need coal fired steam heat boiler

coldguy · By: **coldguy** On: Tue Feb 12, 2008 2:58 pm

Looks like it had an ashpan door at one time, at the base under the main door, but looks like they sealed it over.

LsFarm · By: **LsFarm** On: Tue Feb 12, 2008 3:03 pm

Almost for sure it was a hand feed boiler at one time, the grates were removed, and the stoker mechanism installed, and the refractory cement cast around the burnpot, covering the old grates and shaker mechanism...

Have you got 'hold of 'oilman' yet?? Or decided if the boiler is watertight and able to handle some steam pressure.??

clean up the area around the burn pot, vacuum out the vent holes in the burn pot, fire it up and see if you get lots of air out of the vent holes... Then we'll see if it can make heat... Oh, you still need to clean out the tubes and seal off the end of the boiler at the chimney...

Gonna be interesting..

Greg L.

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gregolma · By: **gregolma** On: Tue Feb 12, 2008 5:23 pm

Burn some in your charcoal grill over a small wood fire. If it churns out black smoke and smells like old tires burning, then its bituminous. Anthracite doesn't smoke and smells a bit sulphery.

Syracuse is pretty close to the Anthracite fields. The Lackawanna went there. The Lehigh Valley and the NY,O&W almost got there as well. The Erie could have shipped there also.

coldguy · By: **coldguy** On: Tue Feb 12, 2008 9:12 pm

i burnt a bunch of it in a wood/coal furnace i had in a different house about 10 years ago...it was hard to get going, and smelled sulphury, nothing like tires burning...does bituminous light up easy? cause this stuff was definitely not easy to light up

coldguy · By: **coldguy** On: Tue Feb 12, 2008 9:29 pm

haven't got ahold of oilman yet...will try now.

LsFarm · By: **LsFarm** On: Tue Feb 12, 2008 9:48 pm

Bituminous is fairly easy to light, anthracite is usually pretty difficult to light in a fireplace.. If it didn't have lots of black sooty smoke, then it probably is anthracite...

Anthracite will burn just fine in the iron fireman stoker, but the ash will be more work to clean out of the firebox... Bituminous ash fuses together with heat and makes clinkers.. they look like glued together pieces of burnt coal. Anthracite coal will usually not form clinkers that are solid enough to pick up in one piece, they fall apart.. So the loose powdery ash will need to be shoveled out of the firebox.

Removing the ash from the firebox will be more work than removing a few large hard bituminous clinkers, but the good news is that the boiler will be much cleaner inside and not get sooted up from the bituminous smoke/soot.

Greg L

coldguy · By: **coldguy** On: Wed Feb 13, 2008 12:52 am

well im thinking anthracite then. Where my house is, about 25 miles west of where the bldg with the boiler is, there is a coal fired power plant on the lake, and every day the train goes past the front of my house with about 100 railcars of coal from pa to the powerplant. Must be anthracite they are bringing in on the train for the power plant up the lake.

In your previous post where you were talking about starting it up, what were you referring to about sealing off the end of the boiler at the chimney? You lost me there...

Richard S. · By: **Richard S.** On: Wed Feb 13, 2008 1:12 am

They don't use anthracite in power plants except whats reclaimed from refuse, at least as far as I know. Too expensive.

Another way you could probably easily check is simply wash it off, if you can roll it around in you hands after washing it without getting a significant amount of dirt on your hands you have anthracite. With a very high quality piece there will be none.

Berlin · By: **Berlin** On: Wed Feb 13, 2008 1:35 am

much bituminous coal after washing will not dirty your hands if you rub it around. here's what might have happened; bituminous coal after a long period of exposure to air will lose much of its volitile content and energy, it becomes like a low heat output version of anthracite. This is likely what happened with your coal. i've gotten my hands on some 50 year old bituminous coal that has little heat output, is worse than anthracite to get started, and barely burns in general; this may be what you have; as it is highly unlikely that that boiler burned anthracite, at least after the stoker was added. there is LOTS of old bituminous coalburning equiptment in NYS for large buildings/industry etc. including all over the adirondacks, fingerlakes region and syracuse.

coldguy · By: **coldguy** On: Wed Feb 13, 2008 1:57 am

makes sense, that coal has been sitting around there for a long, long time. It definitely crunched up under my foot very easily today.

