Newbie with Williamson Furnace and Rheen stoker questions.

Hi all! I am pleased to find a community dedicated to coal heating. I live in south eastern Idaho and coal heat is pretty much a lost form of heating here. Consequently, there aren't many service people around that can service my units or teach me how to do it myself. I have a Williamson Flo-Warm furnace and a Rheem stoker. Both I believe were installed in the 30's. I need to find a resource to help me maintain and repair both units. Can anyone help or direct me to literature that covers these units? Thanks in advance for any help!

Big Al

Hello Al, welcome to the forum.
first, a question: is your unit a Furnace [makes hot air] or a boiler? which makes hot water??

I'm afraid you may have to roll up your sleeves and get dirty,, like you said, burning coal is a lost art, and even in the east where coal was very common,
there are not a lot of good repairmen anymore,

Do a google search for Pease Feed and hardware, ro variations on Pease, Combsutioneer, Stokermatic. There used to be a retailer and repair
company that was something Pease they had a lot of parts and info about Bituminous and Sub Bit burning units. they were located in Wyoming or montana..

I'll try a search and see what i can find.

If you can post a few photos of the units, both the stoker and the whole setup,, with name and number plates if you can.

Stay warm @@

Greg L

Found it: www.peasefeedandcoal.com

they are in Wyoming, but most reports are they they know who can fix coal burning units..

Good luck, let us know how it works out..

Greg L

Welcome!

It sounds like you may have a good set-up there which, with a little effort/tending and maintenance, will be very economical heat for you.

Is this furnace currently running?

If you are "handy" you could maintain this unit yourself.

The first thing I would do is check the oil in the stoker transmission. There should be a "fill" plug that you can take out and try to see if the oil is level with the bottom of the plug hole (a flashlight will help see the oil level). If you cannot see the oil, or if you determine that it is low on oil, 90 weight SAE oil would need to be added.

Next I would look for oiling ports on all the motors on the unit and oil them with 3in1 oil.

If this is an existing installation in a house or something that you now own, I wouldn't change any air settings or anything else (yet) because they're probably set close to where they need to be.

It would be good if you would post closeup photos of the stoker and furnace so we can give you more instructions on how to clean ash ect. from the different parts of the furnace.

Where in SE Idaho are you? I frequently travel to the Logan(UT) area which wouldn't be too far from you.