New to Stokers, Picked up a Yellow Flame Boiler

A little background on myself. I have been heating my current house about 8 years now with an old hand fed coal/wood boiler. Recently my wife and I purchased a Foreclosure with plans on fixing it up and moving in before Winter. We'll some dope head decided to break in and rip the pipes and wire out of the basement so we'll have to stay put until the spring when we can get everything back in order.

My youngest son just developed asthma and the soft coal and wood bothered him last winter but he doesn't have a problem at my in-laws and they heat with a coal stoker.

I was already looking at getting a stoker for the new house so when this Yellow Flame popped up In the classifieds for a song, I bought it. It's in pretty good condition. I have cleaned it up some and gone over the stoker to make it as reliable as possible. Now the plan is to pull the hand fired unit off to the side and plumb the stoker in just for this winter. Hopefully all goes well and then next year I can decide whether to take it to the new house or leave it for the new owners and find another.

I have found a TON of info on here so for now I have just one question. I have read that a barometric damper is a good idea for this type of boiler. This is a little new to me. I have the stoker in place now and the exhaust piping was going to be a 90* out the back moving up about 38-40" at a 30* angle into another 90* that goes straight out to the chimney. Is there any issue with the Baro being on the pipe at a 30* angle? I realize it needs to sit level I'm, just wondering If I should go straight up and add another 90 to it? My chimney always seemed to draft well with the and fired unit but it had a forced draft.

Thanks in advance!

A couple pictures of the unit when I picked it up. Not the best I know but there wasn't much room.

A couple more.

Rob R. wrote:That aquastat looks like a good candidate for the dumpster. Did it come with a timer?

Thank you for the quick reply!

Yes it came with a Dayton timer and a new old stock aquastat.

Previous owner had the stoker wired with a plug (seen in the pictures) that was powered by the timer and the aquastat control both (fist thing I did was rotate the motor so the junction box was below that motor to keep the dirt out ). The idea was either the timer or a call for heat would run the stoker. That is unless the water was already up to temp in which case the aquastat would only start the circulator. The timer was run through a high limit aquastat so that it wouldn't run if the water temp was above a set point to keep it from overheating. I also plan to add a high limit aquastat to trip a dump zone just in case it should get up too high.

Does this sound OK?

Thank you!

I have noticed my Yellow flame stoker looks a little different from the others I have seen here.

The main blower has a small wedge shaped adjuster just above the fines clean out pull that connects to a flapper inside the blower cage. It regulates the amount of air the blower puts out through the grates which I believe is a problem StokerDon had with his Yellow Flame stoker.

It also has a small kick up bolted at the end of the stoker bed that sort of levels off the bed at the end. You can see it in one of the pictures.

Unless you're going to get fancy on that hopper, you could wire wheel it up and spray some fluid film on it...paint will too soon look similar to what you started with.

WOW! Welcome TSox,

Nice look'in Yellow Flame you got there. That has latest of the three types of Yellow Flame stokers in there. I have only heard of that kick-up that bolts to the front of the grate. I think that would give you a little thicker coal bed. Good if you burn rice, buckwheat or pea, probably not good for barley.

From what you describe about this air adjuster, sounds like a throttle valve like a Losch or an EFM. I have not seen one on a Yellow Flame. Please post a photo.

On the stove pipe, take Rob's advise on the baro, it will work. I would forget about putting any 90's in it though. Tee's make cleaning a breeze. And, YES you will have to clean fly ash out of there.

-Don

Holy Crap!!! is that a Yellow Flame Manual!? Please post a better photo of it.

-Don

I'll try and get some pictures of the air adjustment.

I guess you would call it a manual. It's a couple color pages and some hand typed pages describing installation and usage. I'll see if I can scan it.