Storing coal

So I am going to be purchasing a wl110 in the future and I am thinking about my coal storage. I plan to have the boiler by the end of this heating season, so I will be able to play with it in the summer and get used to it. I plan on building either a 4x4x8 or a 4x4x10 bin that will sit right along my driveway for my bulk storage, but until then would it be okay to just have it dumped in my driveway on a tarp and covered?

Here is my idea for my bulk coal storage bin, it would have removable boards on the front that I could take out to get my shovel in to shovel coal out, I would probably make it higher than what I drew in the picture and a little wider, there would also be a lid for it, I just didn't feel like drawing it. What do you think of this design?

Once my wheelbarrow is full, I will take it around back to my other bin/chute. This bin is going to be 2x2x4 and should hold around 800# of coal. The bin will be piped with 4" pipe directly to my hopper in the basement, right above the hopper there will be a valve that I can open when I need to fill the hopper, in total between my bin and hopper I should be able to hold around 1000# of coal at any time. The bin outside would have a removable lid, and a removable ramp that I would use to load the hopper by wheelbarrow.



The only concerns I have about this setup is the dust that would occur when filling my hopper inside, and my coal freezing in the bin outside if it is damp.

What do you guys think?

couple initial thoughts...
you will need a sloped floor in the smaller bin funneling the coal to your pipe

if damp it will freeze in the outside bin if cold enough

inside dust can be eliminated if you simply use a shop vac near the end of your pipe at the hopper or if you use the shop vac feed system wiz posted

i'd try as hard as possible to set it up so you aren't moving the coal from the driveway bin to the smaller bin...can't take delivery to the other side of the house?

No way possible to get to that side of the house with a vehicle, it is fenced in and quite a few obstacles to get around.

if I burn about 50# a day I should be able to get 20 days out of one fill bin of coal, and should take less than 4 wheel barrow fulls to fill it all. I could live with doing that little big of extra labor every 20 or so days. I could always build the bin a bit bigger to hold some more.

Your picture of your feed bin shows it being 4' long laying horizontal. I would change that to 2x2 flat and 4' high Like a big square barrel.

Do you have the room to recess it into the ground so you can just dump the wheel barrow?

I may be able to recess some of it into the ground, I need to have enough drop from the bin to my hopper to make sure it will travel through it correctly.

Are you going to be able to push your wheel barrow around when there is a foot of snow on the ground? Or when mud season starts?

My house has similar access issues. I considered storing the coal up at my barn and moving it down to the house as necessary. But when I considered those two questions, it became obvious that was not a workable solution for me. I ended up taking down a couple sections of fence for access and building a bin in the basement.

A few thoughts:

- one of the pics looks like it has elbows and a flat section of pipe. To get the coal to flow without augers, vacuums, etc. you need to maintain a fairly steep downward slope as straight as possible.

- I'd suggest getting the bulk delivery well ahead of the heating season, so it has plenty of time to dry.

- would it be possible to use a gravity wagon to handle the movement from the driveway to the back? If you fill it with a loader and move it when the ground is firm, you'd eliminate a lot of shoveling, trudging , etc. when conditions are bad. And those wagons funnel the contents to a door that could be rigged to accept an auger or pipe, so it could take the place of the bin altogether. (Note: even the small ones normally hold around 5 tons, but have no brakes. When loaded, they should be moved with care and with suitable equipment, particularly if there are any terrain issues.)

Mike

Thanks for the input guys.

Pete, I really don't have any other option with my house setup, I can't build a bin in my basement, and even if I did I would have to carry it from one end of the basement through the finished part and then into the boiler room. I have a snow blower, so if we get a lot of snow, which seems more rarer of an occurence every pass year now, I figured I could just clear a trail from my bin to the other bin.

Mike I just threw that drawing together, thats not actual dimensions and configuration of how it would actually be, just kinda a general idea. What I actually thought of doing would be 45 it out of the bottom of the container and run it through the wall at that angle right to the hopper, its all going to depend on location of my hopper.

A gravity wagon would be a great idea, if I could find one for cheap, I could make some sort of roof for it, fill it in my driveway, then drive it outback and park it and rig it up to the pipework that would flow into hopper inside. I like the way you think.

I don't know what I would move it with, I don't have a tractor, and all i have is a small chevy s-10, i don't know how well that would pull 5 ton of coal. My parents have a diseal powered new holland compact tractor, I think with 27hp, i don't know if that would pull it or not.

I could build a bin that held 1-2 ton and mount it on some wheels and have myself a gravity wagon of my own.

I used to use gravity wagons (with homemade roofs) to help with storing/moving/dispensing TL deliveries of bulk coal. I got some from a farm in the Hudson Valley, and brought in a couple of others from the midwest.

I think most of the movement issues depend upon the terrain. An S-10 could provide the tractive effort to move it on flat ground, but if there's any slope involved you'd need something beefier. The good news is that such moves likely would be infrequent.

Mike

I actually found a wagon frame that can hold up to 2200 pounds, measures 72"x48" I could build a 6x4x2 bin and it would hold a ton of coal, if I pitch it slightly to the back and put a door on the back with a chute I should be able to back it right up to the pipe, and rig up a removable enclose chute that I can attach when its time to refill. This would act as the temporary bin and would be mobile. I should be able to tow it around with my lawn mower, and wouldn't have to make my gate any bigger. My parents have a backhoe that I can use whenever, I would just have to make a bin that I could put the bucket right upto, open something and it would fill the bucket, the just dump it into my home made gravity bin.

That setup should give me well over a month of coal, what would even be better if I could build my bulk bin up high so I could drive my mini gravity bin right underneath and wah-lah filled mobile bin ready to go!

Or I could possibly build a big coal bin there, and have the coal delivered from the neighbors driveway via a long chute, that is the only way I could have it delivered to that side.

So, I never really had my first question answered, If I were to get my coal delivered in the summer, which I plan on doing would it stay dry in an outside bin that has a lid on it. I was talking to someone and they said I would have to keep my coal stored indoors or else it would get wet and I would lose a lot of btu output.

xandrew245x wrote:So, I never really had my first question answered, If I were to get my coal delivered in the summer, which I plan on doing would it stay dry in an outside bin that has a lid on it. I was talking to someone and they said I would have to keep my coal stored indoors or else it would get wet and I would lose a lot of btu output.

If the bin is ventilated and has drain holes in the bottom to allow water from a possible wet coal delivery to drain out then it will dry out over time.

Losing btu output from coal that is wet is not practically true. some energy is used to "dry" the coal, but generally the humidity levels in a house heated with coal is lower so the moisture from the coal hopper is migrating to the drier air. typically the coal i put in the hopper is damp, by the time it gets to the pusher block it is dry.

Thank you, thats what I thought, but I wanted to make sure.