Hybrid Boiler Project

Darn it! It turned my pictures sideways again! Sorry guys

Very nice Bill. EFM should have done it that way right from the start.

Decided to add an a zone to the 2nd floor of the house, wish I had done this sooner, it works great!

This is a cool thread. Nice work.

Thats one sweet install. Go big or go home.

Hey Bill! Nice install. I think the circ pump isn't mounted right though. They are supposed to be parallel to the floor instead of verticle. How does that GJ stoker burn the Kentucky bit? Do you have to pull a clinker out or does it burn the same as anthracite?

I can rotate the pump easily, thanks for the suggestion.

The pot rotates and the blade shears off any clinker or fused ash, It burns very nice, but admittedly If I could get anthracite at a decent price I would burn it over BIT, Anthracite is about 240.00 a ton here and I get Bit for $100.00 a ton delivered.

Look into a tractor trailer load directly from Lehigh.

BK, you've been running this unit for a few years now, How's your fuel mileage? How many tons per year?

-Don

average about 8-10 tons year

You are the one of the few guys here burning Bit with a anthracite stoker. It burns well? Does it smoke bad? Any thing not the same as anthracite? Getting coal for 40% is sweet. I want to know about it. I happened to aquire a stoker like yours and want to know what to expect. Any feedback at all would be great.

It burns well but you don't usually get a nice mushroom head of coal on the burner, one of the biggest problems is getting pea stoker bit somewhere around 1-1/4x3/4 inch in size, I had to get a bin auger 2-3/4 inch in size so the flights would be big enough to carry the coal.
Also stoker bit needs a coke button of 2 or less or else the coal will coke badly, form a coke tree and fall out of the pot taking the fire with it. The rotating pot seems to help.

It smokes very little under a full fire but smokes heavily when it reaches the target temp and shuts the blower off, usually only last a couple of minutes until the natural draft equalizes with the burning coal, (smells good to me). Bit does not idle as well as anthracite, but that's a small tradeoff.

Doesn't idle as well. You have to increase timer settings? More frequent timer settings? How about cleanings? Is there a lot of fly ash like anthracite? Does your coal burn completely?

Idle timer set for 1 minute every 15 minutes.

Less fly ash than anthracite I think, but I have really good bit coal most of the time, I clean out the ash chamber twice a year and have never cleaned the chimney.

Yes the coal burns completely, at first we thought it was making coke but I took a bucket of it inside and threw it on an anthracite fire in my hitzer insert and it did nothing, didn't even glow, the ash seems to fuse if idled for a long time, but its not a problem.