The Cold Weather Is Here!

Steamup,

I was going to respond to your comment that "even the railroads would help that freight over the hill with an extra engine rather than have all of the needed capacity connected constantly" by saying they'd only put in a helper district if there really was no other way. You've beaten me to the punch, however, with your observations about heat loss. To that I'd add that from my experience with a Mag stoker, I wouldn't be too concerned about running it harder, especially if the burn is being monitored and the stoker doesn't need to run hard often. Also, I know precious little about hot water systems, but it wasn't obvious why the tempering would be needed if the unit was only run on demand. Squeezing out a few more degrees of temperature differential seems like it could help.

Mike

Pacowy wrote:Steamup,

I was going to respond to your comment that "even the railroads would help that freight over the hill with an extra engine rather than have all of the needed capacity connected constantly" by saying they'd only put in a helper district if there really was no other way. You've beaten me to the punch, however, with your observations about heat loss. To that I'd add that from my experience with a Mag stoker, I wouldn't be too concerned about running it harder, especially if the burn is being monitored and the stoker doesn't need to run hard often. Also, I know precious little about hot water systems, but it wasn't obvious why the tempering would be needed if the unit was only run on demand. Squeezing out a few more degrees of temperature differential seems like it could help.

Mike

Mike

The idea of the tempering of the water to the water to air heat exchanger is to even out the coal boiler burn. I don't want to knock the coal boiler temperature too far down. It accomplishes more or less the same thing as a bypass loop on a boiler.

Temperature differential out of the system does no good if there is insufficient capacity at the boiler to add the heat back in. Coalkirks problem is that of generation, not delivery. The VF is a small boiler rated only at 95,000 BTUh input. How that was rated and under what conditions we are not told.

Generating a lower supply temperature typically increases the output of a boiler and increases its efficiency but too low a temperature creates other problems.

There are many solutions to the situation here. It seems to me a little selective zoning would be the simplest and cheapest solution.

-7.3* here this morning and windy. Must be -20* wind chill. BRRRRRRRRRRRRR. It's 72* in the house. Burned just under 3 ton so far since Sep 17. Another 3 1/2 months of winter to go here. We are half way there!

Here we go again...27 degrees and the wind is roaring in with a cold front, supposed to be 2 degrees by morning and -12 tomorrow night. 73 in the house.

A little warmer here, 22 tonight and 17 tomorrow night.

We started the day at 42° ... now 25°. At one point the average wind speed was over 10 mph. Lights flickered ... but shockingly we didn't lose power. We usually lose power when it RAINS .. let alone due to high winds.

Gusts on The Cape to 77 mph...
Down in HYA to 55 mph...
Just got down to 31*...

down to 17 here

Kinda balmy here this AM--18* looking for 2* tonight. Then it's supposed to get cold tomorrow.

19° here. Supposed to be only a high of 20 today. It's 71.2° in the house. Laser on the top of the stove reads 443° just behind the Hopper door. It was bloody windy all night.

I'm On Fire wrote: It was bloody windy all night.

Same here. Current windchill is around zero. I just went out to get the paper and "scurried" back to the house.

17 or 18 degrees around here also, depending upon which weather website I look at. High today of 22 to 25 degrees, likewise dependent upon who's doing the prognosticating. Lots of snow, with ugly drifts from the wind. Guess I'll be out running the snow blower sometime this morning.

Thankfully its toasty warm inside though.

Checking in at -5. Bright sunny day, looks pleasant from the warm side of the window.

That new auger pipe I installed on my EFM must be good and shiny on the inside by now...it has been running 30-40 minutes out of every hour. 73 in the house...including the bedrooms. Our "little guy" (Ivan) decided to get his first stomach bug and has been sick. He was cold last night so I just kept bumping the thermostat until he was comfortable.

Only got down to 11 last night, currently 15 degrees.
Hope the little guy feels better fast Rob.