New Boiler Build for New Steam System.

 
unhippy
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Stoker Coal Boiler: MK2 #1

Post by unhippy » Mon. May. 02, 2016 2:10 am

Got some more done after a period of not working on the boiler due to getting a Cold and not feeling like doing anything more than is absolutely necessary and getting a few breakdown call outs at work.

My sight glasses and other stuff turned up from the US.

I got the sight glass mounted, the separator baffle in and the top on.....next up is to do a hydro-test.....then cut the insulation to size and punch holes in it for all the penetrations.

Callum


 
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StokerDon
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Location: PA, Southern York County!
Stoker Coal Boiler: Gentleman Janitor GJ-5, Van Wert VA-600, Axeman Anderson130 X3.
Hand Fed Coal Furnace: Harman SF3500 reduced down to 3 grates connected to its own plenum
Coal Size/Type: Rice, Chestnut and whatever will fit through the door on the Harman
Other Heating: Noth'in but COAL! Well, Maybe a little tiny bit of wood

Post by StokerDon » Mon. May. 02, 2016 7:17 pm

Nice!

I'm glad something is getting done. It's been pretty dead around here lately.

-Don

 
unhippy
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Location: New Zealand
Stoker Coal Boiler: MK2 #1

Post by unhippy » Tue. May. 03, 2016 2:07 am

Summertime...its the domesticated pyro's graveyard shift.

I'm having to work on the boiler in between getting my real work done and sorting the usual domestic disasters.....todays one was a fitting blowing off a plastic waterpipe while I was at work.....fortunately it was outside......i just finished sorting it out about 10 minutes ago :roll:

Callum

 
unhippy
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Stoker Coal Boiler: MK2 #1

Post by unhippy » Fri. May. 13, 2016 7:44 am

I'm quietly progressing with the boiler.....current job is to make up the housing for the water feeder float valve.

I made an interesting discovery on the float valve i'm going to be using......the one thread on it that i'm going to use is a metric fine thread.....everything else on it is imperial, threads, spanner sizes, lengths etc all imperial.....and the thread for the bulkhead fitting part is a M14x1.5mm.....i was on the edge of having a spaz-out trying to match up the thread size and pitch to anything in the imperial sizes....

I think winter might have bypassed us....or is just running really late....it was 85F here on wednesday :shock: and has been consistently over 70F ever day .....we were having snow and other such nastys at this time last year.

Callum

 
unhippy
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Joined: Mon. Dec. 27, 2010 1:59 am
Location: New Zealand
Stoker Coal Boiler: MK2 #1

Post by unhippy » Sat. Oct. 29, 2016 7:58 am

Time for an update on the progress....after a period of no alot happening on the boiler and system apart from getting the radiators and mounting them on the walls its time to pull finger and get something done while i'm not going to get growled at for making a mess in the house.

On my front veranda is 3 lengths of 1 1/4" pipe and a bag of tees and elbow fittings with more to be picked up on monday morning.....

Because.....

While my fiancee is in japan I've taken a week off work to crawl around under and drill holes in the floor to fit the pipework to supply the 4 shiny new radiators that have been sitting on my walls for the last few weeks and also to make the base/floor for where i'm going to put the shed that the boiler is going to live in.

Once thats done I hope to have time to assemble the boiler enough to test fire it......and if everything magically falls into place I will start work on the condensate receiver tank and the float switch that I need to build for it...but I doubt that I will get that far

Callum

 
lzaharis
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Posts: 2366
Joined: Sun. Mar. 25, 2007 8:41 pm
Location: Ithaca, New York
Stoker Coal Boiler: Keystoker KAA-4-1 dual fuel boiler
Hand Fed Coal Boiler: former switzer CWW100-sold
Coal Size/Type: rice
Other Heating: kerosene for dual fuel Keystoker/unused

Post by lzaharis » Sat. Oct. 29, 2016 10:24 am

Hello Callum,

Good to hear of your progress. Here on my mountain on the western side of the Atlantic Pond the weather has been as finicky as a cat with a paw full of peanut butter.

We had a layer of wet heavy snow the other day that did not stay around very long.
It is supposed to rise into the 70's today being Saturday.

The traditional Farmers Almanacs forecast has been pretty much right on schedule and
some of us that are burning the "blessed" black rocks now have had snow but in
most places it has not stuck.

I have been burning dinosaur juice as the temps have not been conducive (very cold) to burning the sacred black rocks that I have stockpiled.

