The Bairmatic - Van Wert Project

IT'S GOOD!!!

Yesterday I swapped out the ashpan. When I opened the door, no ash fell on the floor, YAY!
When I shovel out that ash on the right side it should stay clean now. Another benefit is I don't need to have the ashpan all the way over to the right. This allows us to use a standard #3 ashpan with very minor clearancing on the right. Now, ALL of the ash should fall IN the pan. -Don

Meter reading today, 2498.6 - 2474.2 = 24.4 hours x 11.0 = 268.4 pounds for the past 7 days, 38.3 pounds per day.
Hummm, might need to turn the air up a shade. The been is down far enough to take the front cover off. Still a good sized mountain in there. It's cold and windy today and it's going to be cold most of the week. If we can keep it under 50 or 60 pounds a day average I will be happy. Everything is working well at this time.

-Don

Meter reading today, 2526.7 - 2498.6 = 28.1 hours x 11.0 = 309.1 pounds for the past 7 days, 44.2 pounds per day.
The mountain of coal just landslides down into the Gofer hole every once in a while. Kind of self-feeding. The pluming is about done for now. There are 8 radiators and 1 floor radiant branch plumed in. So far this setup has no problem heating the house. The aquastat is still set at LO=120* and HI=140*. I have plenty of room to push the temperature up if I need to. -Don

So, I am now running a 100% radiant system. 8 radiators and a bit of in floor radiant. The heat exchanger coil in the duct-work that used to heat the house is now dormant. The new radiant system is working very well and I love it!

That being said, I have started to get curious HOW it is working so well. It's finally cold down here and I have observed some heat calls. The heat calls are satisfied quickly, about 15 to 20 minutes. In that time, the radiators only get warm, not hot.

To help figure this out I connected the clock to the pump circuit. With the clock I can track how long the pump runs. I started it at 6:00 yesterday evening, took the picture at 6:00 this evening. The pump ran 3.5 hours over the past day. The clock in conjunction with the stoker hour meter will help me dial the system in.

I have bumped the air up twice over the past couple weeks. There was a lot of black in the ash, that was OK for Summer but now that the stoker is running more often it should have cleared up. The fire was a bit lazy looking and the ash ring was on the small side at full burn. I moved the air up in 2 steps, from 5 to 6 last week and from 6 to 7 yesterday. The fire looks better and the ash looks better. Still running at 11 pounds per hour. Chimney draft is -.05 and over fire is -.02 at full burn. The draft got very noticeably better once the temperature dropped. My baro is actually working pretty hard now. -Don

Meter reading today, 2550.6 - 2526.7 = 23.9 hours x 11.0 = 262.9 pounds for the past 7 days, 37.6 pounds per day. The stoker run time is 3.4 hours per day. The pump has run a little over 7 hours for the past 2 days, 3.5 hours per day.
Gofer action. That gofer has eaten this side of the bin down pretty far. I'm starting a plan to make a transfer auger to get the coal from the small bin over into this bin.

-Don

The stoker ran for 3.9 hours and the pump ran for 2.8 hours over the past day.
Time for a coal measurement. Looks like about 20 inches from the top of the gofer hole down to the augers mouth. Guess I better get to work on that transfer auger. -Don

Wow Don you got the air slide way up thier, I never ran that high. I just put rice in for the first time yesterday. Im getting way too many fines with what my dealer calls buck. Its almost pulverized powder mixed with some buck. Anyway 400 lbs was tossed in last night. Do you anticipate me needing to increase the air flow? Looks great BTW Don!

anthony7812 wrote:Wow Don you got the air slide way up thier, I never ran that high. I just put rice in for the first time yesterday. Im getting way too many fines with what my dealer calls buck. Its almost pulverized powder mixed with some buck. Anyway 400 lbs was tossed in last night. Do you anticipate me needing to increase the air flow? Looks great BTW Don!

Thanks Anthony!

Currently I am seeing a lot of black in the ash and a very small ash ring. This means either a feed rate decrease or another air increase. I am over due for the Fall cleaning, when I finally do it, I will have another look inside to see if anything is wrong.

Sorry to hear about your Buck fines. Our rice has a lot of fines in it, doesn't seem to be a problem, the Van Wert just burns them all up!

The stoker ran for 4.2 hours and the pump ran for 3.5 hours over the past day. I reset the clock this time. -Don

Without a doubt the Ole Vw was able to eat the powdered buck . Any who, have you burned any buck in that yet??

anthony7812 wrote:Without a doubt the Ole Vw was able to eat the powdered buck . Any who, have you burned any buck in that yet??

No I have not. Unfortunately, Buck is not available down here. I could get some but it would be a little more expensive and a lot more difficult to get than the rice coal. A year ago I was very apprehensive about using a Van Wert or a Gentleman Janitor stoker because they are designed to burn Buck, not rice. It turns out, the Van Wert burns rice very well!

-Don

Some day you are going to have to suck it up and make the call for a TT load.

I don't want to run away from the Bairmatic/van wert but so far I've had to increase air from 3/4 to 5/6 with the switch from buck. Rice burns pretty darn good just needs a bit more combustion air.

Thanks for the feedback Anthony. Sounds like you are at about the same air setting as me with the rice coal.

-Don

anthony7812 wrote:I don't want to run away from the Bairmatic/van wert but so far I've had to increase air from 3/4 to 5/6 with the switch from buck. Rice burns pretty darn good just needs a bit more combustion air.

Although I have a different brand stoker, I noticed the same result as I just switched over to buck. I didn't make any changes at first and when checking fire after 12hrs of burning I noticed I had more ash in the stoker bed. Instead of decreasing the air I adjusted the feed rate to give it more coal. Am curious to see how it looks when I get home....maybe I should have just decreased the air?

If you need more heat you would increase the feed rate. If not, you would restrict the combustion air.

In general, Buck should burn a little faster than Rice. This should allow you to increase the feed rate while leaving the air setting about the same, resulting in a little more heat out of the boiler.

In the case of the BiarMatic/Van Wert we have not come close to it's limit on Rice coal, it just loafs along. So far we don't need the extra heat output of Buck coal.

At some point I am going to have to ween myself off of running 2 boilers. Then the boiler in the basement will also be pushing heat to radiators in the garage. This will require a bit more heat out of the Ol' BairMatic/Van Wert!

-Don