Say Hello to My Little...

....pool heater (coal fired, of course)
It's labeled Werner Foundry 16. I guess it's an oversized bucket a day heater. I picked it up for $100 (list price) from an older couple on a farm. They said they used it in the house up until last year. I started it on w@#d in the morning around 9:30, let that go a while until there was a decent bed, threw some non-anthracite on, then loaded it with anthracite. I just opened the pool this past Thursday. I have the pump running into the filter, on the filter discharge I mad a manifold so I can either run all the water through the heater, or have it as a side stream and mix the return stream to the pool. Water temp was 64 when I started, It's up to 73 now. The pool, if I remember right, is about 12000 gallons, so I think it's working pretty well considering the volume I'm trying to heat. Most of the coal I'm burning in it was picked (free), so I only spent the money for the heater, and some pvc and steel pipe and fittings. My wife had her doubts, but I think she's coming around to my way of thinking.

NICE!

Ah yes, American ingenuity

Very inventive PG. I had thought of doing the same thing to my pool, but this winter did a job on it, and not sure if it's fixable. I heard of a guy using an old chevy 6 cylinder P.U to heat his pool. Plumbed the hoses through the engine cooling system, and let the eng. idle while it pumped the water from the filter, through the eng. and back to the return. I don't know how many BTUs to the gallon it got tho.

That's awesome!

My buddy and I argued for about 2 or 3 hours back and forth about the best way to run it. The pump puts out 66 gpm (label, so it varies on how clean the filter is.) If you run the full flow through the heater, the jacket temp isn't very impressive. If you throttle the mix valve, you can get the jacket temp up and hold it around 100 (probably more, but 100 was our arbitrary chosen temp.) I say that you only get X amount of heat transfer through the wall, no matter what the flow is, so you may as well put the full flow through even though it doesn't really look like you're gaining anything on the temp gauge (which is very old any in increments of 10, so not very accurate.) He says that keeping the jacket temp up is better, and mixing it into the cold stream gets the same temperature rise going back into the pool. If I had temperature gauges on the inlet, outlet, and return to the pool, I could get a definitive answer, but I don't, so anybody with an opinion, I'm all ears.

And, yes, we both know the best answer is forced draft and more heat, but I'm not heading down that road just yet

I like it and I'm getting this vision of a few add on features:

1 Fitting it with a Mica panel door......... Its going to be great to sit around on those cool nights.

2 Cooking plate on top

3 Cut the back out of an old gas grill and strap it on

4 Hmmmmmm ...........Copper kettle mounted on the back with condensation line ran behind the trees? A little White Lightning as a by-product for personal consumption.

Paulie

I have it set up as a test run, long term plan is to build a little shed around it and insulate everything. My buddy suggested a coil in the stack to suck more heat either as an additional stream or to pre or after heat. The outside of the jacket stays cool as long as there's flow through it. I have the white lightning under control, but that's a whole 'nother thread ha ha.

Shouldn't this be posted in "You might be a redneck if............" thread? I like it!

I work on the sophisticated side of the Blue Mountain (Lehigh Valley,) and when the guys I work with refer to me as a redneck, I politely correct them and explain that I'm a coal cracker. Both sides of my family are from Jim Thorpe and Nesquehoning pretty much from off the boat, so I have the birthright. I'd explain the differentiation more, but not really knowing the audience, I wouldn't want to offend any rednecks

Piney, that is awsume!!! You made my day! Old handfired boiler made into a pool heater. I have actualy though about doing this, only problem is, I don't have a pool. It is a great excuse to burn coal in the Summer though!

I hope you can hold a draft with that chimney! I guess thats why the ash door is opened.

-Don

Wife had doubts? She should have said so before she married you ...

That looks like something you find in the hills of West Virginia with some white lightning coming out one end!

Putting my engineering hat on:
Maximum delta T (difference in temperature) is one factor in maximizing heat transfer. But it also has a side effect of pulling too much heat out of your coal bed and exhaust. Low exhaust temp means low draft and a cooler fire.

Too much flow can also reduce heat transfer through fluid dynamic properties (turbulent verses laminar flow) Laminar flow has the best heat transfer characteristics.

You need to find a balance between flow and heat output from your fire. Not sure what temps that would come out to.

There are some equations that you can use to get there, but trial and error will get you there too!

oros35 wrote:That looks like something you find in the hills of West Virginia with some white lightning coming out one end!

Putting my engineering hat on:
Maximum delta T (difference in temperature) is one factor in maximizing heat transfer. But it also has a side effect of pulling too much heat out of your coal bed and exhaust. Low exhaust temp means low draft and a cooler fire.

Too much flow can also reduce heat transfer through fluid dynamic properties (turbulent verses laminar flow) Laminar flow has the best heat transfer characteristics.

You need to find a balance between flow and heat output from your fire. Not sure what temps that would come out to.

There are some equations that you can use to get there, but trial and error will get you there too!

And that's the way us rednecks do it

I'm not sure she knew the whole scope of what she was marrying beforehand.

I was worried about the draft with such a short stack, but it's burning surprisingly well. It's a very even burn, if that makes sense. Lots of rogue air leaking in, so I thought if it did burn, I'd have to close the ash door, but it's really staying nice. I do have the mpd closed about 3/4 to try and hold more heat in. I'm not educated on the fire side of locomotives, but they have a pretty short stack and can heat up without moving, so I figured the short chimney at least had a chance.