 
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lsayre
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Posts: 21781
Joined: Wed. Nov. 23, 2005 9:17 pm
Location: Ohio
Stoker Coal Boiler: AHS S130 Coal Gun
Coal Size/Type: Lehigh Anthracite Pea
Other Heating: Resistance Boiler (13.5 KW), ComfortMax 75

Post by lsayre » Sat. Oct. 29, 2016 10:56 am

How many sq-ft of heating surface will your new homemade boiler have? Have you tried calculating its potential Gross BTUH using my ballpark method?


 
unhippy
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Stoker Coal Boiler: MK2 #1

Post by unhippy » Sat. Oct. 29, 2016 5:54 pm

lsayre wrote:How many sq-ft of heating surface will your new homemade boiler have? Have you tried calculating its potential Gross BTUH using my ballpark method?
Its 28 sq-ft of heating surface....however I deliberatly undersized the burner to more closely match me current heating load so it only has a 20kw stoker in it......working on the theory that a bigger coal boiler can be downfired without 'too' much efficiency penalty and if I move house and need a larger boiler all I need to do is fit a larger stoker.

so based on the fact that it has a stoker that is able to put in 68'242btu x 0.75 = 51'181 output.....or 15kw output......my maximum load is 13kw at -10c outdoor temperature......and that only happens once every couple of years most of the time -6 is about as low as we go
lzaharis wrote:Hello Callum,

Good to hear of your progress. Here on my mountain on the western side of the Atlantic Pond the weather has been as finicky as a cat with a paw full of peanut butter.

We had a layer of wet heavy snow the other day that did not stay around very long.
It is supposed to rise into the 70's today being Saturday.

The traditional Farmers Almanacs forecast has been pretty much right on schedule and
some of us that are burning the "blessed" black rocks now have had snow but in
most places it has not stuck.

I have been burning dinosaur juice as the temps have not been conducive (very cold) to burning the sacred black rocks that I have stockpiled.
I was watching a thing on youtube the other day and the guy was bitching that at his place he had 3" of snow with more falling but his sister that lived 40 miles away over the other side of a range of hills was sitting on her deck drinking coffee in the morning sunshine.....

What temperature do you start burning the good rocks?

Callum

 
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lsayre
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Posts: 21781
Joined: Wed. Nov. 23, 2005 9:17 pm
Location: Ohio
Stoker Coal Boiler: AHS S130 Coal Gun
Coal Size/Type: Lehigh Anthracite Pea
Other Heating: Resistance Boiler (13.5 KW), ComfortMax 75

Post by lsayre » Sat. Oct. 29, 2016 6:48 pm

unhippy wrote:
lsayre wrote:How many sq-ft of heating surface will your new homemade boiler have? Have you tried calculating its potential Gross BTUH using my ballpark method?
Its 28 sq-ft of heating surface....however I deliberatly undersized the burner to more closely match me current heating load so it only has a 20kw stoker in it......working on the theory that a bigger coal boiler can be downfired without 'too' much efficiency penalty and if I move house and need a larger boiler all I need to do is fit a larger stoker.

so based on the fact that it has a stoker that is able to put in 68'242btu x 0.75 = 51'181 output.....or 15kw output......my maximum load is 13kw at -10c outdoor temperature......and that only happens once every couple of years most of the time -6 is about as low as we go

Callum
Sounds like you should be fine, but perhaps be marginal for the dual purpose case of providing for both home heating and DHW. We heated our home with a 13.5Kw resistance boiler (46,062 BTUH at both input and output) for 10 years before we switched to coal. On the coldest couple of days of the year (in some years) our house temperature would slowly drop a few degrees, so it was marginally undersized for us, but clearly not very much below our actual heat load. But other than a handful of times in 10 years, it performed just fine (though in the cost department it was a killer). We did keep our T-Stats set a few degrees F. lower back then, so at our current chosen T-Stat temperature of 70 F. (21.1 C) the 13.5Kw boiler likely would have struggled on a few additional days each year.

 
unhippy
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Stoker Coal Boiler: MK2 #1

Post by unhippy » Sat. Oct. 29, 2016 7:12 pm

The 13kw I quoted includes load for the DHW tank.....hopefully I haven't dropped the ball on crunching numbers :D

Callum

 
lzaharis
Member
Posts: 2366
Joined: Sun. Mar. 25, 2007 8:41 pm
Location: Ithaca, New York
Stoker Coal Boiler: Keystoker KAA-4-1 dual fuel boiler
Hand Fed Coal Boiler: former switzer CWW100-sold
Coal Size/Type: rice
Other Heating: kerosene for dual fuel Keystoker/unused

Post by lzaharis » Sat. Oct. 29, 2016 7:29 pm

unhippy wrote:
lsayre wrote:How many sq-ft of heating surface will your new homemade boiler have? Have you tried calculating its potential Gross BTUH using my ballpark method?
Its 28 sq-ft of heating surface....however I deliberatly undersized the burner to more closely match me current heating load so it only has a 20kw stoker in it......working on the theory that a bigger coal boiler can be downfired without 'too' much efficiency penalty and if I move house and need a larger boiler all I need to do is fit a larger stoker.

so based on the fact that it has a stoker that is able to put in 68'242btu x 0.75 = 51'181 output.....or 15kw output......my maximum load is 13kw at -10c outdoor temperature......and that only happens once every couple of years most of the time -6 is about as low as we go
lzaharis wrote:Hello Callum,

Good to hear of your progress. Here on my mountain on the western side of the Atlantic Pond the weather has been as finicky as a cat with a paw full of peanut butter.

