The Bairmatic - Van Wert Project

The stoker ran for 7 hours and the pump ran for 5 hours over the past day. Wow! that is a big increase.

The rads and the whole house were nice and warm this cold windy morning! This is pretty nice, lots of radiant heat and no blower to make noise and blow dust around. I'm lov'in it!

I did cheat a little bit. Last night I bumped the thermostat up 2 degrees and I opened the TRV's to 3.5. That pushed a good bit more heat into the house. The radiators are working great. I haven't noticed any heat balancing problems, the TRV's are handling that quite well.

The stoker running for 7 hours per day means that in this kind of weather I should bump the feed rate up from 11 to 12.5 pounds per hour. Last Winter we ran 12.5 pounds per hour and the stoker was running 4 to 5 hours a day on average.

-Don

Mine ran 5 hours between 7 pm and 5 am this morning. I thought it would be more than that, but the wind stopped sometime overnight.

Are you still heating the garage?

I need to put a timer on my boilers fan motor. And a timer on its ashing motor also. The only thing holding me back is general incompetence when it comes to electrical wiring projects, and fear of same. My first assumption is that the timer gets wired in parallel with the motor. Any timer suggestions? Wiring method suggestions?

Larry....Yes to the parallel wiring.

I realize yours is hardwired and will be different but I am going very simple for mine since the feed motor is plugged into a receptacle on the controller. I will use Don's method of setting the hands at 12 on an analog clock. I am getting a multi plug adapter that will go in the outlet for the feed motor and a simple plug in analog clock. The feed motor and clock will be plugged into the adapter. Set hands at 12 each night when tending and have it track the run time.

Rob R. wrote:Mine ran 5 hours between 7 pm and 5 am this morning. I thought it would be more than that, but the wind stopped sometime overnight.

Are you still heating the garage?

5 hours at 4 teeth is about 45 pounds of rice. Not bad for a night like that.

The garage is being heated with the GJ/EFM and the Monster radiator. Yesterday morning and this cold morning the Garage and breezeway thermometers read 60 degrees. I have not yet mustered the courage to shut the EFM off and let the BairMatic - Van Wert heat that area. I will probably try it over the Christmas Holiday.

-Don

lsayre wrote:I need to put a timer on my boilers fan motor. And a timer on its ashing motor also. The only thing holding me back is general incompetence when it comes to electrical wiring projects, and fear of same. My first assumption is that the timer gets wired in parallel with the motor. Any timer suggestions? Wiring method suggestions?

Larry, By "Timer" I assume you mean Hour Meter or Clock? If so, wiring is just like Titleist says. The hour meter/clock is wired in parallel with the motor you want to measure. White wire (neutral) from the motor, goes to one terminal on the hour meter/clock and the Black wire (hot) from the motor goes to the other terminal on the hour meter/clock. The hour meter/clock doesn't really care which terminal is neutral or hot.

-Don

StokerDon wrote:Larry, By "Timer" I assume you mean Hour Meter or Clock? If so, wiring is just like Titleist says. The hour meter/clock is wired in parallel with the motor you want to measure. White wire (neutral) from the motor, goes to one terminal on the hour meter/clock and the Black wire (hot) from the motor goes to the other terminal on the hour meter/clock. The hour meter/clock doesn't really care which terminal is neutral or hot.

-Don

Yes, I meant a time running recorder. Thanks for confirming the parallel wiring. Any suggestions for a time recording meter suitable to this task?

One like this.
https://www.zoro.com/honeywell-hour-meter-120-to-240vac-5060hz-28105/i/G5151115/

It needs to run the same voltage as your motor. I am assuming 120 Volt?

Once you get these hooked up, you can collect all kinds of data on your boiler's activities!

You know, you can get 24 volt ones for the zone valves to.

-Don

Meter reading today, 2619.9 - 2583.7 = 36.2 hours x 11.0 = 398.2 pounds for the past 7 days, 56.9 pounds per day.

Since Wed Dec 15, The stoker ran for 2619.9 - 2597.2 = 22.7 hours over the past 4 days, 5.7 hours per day, 62.4 pounds per day. This was a very, very cold stretch with windchills down to zero degrees. I should have bumped the feed rate up to 12.5 pounds per hour, it might have brought my stoker run time down. The other night I did bring the air down to 8. 2 ash pans full this week! We are starting to get near the end of "landslide" filling the auger. Only 13 inches down to the mouth of the auger. Soon I will have to rake coal over to this side of the bin. It's been a nice 6 month vacation from moving coal into a barrel! -Don

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!! I hope you are all toasty warm by a nice coal fire.