Richard S. · By: **Richard S.** On: Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:30 am

Berlin wrote:much bituminous coal after washing will not dirty your hands if you rub it around. .

I gotta stop assuming things and keep my mouth shut. Don't look that way on TV. :lol:

coldguy wrote: It definitely crunched up under my foot very easily today.

It shouldn't crush ver easily at all if it's anthracite. You realy need hammer to break it or a big dam boot and lot weight.

stoker-man · By: **stoker-man** On: Wed Feb 13, 2008 7:00 am

It is also claimed by many experienced people in the coal business that anthracite also loses some of its heating power when exposed to air.

magikk · By: **magikk** On: Wed Feb 13, 2008 8:56 am

Hey there,I used to fore some big coal boilers at one of our older schools.They had stokers & blew air up around the fire pot.They were for bit coal.We always used washed pea stoker coal.Well at least thats what we bid, but since it always came down to saving money we ussually got crap.Watch out for rocks in the coal they'll jam the auger or shear transmission pins.Like lsfarm said we used to switch them off & let them cool for about a half hour then after the clinker cooled they stuck together then we'd breakem up with a big poker then drag them out with a hook.Then you'd shovel the hot coals over to one side then shovel out the ashes off of the bottom of the boiler.I Don't miss those boilers too much I ran them for 16 years that was enough.One other thing you may want to check.I'm not sure if anyone mentioned this or not is your pop off valves for overpressure.You don't want these stuck they relese excess pressure incase you over fire.Good Luck Mike

LsFarm · By: **LsFarm** On: Wed Feb 13, 2008 9:50 am

Hi coldguy, I meant start up the iron fireman, that is flip the switch and make the motor/fan run.. You want to check that mice haven't made nests and clogged the tubes/fans/flappers/airways etc... My Iron Fireman had several nests in the tubes and fan.. Made real mess when I first ran the fans..

As for sealling it off... what I meant, is that in the third from last photo you posted, it shows what appears to be the boiler smoke outlet with some kind of tubes/heat exchanger in a large horizontal tube arrangement, then on top if this large tube is the chimney flue pipe exiting the boiler... The end of the large tube appears to be open to the flue pipe... so I assumed that there is some kind of cover or access plate that covers the end of the large tube, sealing off the boiler from the boiler room ???? Maybe I need to see a close-up of the chimney flue arrangement..

If you were able to crush the coal underfoot, then I'd say it is soft coal, bituminous coal. I can stand on a golf ball size piece of anthracite and twist and turn and only grind a little coal off the bottom of the piece... I can't crush it into powder or numerous pieces, it is too hard... another comparrison I did when I had bituminous around was to take a 3" piece of bituminous and a 3" piece of Anthracite... using an 18# splitting maul, held 6" above the bituminous piece, I dropped the maul on the coal. The coal broke into 6-8 pieces, and lots of fines [powdery coal]. When I dropped the same maul from the same height on the piece of anthracite, I heard a 'clink' and the maul fell over, the anthracite was pretty much untouched, a small flake or two had popped off the bottom, but the piece was 99% intact. HARD stuff.

Yes if the coal is old it may be very hard to ignite, I had forgotten about this.

Greg L

coldguy · By: **coldguy** On: Wed Feb 13, 2008 1:19 pm

the heat exchanger: Ok, the photo you were looking at is with the door t(o the big horizontal heat exchager0...open. The two photos following show the same section of the heat exchanger, but with the door shut. I just opened the door for that one photo so everyone could see the tubes in there. I'm assuming thats just an access door to clean out those tubes?

need coal fired steam heat boiler

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