We had a layer of wet heavy snow the other day that did not stay around very long.
It is supposed to rise into the 70's today being Saturday.

The traditional Farmers Almanacs forecast has been pretty much right on schedule and
some of us that are burning the "blessed" black rocks now have had snow but in
most places it has not stuck.

I have been burning dinosaur juice as the temps have not been conducive (very cold) to burning the sacred black rocks that I have stockpiled.
I was watching a thing on youtube the other day and the guy was bitching that at his place he had 3" of snow with more falling but his sister that lived 40 miles away over the other side of a range of hills was sitting on her deck drinking coffee in the morning sunshine.....

What temperature do you start burning the good rocks?

Callum
===========================================================================

At the rate things are going Callum, I will not be igniting any black rocks until it drops to the 20's and very low 30's Fahrenheit(52 Celsius on your side of the Pacific Pond?) and stays there. I am just going to wait a bit longer I guess.

All I have worry about now is whether the cad cell in the dinosaur juice burner is bad as it keeps kicking off even after I changed the 10 micron fuel filter that was good for 10K gallons of fuel. I may have a weak fuel pump after all these years too as I need to bleed air out of it every time it kicks off.
Last edited by lzaharis on Sun. Oct. 30, 2016 9:11 am, edited 1 time in total.

 
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StokerDon
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Posts: 7486
Joined: Mon. Nov. 11, 2013 11:17 am
Location: PA, Southern York County!
Stoker Coal Boiler: Gentleman Janitor GJ-5, Van Wert VA-600, Axeman Anderson130 X3.
Hand Fed Coal Furnace: Harman SF3500 reduced down to 3 grates connected to its own plenum
Coal Size/Type: Rice, Chestnut and whatever will fit through the door on the Harman
Other Heating: Noth'in but COAL! Well, Maybe a little tiny bit of wood

Post by StokerDon » Sat. Oct. 29, 2016 8:30 pm

unhippy wrote:Time for an update on the progress....

Callum
It's about time! Good thing I wasn't holding my breath!

You should test fire that stoker and do a video of it. Most of us in this part of the world have never seen one of those running.

-Don

 
unhippy
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Stoker Coal Boiler: MK2 #1

Post by unhippy » Sun. Oct. 30, 2016 12:42 am

lzaharis wrote: At the rate things are going Callum, I will not be igniting any black rocks until it drops to the 20's and very low 30's Fahrenheit(52 Celsius on your side of the Pacific Pond?) and stays there. I am just going to wait a bit longer I guess.
Lol 52 deg C is some Arab hunting in the desert temperatures :D ........i think you converted the temps backwards....32f/0c is freezing point

Callum

 
lzaharis
Member
Posts: 2366
Joined: Sun. Mar. 25, 2007 8:41 pm
Location: Ithaca, New York
Stoker Coal Boiler: Keystoker KAA-4-1 dual fuel boiler
Hand Fed Coal Boiler: former switzer CWW100-sold
Coal Size/Type: rice
Other Heating: kerosene for dual fuel Keystoker/unused

Post by lzaharis » Sun. Oct. 30, 2016 9:09 am

Well, I could not find my conversion table handily
as my eyes are still healing from the cataract surgery
Callum.

So, I tried and did not suceed as Albert Einstein used to
say rather than admit failure as admitting that you have
not yet succeeded does not allow for failure to intrude
and pester you :roll: :lol:

Leon

 
unhippy
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Post by unhippy » Tue. Nov. 01, 2016 5:17 am

I remembered to take some pictures today

All the fittings laid out on the floor in the order that they go in...the feed comes in the side of the upper tee on the right hand side of the picture....this was me making sure I hadn't forgotten any of the really important stuff....and yes I did forget something :roll:
P1000530.JPG
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How do you get threaded pipe the right lengths when you don't have threading gear?.....you buy a 12" barrel nipples and cut them in half and weld to your pipe....welders solution to everything :D
P1000531.JPG
.JPG | 170KB | P1000531.JPG
Jig that lets me weld right around the pipe while it stays clamped
P1000532.JPG
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End result...a little rough but in my defense I plead suky power supply
P1000533.JPG
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Meanwhile in the Black Hole of Calcutta...is the pipe being laid out in the time honored measure the next bit then make it method
P1000538.JPG
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And away down there...is tomorrows job cause I've had enough of crawling round down here for today
P1000540.JPG
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Apart from the rest of the pipework another part of tomorrows work will be installing the pipe hangers and setting the pitch on the pipes....
Plus I need to go to a local business that is a second hand material & machinery dealer to get some more 1/2" copper pipe...seeing as the longest piece of copper pipe I need is about 3ft long I see no sense in getting a full length new for $$$ when I can get short bits secondhand and pay scrap+25%...buying copper sweat elbows hurts enough without adding to it.

Callum


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