Need some help...what to buy?

First let me say... Thanks for the great wealth of information here! Ok...onto the problem before I run out of hair to pull out. I am currently heating a 3500 sq/ft shop and 2100 sq/ft house w/ a pellet furnace and a pellet stove. I am looking to heat an additional 1500 sq/ft of the shop and 1500 sq/ft of the house. Needless to say maintaining what I have now is the limit of the work I want to do. I would like to do an outdoor unit to keep the dirt outside. I am located in central PA so coal is readily availible. The shop and house are very well insulated. On the coldest of days I use 4 bags (160lbs total) of pellets for both locations. What would you buy and why? I can't seem to find an outside unit that lives up to all the "hype" the manufacturers claim. I know one thing... I only want to maintain one unit that is coal fired.

Thanks
Dennis

http://www.heatinn.com/coalman.html

- an outdoor coal stoker boiler with the capability to burn any low coke button bituminous coal.

Be patient my friend. We're having a bit of a cold snap here.

No kidding...12 degrees here right now!

Dennis,

Welcome to the forum.

What was used to heat the house before the pellet appliances ???




Rick

How far is the shop from house?

airflowdevelop wrote:First let me say... Thanks for the great wealth of information here! Ok...onto the problem before I run out of hair to pull out. I am currently heating a 3500 sq/ft shop and 2100 sq/ft house w/ a pellet furnace and a pellet stove. I am looking to heat an additional 1500 sq/ft of the shop and 1500 sq/ft of the house. Needless to say maintaining what I have now is the limit of the work I want to do. I would like to do an outdoor unit to keep the dirt outside. I am located in central PA so coal is readily availible. The shop and house are very well insulated. On the coldest of days I use 4 bags (160lbs total) of pellets for both locations. What would you buy and why? I can't seem to find an outside unit that lives up to all the "hype" the manufacturers claim. I know one thing... I only want to maintain one unit that is coal fired.

Thanks
Dennis

If its close enough you could look at the following running in shop. May need a few zones and some water to air heat exchangers

Efm 520 or 700
Ahs 260
aa 260
Ka6/8

A couple refurb efms maybe cheaper than the new unit + plumbing. They both could have independent bins outside.

PatriotCoal makes a 170k stove, and keystoker has 250k+ furnaces.
The shop only heated 12 hours?

thats alot of sqft. to heat. Do a heat loss calc.,and since you only want 1 heat source there will be alot of buried pipes, so you will need to find what heat loss is needed in those buried pipes also.Don't forget DHW. That will get you started and the experts will help from here. Dennis

The shop is within 50' of the house. For some strange reason I would rather use a hand fired boiler in place of a stoker (IE I can source large coal much cheaper). One other big concern is ash maintenance. I know some of the outside units require attention daily for dealing with ash. I would prefer to only deal with ash once a week max if possible.

Dennis

If you are intrested in a hand fired boiler look at the AHS boilers.They have multi fuel boilers with options of having a oil/propane/gas gun installed.I have a woc/55 and very pleased with it,easy to operate, shake, clean and don't have any problems burning coal.They have many different sizes avalible. http://www.alternateheatingsystems.com Dennis

EDIT:they are indoor boilers

airflowdevelop wrote:The shop is within 50' of the house. For some strange reason I would rather use a hand fired boiler in place of a stoker (IE I can source large coal much cheaper). One other big concern is ash maintenance. I know some of the outside units require attention daily for dealing with ash. I would prefer to only deal with ash once a week max if possible.

Dennis

on self ashing stokers you can.
You get 3 ash tubs put a black garbage bag on it and when you load the coal just swap tubs every 2-4 days. Then you can deal with it in 5 min, once a week.

How big we talking nut or stove?

I was kind of hoping to burn Egg. I am kind of intrigued by the AHS multi fuel. I might have to take a trip down the road and look at one. I wonder if they have them in operation on site?

Give them a call.When I picked mine up it was still at there old showroom and had no operating stoves that i saw.Where you located,your welcome to look at boiler if you want. Dennis

I was at the AHS factory before Christmas and the showroom has the multi fuel boilers on display along with the coal boilers, nothing operating on site that I saw. Several S500 units were in the loading area . With that much area to heat I think you would need a S500 with a augar and a large bin . I know most of the mines in central pa our bit coal and the AHS,EFM, and Keystokers burn antharacite.

Mac