The Bairmatic - Van Wert Project

I've never done the degree day vs. coal usage calculation. Maybe that's what I'll do over the Summer.

-Don

OUTFIRE!

Last night I looked in the bin and the auger was bare! I quickly raked some coal on top of it. It must have been exposed for a long time, this will create a long gap in the feed pipe where there is no coal. Everything seemed OK last night though.

This morning I heard the stoker kick on, so I went downstairs to look at the fire. The fire was out! The gap in the feed pipe must have reached the pot hours ago. That was it for me, I'm done raking till next year. I re-lit the fire and through the barrel in! First I cleared all the coal away from the 5 concrete blocks at the bottom of the bin, so the barrel has a nice, flat surface to sit on. Sat the barrel in place. Then filled it up! By the time I was done, the fire had recovered nicely. I'm now going to be filling the barrel from the auxiliary coal bin. Last Summer, we were refilling the barrel every 2 to 3 weeks. I expect that since the mouth of the auger is now below the bottom of the barrel instead of above the bottom of the barrel, we will be refilling every 3 to 3.5 weeks.

This is much better than re-piling coal every few days!

-Don

Meter reading today was, 3267.3 - 3255.7 = 11.6 hours, 1.66 hours per day over the past 7 days, 16.6 pound per day. Wow! again. We are into day 2 of our 4 day heat wave, hi temps at 90 or above. I hate Summer!
This weeks ash. No more raking, YAY! -Don

I'm hovering around at between 14.5 and 15 lbs. per day, and I'm almost at two full years between clean-outs. I had been cleaning the Coal Gun once every year, but at one year there wasn't much to clean out overall, so now I'm giving two year intervals a shot. The built in cyclonic separator really keeps it clean.

lsayre wrote:I'm hovering around at between 14.5 and 15 lbs. per day,

Now that makes me feel pretty good. For the first couple years of running stoker boilers, I couldn't get below 25 pounds per day for DHW. And I though to myself, how does Larry's Coal Gun get down to 14 or 15 pounds per day? Now that We are in the 16's, that's good enough for me!

lsayre wrote:and I'm almost at two full years between clean-outs. I had been cleaning the Coal Gun once every year, but at one year there wasn't much to clean out overall, so now I'm giving two year intervals a shot. The built in cyclonic separator really keeps it clean.

Now that is impressive Larry! My only hope is that the self cleaning nature of the Van Wert VA-600 will cut down my cleaning cycles.

-Don

Some of the Keystoker Kaa-2 guys talk of 12 - 13 lbs. per day.

lsayre wrote:Some of the Keystoker Kaa-2 guys talk of 12 - 13 lbs. per day.

There is no way I am going back to a flat grate stoker Larry!

I would also question there pound per day measurement method's. At 2 minutes every 15 minutes (3.2 hours per day), with a feed rate of 6 pounds per hour (just an example) is 19.2 pounds in 24 hours. That's just running on the timer to keep the fire lit.

I don't think you can run a flat grate in the Summer on a shorter timer cycle. I also don't think these can push as low as 6 pounds per hour. I might be wrong?

Has anyone measured the feed rate of the smaller Keystokers?

-Don

I have a kaa-4 and just measured my idle rate per day over a 7 day period. I used right at 12 pounds per day. My boiler idles at 200 give or take 5 degrees and supplies my wife and I all our DHW just idling. The settings are:

4/3/3 pins on 30 minute timer which is 66/51/51 seconds each half hour or 2.24 hours per day. The coal feed is about 9 turns out. The top is insulated.


I filled up the hopper to even with the top and seven full days later filled it to the same point. I added just under 84 lbs measured with a digital scale. It worked out to be 83.5 lbs per week or just under 12 pounds per day. Not scientific but pretty darn accurate. Based on the measured usage, it is feeding at 5.36 lbs per hour.

nepacoal wrote:I have a kaa-4 and just measured my idle rate per day over a 7 day period. I used right at 12 pounds per day. My boiler idles at 200 give or take 5 degrees and supplies my wife and I all our DHW just idling. The settings are:

4/3/3 pins on 30 minute timer which is 66/51/51 seconds each half hour or 2.24 hours per day. The coal feed is about 9 turns out. The top is insulated.


I filled up the hopper to even with the top and seven full days later filled it to the same point. I added just under 84 lbs measured with a digital scale. It worked out to be 83.5 lbs per week or just under 12 pounds per day. Not scientific but pretty darn accurate. Based on the measured usage, it is feeding at 5.36 lbs per hour.