My niece and nephew tried to by me a half a ton of coal for Christmas but they couldn't find a place on-line to buy it! Oh well, they gave me the money instead, I will go buy some this week.

Meter reading today, 2655.3 - 2619.9 = 35.4. I don't know what that means now. On Tuesday night I changed the feed rate from 11 pounds per hour to 12.5 pounds per hour. Maybe I'll put that half ton right there. I changed the timer to 1 minute every hour. It was at 2 minutes for Summer. I forgot how much the air changes when you change the feed rate on one of these things. The air was at 8 and it was very obvious that was too high. I decided to use the Richard S. (our Mayor) method of dialing in the air setting on one of these Van Werts.

I set the air to 6, let it run for a day. I pull the ashpan and set it aside. Then I set the air to 5 with the new ashpan and let that run for a day. Pull the ashpan and set it next to the other one. Do the same at 4 and 3. It was obvious that 3 was to low so then I looked at the ashpans and decided that the pan for air at 5 looked the best. A little over 5 is where I settled on last Winter also.

Ashpans Fire The stack temp runs high on this one. That's about 640 degrees. Anybody else running stack temps that high?

-Don

That is the highest stack temperature I have ever seen on a stoker boiker, by far. Too much heat up the chimney for my taste.

Rob R. wrote:That is the highest stack temperature I have ever seen on a stoker boiker, by far. Too much heat up the chimney for my taste.

I had to look at your videos to find out your stack temp. Looks like about 300 degrees, that seems kind of low.

The BairMatic boiler gas path does not go down at all before it gets to the flue outlet. I think that's why the stack temps are high. The BairMatic has 4 plates, the 3 above the fire, 1 long one that makes the back of the firebox and one in the rear that is a little shorter. all of these plates are about 2 inches from the top of the firebox allowing the hot gases to flow along the top and out the back of the boiler.

I think I will try to put a piece of angle or something on the top of that last plate to block off the gas path. This would force the hot gases to go down below the rear plate before going out the flue, releasing more heat into the boiler.

-Don

StokerDon wrote:I had to look at your videos to find out your stack temp. Looks like about 300 degrees, that seems kind of low.

300 degrees is probably what it gets up to on an average heat call, but it will go higher than that if the stoker runs a long time. This morning I turned the heat up just as the indirect water heater called for it, the stoker ran for 45 minutes without shutting off and the stack temperature got up to 375.

Today I did my long over due Fall cleaning.
Everything had a good coating of flyash on it. After brushing down the boiler I pulled the stove pipe and cleaned it. My new stove pipe clean'in brush. I taped it to an old broom handle so it will reach all the way in the thimble. Then I cut a piece of aluminum angle, drilled and tapped a few holes in it. This is now my rear baffle plate upper block off. It sits on top of the rear baffle plate to block hot gasses. The hot gasses now have to flow down in between the 2 rear baffle plates then up behind the rear baffle plate to the flue. You can kind of see it sitting on top of the rear baffle plate looking through the flue outlet. Hopefully this will take a little bit of heat out of the chimney and put it into the boiler. Vacuumed out the pot rings. All nice and clean. Changed the oil in the gearbox. I also put a drop or two of oil on the motor bearings and the chain. Wiped off my 12" BBQ thermometer and reinstalled it. I raked and shoveled the coal from one side of the bin to the other. Looks like about 3 ton still in there. When I first fired the BairMatic Van Wert on 12/30/2015 We had 3.1 ton, that lasted til June. Then it was time to fire it back up again. I have become a big fan of starting with wood. It takes about two 2 inch pieces of 2x4 split into small pieces to get it going. After it gets going I turn the stoker on with next to no air. After 5 minutes, load the pot from the top with coal. I forced the pump ON with all zones calling and let it run. A little over an hour later, this is what it looks like. The stack temp only went up to 500* while the pot was full of lit fresh coal. Then it came down to about 400*. That's more than 200* lower than it was running yesterday. Either the blocking plate idea is working or the nice clean boiler walls are absorbing more heat! 400 degree stack temp after running for an hour and a half strait, I'll take it!

Hour meter reads 2660.5 Good to go til Spring!

-Don

Congrats on the exhaust temp improvement! Probably a combo of the cleaner walls and the new indirect exhaust path but the % improvement is impressive.

You weren't too overdue with the fall cleaning, we only moved into Winter about 5 days ago!