Royall Model 6526 Any Good?

I've got a Royall coal/ wood boiler model 6526. I think its from the mid 80's. It looks like its in good shape still. I've been in my house for 8 years and have always wanted to use it but i'm not sure if its worth the trouble. My house was built in the early 60's and is about 2000 sq. ft. I will need to plumb it in to my newer propane boiler and I need to have my chimney checked out and possibly install a s.s. liner. Does anyone have any experiance with this model? Was it any good when they were new? I am alittle hesitant to use it because I work odd hours and wouldnt want to have to relight it constantly. Also leaving it unattended wories me. On the other hand I would love to save some fuel costs, and being in the basement I think the radiant heat will benifit my kitchen, living room and living space in the basement. Am I wrong? Will the outside get supper hot? Sorry for all these newb questions.

Not familiar with that product but the first issue is if it's suitable for coal. It's common for some "dual" fuel units to be very problematic with coal because they are primarily designed for wood. You can burn wood in coal stove but you can't burn coal in a wood stove.

Ideally you want a deep firebox with straight sides and all the air coming from underneath. Here is the EFM wood/coal boiler and is great example of a unit that will burn coal well. If you have something like this you're on the right track:

I just checked. The brick sides are at a 45 degree angle and the blower fan is on the front above the area of the brick. I really don't want to burn wood, I want to stick to coal. I hope this thing will work.

vdubnut wrote:I just checked. The brick sides are at a 45 degree angle and the blower fan is on the front above the area of the brick. I really don't want to burn wood, I want to stick to coal. I hope this thing will work.

Sounds like you have a wood burner... Photos would be quite useful....

dj

I took pics but need to figure out how to post. After further inspection I see there is a plenum on the inside to direct the air from the blower fan down into the ash pan and under the shaker grating. So I can get air flow under the bed of coal. I cleaned out alot of unburnt coal (i have not used or cleaned since moving here). It was approx 1 inch in size, some bigger, some smaller. I'm not sure if that is the best size for using in this?

You want to burn nut or stove size coal in your handfed firebox.
Your sucess in burning coal will depend on the available draft from your chimney, how tall and what flue size is your chimney?

Read the section about starting a fire in a handfed stove.

Keep the air over the fire air vents closed, you want all air to come up through the grates, If any air can get around the fire, it will reduce the fire's heat output and make it difficult to control the fire or even get it to burn at all.

Keep us informed on your burning experiences.

Greg L.

Thanks for the info. I need some good weather to measure the chimney, but its on the to do list. The outlet from the boiler is an 8" collar but the hole is 6". Is bigger better for draft? I suspect the chimney height to be 15-18 feet.

Hopefully these help. I'm staying positive here but honestly what do you think?

Looks a lot like a Clayton or US Stove design to me. Can't tell how the slope of the firebrick compares to those. With the brick sloped like that coal will be harder to burn than in a stove that has vertical firebrick. There are threads on here discussing the tricks to get coal to burn well in Clayton's and US Stove's I would start there and see what has worked and use those methods for your stove to see if it will react the same.

You may need to poke and scrape the ash along the sides to get it through the grates if your shaker grate is not aggressive enough.

One thing I seem to remember is that they needed a fan pushing air into the ash pan area to increase air flow through the coal bed so it burns well.

Thanks for the info. I will search those brands. The air flow from the fan is directed through a plenum down into the ash bin to feed the bottom of the fire. When the shaker grating is to one side the opening is about on inch wide. Is that agressive enough?

Yes that fire box shape is very close to the the Clayton furnace I'm using. The only difference I see is the grate system, mine has a grate that rocks on its center axis (shaker handle movement is left to right) where yours looks like you thrust it back and forth by pushing and pulling - is that right? At any rate yes the sloped sides do accumulate ash and I agree would probably be better vertical. I've managed with some learning and expirementing to deal with it as many here have. I'm very pleased with the performance of my furnace, and with some tweaking and small modifications, I'm sure you too can be successful burning coal in yours. By the looks of that grate system you will need to be careful shaking ash so you don't get coal stuck in it or have alot falling into the ash pan. I have no forced draft on mine. As long as you have decent draft on the chimney and use a poker from underneath to make air passages up thru the coal bed I think you will do just fine Thats where I would start. I'll try to attach what my grate looks like.

vdubnut wrote:Thanks for the info. I will search those brands. The air flow from the fan is directed through a plenum down into the ash bin to feed the bottom of the fire. When the shaker grating is to one side the opening is about on inch wide. Is that agressive enough?

I think you will have to try it out to see if it shakes well enough to clear the ash effectively. You may have to experiment with nut and stove sized coal to see if one size burns better than the other. The draft your chimney pulls will be a big factor in how it performs and each install is different in that regard.

No better way to find out than to fire it up and see what happens!! Get a couple hundred pounds of each size and try it out so your investment is small until you see what works best.

Measure the size of the rectangular holes in the grates.. in the posted photo, it looks like nut would fall right through, I'm thinking these are grates for burning wood. the grate's holes look to be 1.5" by 4" that's a pretty big slot, and most coal, even som stove would fall into and jam the sliding grates.

Greg L