If you are measuring coal going in, every one week cycle, that is about as accurate as you can get! Thanks for the numbers. 12 pounds a day, wow, now I have a new goal to shoot for.

Ya know, ya don't have to run the boiler at 200 degrees to heat DHW. Might use even less coal if you crank it down to 150.

-Don

Insulating the top raised the temp about 25 deg. it used to idle around 170 to 175 before that but the basement was 5 or 6 degrees warmer. I'm ok with 200 since I set the low temp to 140 in the summer and have the mixing valve set to 125. I don't expect it to ever get to 130 and have a burner cycle for DHW. It just idles and provides all we need.

Meter reading today was, 3278.1 - 3267.3 = 10.8 hours, 1.54 hours per day over the past 7 days, 15.4 pound per day. Again, I say WOW! I never thought we would get down into the 15's! It's been hot here, 80's and 90's all week.
The barrel with 108 pounds less coal in it. Another weeks worth of ashes. -Don

Yet again this BairMatic/Van Wert COMPLETELY AMAZES ME!!!

Overnight, there was a problem. I got up to go to work at about 5:00 this morning and I could hear a terrible noise coming from the basement. I went into the basement to investigate. Sure enough it was the Van Wert clanking and dinging away. It sounded like a problem with the combustion blower. I shut the power off and went to work.
I got home a little before 5:00 in the afternoon, pulled the the gear box mounting off and sure enough the bolt holding the blower onto the gear box shaft had come loose. The blower had walked out and was banging on the housing. Easy fix, I pushed the blower back on and tightened the heck out of the bolt. I put everything back together and turned the power back on. The whole repair took about 25 minutes.

What I DIDN'T EXPECT was to find LIT COAL while I was shoving the ash out of the pot!!! What the heck is up with this thing, you can't kill it!!! Maybe it's some kind of coal fired Zombie or something!

I through 3 small shovels of coal on top. 5 minutes later. Remember, this is a full 12 hours after the power was shut off, on an 88 degree day with the air conditioning running. Plus how every many hours it was struggling along during the night with no combustion air. COMPLETELY AMAZING!!! I set the air to 5 and let it go. I know one thing, this VA-600 has some mighty large shoes to fill once I install it! I shot a long video of the repair, then 2 shorter videos of my stunned amazement at not loosing the fire after 12+ hours. They will take a long time to up load so I will try to do it overnight.

-Don

It should hold a fire for at least 12 hours....it comes down to your coals carbon content (and a nice deep firepot to insulate the coal with ash helps)...high carbon low volatile content coal will hold a fire longer than a low carbon higher volatile coal....and anthracite is pretty much the ultimate high carbon fuel

I can do 24hrs no sweat...on this coal and in a relatively shallow firepot

"A Typical Analysis:

Calorific Value 8460 btu/lb

Moisture 30.4%

Ash 4.7%

Volatile Matter 30.8%

Fixed Carbon 34.1%

Sulphur 1.52%
(as sampled)"

So with a higher carbon content coal and a deeper firepot i would be very surprised if you couldn't get similar results.

Having said that, its always somewhat amazing to turn the stoker on and see the apparently dead fire come back to life after being cold enough to touch with my bare hand....i've done it a couple of times now and it hasn't got old yet.....as a bonus it also means you can stay in the one match/lighting club and feel like your cheating.

Callum

Unhippy, the BTU's of your coal are a bit down vs. anthracite, but your 4.7% ash is a big plus. Off the top of my head, that's half to perhaps less than half the ash of typical anthracite.

Is that 8,460 BTU/Lb. measured on a "dry basis"? 30+% moisture would be the concern here. Your effective BTU's may be well less than 8,460 if the measure is for dry. It means burning loads more coal, so on a real world basis, your ash to BTU's ratio is probably about the same as for anthracite.

unhippy wrote:It should hold a fire for at least 12 hours....it comes down to your coals carbon content (and a nice deep firepot to insulate the coal with ash helps)...high carbon low volatile content coal will hold a fire longer than a low carbon higher volatile coal....and anthracite is pretty much the ultimate high carbon fuel

That's interesting, but I've never read about anyone else on the forum holding a fire for 12 hours. Maybe they do and they just don't write about it.

I saw your thread about going to re-lit the fire 24 hours later and being surprised that it was still lit! That is amazing to!

I uploaded the blower repair video. I will get the other 2 up soon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwi5oHFY0Ic

-Don