bituminous stoker stove

My dad was over the other night and was grumping about how expensive his house was to heat this winter. He lives in a large old brick house that has a propane steam boiler for heat. When I was very small there was a bituminous underfeed stoker that fed a coal boiler but, the boiler just wore out (cracked) it was installed by my grandpa in the 30s so it had a good run. About 6 years ago before corn got expensive my dad put in a cornglow insert in a fireplace, well corn got evpensive now my dad is screwed he wants to find a stoker stove that can burn bituminous coal but they seem to not exist.

Does anyone have any ideas?

There are underfeed stoker mechanisms still available from the Wilburt company [google them]..
They bought the Iron Fireman company that made a lot of underfeed stokers.
These stokers were retrofit units to convert a hand fed boiler or furnace to stoker feed..
The Wilburt underfeed stoker is NOT inexpensive,
Ocassionally an Iron Fireman stoker unit will be found on ebay or on Craigslist.

Also there are small Bituminous furnaces, Combustioneer, and StokerMatic. both are out of production. but they do show up on Craigslist.com, and local
sales papers etc.. once in a great while on ebay.com

I'm moving this to the Bitumious section of the forum where it might get more attention.

Greg L

LsFarm wrote:There are underfeed stoker mechanisms still available from the Wilburt company [google them]..
They bought the Iron Fireman company that made a lot of underfeed stokers.
These stokers were retrofit units to convert a hand fed boiler or furnace to stoker feed..
The Wilburt underfeed stoker is NOT inexpensive,

Greg L

Not expensive is in your opinion. I priced a wilburt stoker a few years back and the quote was $4500.00. Not that it isn't worth it, but finding a boiler to marry it to was challanging. If you work with AHS, their multifuel boiler could be adapted to one of these stokers with some minor modifications.

As far as a Bit stoker stove, I have not seen one. Bit has varied burning characteristics and is difficult to engineer to. There are hand fired models out there.

This company seems to deal with Bit burning appliances-

http://www.peasefeedandcoal.com/

You may want to call and talk to them.

steamup wrote:Not expensive is in your opinion.

LsFarm wrote:The Wilburt underfeed stoker is NOT inexpensive

NOT inexpensive = expensive

I think he still has the stoker unit? I think, but it was/is big more that would be wanted for a room stove. The reason a propane boiler was put in was because he could not find a one pipe steam boiler for a solid fuel.

Thanks for the link.

Until you find something to convert the boiler, in the mean time get one of these. It will turn your frown upside down. This is a Florence Hot Blast. These stoves were designed expressly for burning Bituminous Coal. These are the best stoves ever made for burning soft coal.

I know where a large florance hot blast is its been there for years and is in good shape but, there is a problem with getting a chimney to it. All the flues in the house are 12x12 unlined soft brick except the lined flue for the steam boiler. The down stairs flues make a funny jog around the fire place above the upstairs fire places so a liner of any sort would be difficult. The corn stove insert has a 4 inch pipe that goes above the smoke chamber then its unlined from there on up.

i have a nice coalman underfed bit stoker boiler for sale