Yellow Flame to Tri-Burner Conversion. What Do You Think?

The stoker ran for 35.5 hours since last Sunday, 5 days. That's 124.5 pounds, 24.9ounds per day. I removed 39 pounds of ash.
Might be the last full hopper! There might be a bit left in the auger. Even if there is, it's not likely I will make it til June 1st as I had hoped. I still have my funky basement coal. This weekend I will haul it up into ther bin, slice the bags open and see how much dirt, rocks and broken glass I can get out of it before I try putting it in the hopper!
-Don

The stoker ran for 19.8 hours over the past 3 days. That's 69.3 pounds, 23.1 pounds per day. I removed 22 pounds of ash.
Today I put the last of my good coal in the hopper. This was the last of the 9 tons I have bought and been using since Sept 14, 2014. I filled the rest of the hopper with 10 to 15 pounds of the funky junk coal I had in the basement. This stuff will burn but it has a lot of dust, sand, rocks, dirt and wood in it. We will see how that goes. I guess next weekend I will go and get some more coal.

-Don

The stoker ran for 25.3 hours over the past 5 days. That's 88.5 pounds, 17.7 pounds per day, WOW! I hope I did the math right! I very much like being under 18 pounds per day! I removed 36 pounds of ash.
I picked up 20 bags of coal today. I'm not a fan of bagged coal at all but, I need to do some changes to my coal bin before I load it up again and bagged coal is easier to move. -Don

I LOVE MY INDIRECT WATER HEATER!!!

Because I am trying to burn some junk coal I have lying around I had an outfire. There was a lot of coal in the pan this morning so it must have been during the night.

This afternoon I did 5 loads of launry, washed some dishes and a few other things. About 5:00 or so I lit the burner back up. Water temp was 90 degrees. I REALY needed to take a shower at this point, hot, humid here today and I was fithy. I was not expecting to get much hot water, as it turnned out, I had a nice long hot shower! The burner was out for at least 14 hours at that point AND I had used a lot of hot water during the day! All I can say is WOW!.
I turned the feed rate up 2 turns to try to make it through this junk coal. Kind of a silly day, I serviced my AC system and turned it on. I re-lit the boiler and since I have bagged coal now, I fired up the Rocketstove to burn the bags. Just for fun, I pushed the EFM outside and fired it up! I removed the Westfield grain auger and sat it in the coal bin. Hopefuly I will be using the EFM stoker next winter! I should also say the this auger system worked very, very well for me. Some bagged coal and some junk coal in the bin. I need to do some re-designing of my coal bin to make it hold more coal and be easier to fill. I also need to figure out how to plug the EFM into it.

-Don

Dude... It would be pretty cool to have you as a neighbor

Lightning wrote:Dude... It would be pretty cool to have you as a neighbor

Nah,,,, he would drink all the beer

Rocket stove needs a water coil in it to grab some heat.

McGiever wrote: Rocket stove needs a water coil in it to grab some heat.

Good Idea! At this point the Rocketstove is more reliable than the stoker.

Yes, another outfire! It was out when I checked before I went to bed last night. I'm starting to think it might be the new bagged coal. As I have said before, I am not a fan of bagged coal, I don't know how people put up with it!

This bagged coal that I have has been sitting in a dry garage since last June, and it is still damp!

I'm going out to dig everything out of the hopper. Then I will try just the bagged coal that has been sitting out drying for a couple days.

The EFM doesn't seem to mind the the junk coal/bagged coal mix. -Don

One way to speed up the drying of wet/damp coal is to increase the surface area of the coal exposed to the air (stacked or in a bin is bad) one way is to allow air circulation through coal bin (through 3" or 4" buried pipe with perforation holes with or without forced air)
Another way is a 150*F buried pex or metal pipe loop circulated through bottom of pile.

Another task for the Rocket Stove???

McGiever wrote:One way to speed up the drying of wet/damp coal is to increase the surface area of the coal exposed to the air (stacked or in a bin is bad) one way is to allow air circulation through coal bin (through 3" or 4" buried pipe with perforation holes with or without forced air)
Another way is a 150*F buried pex or metal pipe loop circulated through bottom of pile.

Another task for the Rocket Stove???

Oh man, that would be neat! Rocketstove/Boiler/Coal Dryer!

-Don

I cleaned out the hopper, vacumed out under the grate, pulled the carpet and vacumed that. Then I vacumed the bottom of the hopper and the grate. I also poked a screwdriver through the holes in the grate. Other than some fines under the carpet, I didn't find any real problems. Even the coal at the bottom of the hopper was dry and fairly clean.

I fired it up again. Boiler temp was down to 80 degrees. Been running for an hour now, fire looks good and pretty even. We'll see how it goes after it has to idle for a long time. I didn't fill the hopper all the way yet. A bucket of the bagged coal that has been laying spread out on the coal bin floor for 2 days. It's fairly dry now. This bucket came out of the bottom of the hopper. It is nice and dry, it is also pretty clean, It will go back in. I have figured out that I can use the EFM to blow the dirt and dust out of this coal and at the same time, collect the fines under the pot. That should clean up the junk coal!

EFM S20 stoker / Coal Processor.

Dirty dusty coal goes in. Fairly clean coal comes out! The bricks keep the coal going into the ash tubs. If the coal falls off the front or the back it misses the tubs. I could probobly use this to dry coal to? -Don

StokerDon wrote: I have figured out that I can use the EFM to blow the dirt and dust out of this coal and at the same time, collect the fines under the pot.

Seems like it might be more efficient to just run the coal over a piece of 1/8" hardware cloth. 20x as fast, equally or more thorough, less grinding of coal.

Mike

Pacowy wrote:

StokerDon wrote: I have figured out that I can use the EFM to blow the dirt and dust out of this coal and at the same time, collect the fines under the pot.

Seems like it might be more efficient to just run the coal over a piece of 1/8" hardware cloth. 20x as fast, equally or more thorough, less grinding of coal.

Mike

Good point Mike. The worn out auger and feed pipe are grinding the coal, creating more fines.

It was fun though!

I need to stop having fun with the EFM so I can take it apart and get it ready for it's next boiler.

-Don

I did a little cleaning up in my coal operation today. The next time I have several hours to spend out here, I need to get the Losch taken apart, clean it up and take it to the welder. I think while he is welding my grind leak, I will have him weld a plate over the domestic coil area. I don't want that to ever leak again!
Opressively hot and humid here today. 92 degrees in the garage. I put a divider in my bin and shoveled all the junk coal to the back. I unbagged the rest of the coal and spread it out in the front part of the bin. I put a fan in there to blow across it to help dry it out. The Rocketstove ate all the nasty bags. The nice thing about the Rocketstove is it burns at such a high temperature, there is very little to no smell. I got about 2 buckets out of my EFM coal processor. Everything is cleaned up and put away now. Ready for another work week. later on I will finish filling the hopper on the Yellow Flame. Hopefuly I can make it through the week with no outfires!

-Don

The stoker ran for 19.7 hours over the past 2 days. That's 68.9 pounds. This is irrelivent as a lot of that run time there was no fire lit. 2 outfires over the weekend, one during the night. I didn't bother weighing the ash as I put an empty pan in this morning.
I got a little carried away filling the hopper. Still idling!!! -Don