Sensor only. Making a custom PID controller is on my ever expanding to do list.

ValterBorges · Post by **ValterBorges** » Mon. Oct. 17, 2011 10:24 pm

What kind of bizare control are you guys using?

You're making me want to go make a video so you guys can review and pick apart everything.

ValterBorges · Post by **ValterBorges** » Mon. Oct. 17, 2011 10:26 pm

Yanche,

So based on what you hear what do you think is going on?

What do you think about the wiring?

lsayre · Post by **lsayre** » Mon. Oct. 17, 2011 10:27 pm

Valter, I just noticed that your boiler is referenced in your SIG and in your information section as an S250. Should that be an S260?

ValterBorges · Post by **ValterBorges** » Mon. Oct. 17, 2011 10:28 pm

It's the Connecticut Model ask Yanche.