Burning Too Much Coal?

heres the rundown of the system, keystoker ka-6 boiler is in the shop, 60 ft away piped primary secondary to the baseboard in house, another primary secondary loop in the house. 2 pumps run continuously, boiler pump and secondary loop to the house. pump on secondary loop in the house is run off zone controller. radiant floor in the shop is primary secondary off the return side off the house controlled off an HBX controller. I don't think the radiant has had a call for heat yet, set at 50. I am burning about 50, to 60 lbs a day keeping the house at 70 (small 1200' ranch). I thought this was slightly high. feed rate is 15 turns back, rice coal. the timer is set at 4 pins every 15 mins as left from factory. min 150 hi 180 on aquastat its really not cold out yet, cold at night and in the morning. I was expecting to use less any ideas on tunning up effiency of this system. is the secondary loop to the house too much water to keep warm? is that putting a constant load on the boiler? return temps look good less than 10 degree difference after running a couple mins.

Have you check your draft with a manometer? I'm burning 30 lbs of rice a day for past couple of days heating DH and keeping 2400 sq ft house at 72. I have a total pipe run of 310 ft from house boiler to Keystoker in shop.

No thats the only step I skipped

Do you have a barometric damper to moderate your draft? Are you seeing a lot of partially burnt to unburnt coal in your ashes?

Does the boiler just maintain the low limit setting? Or do you have the TT terminals jumped?

I have a damper installed no draft meter theres about a one inch gap on the bottom partially open aquastat maintains low limit little to no unburnt coal

What is the weight setting on the baro?

Even if the shop isn't calling for heat, all of the radiant heat from the boiler is going into the shop. Between the heat going into the shop, the ground, and your house...50 lbs isn't "off the page". I burn 20-25 lbs per day just to keep the boiler running and provide domestic hot water.

When I first started running my system I was going to keep the loop to my house hot. Big energy waster. I ran a low voltage wire between the house and shop in a conduit just for low voltage wires. (phone and internet run there also).

I wired auxiliary contacts to the pump controllers and the boiler. Works like this:

House calls for heat and closes the aux contact in the house. That contact fires the loop pump for the house that is in the shop. That loop pump relay has a contact that closes TT on the boiler and fires the boiler and pump. Shop system has similar dry contact wired in parallel to the TT on the boiler. Either calls, the boiler fires up, otherwise idles at 140 deg. I don't always need 180 to heat the house and the lower water temp minimizes heat loss from the boiler and piping.

I would recommend a few dollars in controls or the coal usage in the mild weather will be high.

ya I was guessing that was the problem. so I think this is what im going to try and do, use c1, c2 to feed the pump during the fall, and jump it out with a 3 way switch have contsant power on the other side for when winter kicks in and we really need some heat. ill let ya know how I make out

Changed controls so that the house loop only runs on heat call but im still heating that loop don't kno if im getting ghost flow thru that secondary loop if I run the main pump on the boiler only on heat calls will the hot water gravity feed thru the pump and check-trol ?

It is possible your main pump is causing flow in the other circuit. I would run them both on demand.

Changed both pumps to run on a heat call put both on a 3 way to run constantly during winter if it becomes necesary

Let us know how the change impacts your daily consumption.

Just checked on it this morning deff waaay less maybe 10 lbs all night and the floor was running because I forgot to turn the t stat down