Tank in a Tank and Harman SF360

I Burn coal now. Harman TLC2000 and Elmira cookstove. Both great. I will keep the cookstove just for the looks.

Now I wish to use HArman SF360 boiler in my garage and pipe water in. Only bituminous coal available here. Good quality.
Very inexpensive. Any suggestions?

For domestic hot water has anyone had any experiance with Triangle Tube, tank in a tank system. Not a bad price, lots of flow, nothing to repair ( maybe).

Robby

Hello Robby, I don't know anything about the triangle tube water tank, do you have a link to a website??

As for the SF360, they are a very good hand-load boiler. My only concern is the Bitum. coal you burn... Your descriptions of how it burns in your TLC2000 certainly makes it sound like very good Bitum coal.. I'll explain what my problems were with burning Bitum in my 'Big Bertha' boiler

My Bitum coal liked to swell, get soft and stick together into a rigid sheet of coal. This caused the fire to burn out underneath the 'bridge' of coal, and I had several times where the fire would not be making any heat, the firebox appeared full, but when I broke bridge of coal, it colapsed into the bottom of the firebox, the coal was almost burnt out... I started going back to the boiler after an hour or so and manually breaking up the bridge.. this helped.

My Bitum coal had a lot of ash, and a low ash-fusion temperature. So when burnt at a temperature that would effectively heat water, the fire created lots of clinkers.. Part of this was due to the design of my firebox,, it had a narrow center grate, and 'V' shaped sides... so the firebrick funneled the hot ash together, forming clinkers as the coal burned... You shouldn't have this problem with the Harman firebox, it has vertical sides and a full width grate in the firebox.

My Bitum coal had lots of volitiles, and made lots of soot.. So I had to scrape the inside of the boiler surfaces every week or so.. Not as often as when burning wood, but the soot tended to insulate the surfaces of the boiler.

You mentioned in a post that you feed your TLC2000 on one side, let it get burning, then fill the other side.. you will probably need to do the same with the boiler.. otherwise you will get significant 'puff-backs' [minor explosions] in the firebox from the volitiles lighting-off after a fresh load of coal.

The surfaces in a boiler run cooler than the surfaces in a stove, so you may not get as much 'self-cleaning' of the soot as you get in your TLC...

As for locating the boiler in an outbuilding or garage, this is a very effective way to keep the dirt, soot and smells away from the house... If you look on ebay.com for outdoor wood boilers, you will find lots of sellers of insulated pex-pipe packages for tranfering the hot water into the house...

You will also find sources for water to water and water to air heat exchangers for use in your house heating system.. I use two water-to-water heat exchangers, one to tranfer heat to the hot-water baseboard heat, and the second to heat my domestic hot water tank.

I use 1" pex-al-pex tubing, in a sealed insulated double wall pipe package, I loose only 3*F in 150' of underground piping, from my boiler building to the heat exchanger in the house... Don't scrimp on insulating the pipes, it doesn't do much good to heat the ground instead of the house.

That's all I can think of right now... Greg L

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Web site for Tank in Tank http://www.triangletube.com/Residential/ProductIWH.htm

And design picture http://www.triangletube.com/Residential ... esign.html




I appreciate the information. I think the coal is pretty good quality. It burns equally well in the kitchen stove, Elmira, which is now “Heartland”. The chimneys are virtually clean when I check in the spring.

Our wood here, Southern Alberta, Canada is poor quality and a bit sparse. We are a semi arid area. 50 miles away cactus grow, just little ones, but cactus. I use some, but I prefer coal. More heat, a lot less work, cleaner chimneys.

You are absolutely correct about loading. Dump too much in, sometimes small explosion, sometime a bit bigger. Learned my lesson quickly.

I have converted my house, 2000 sq. ft upper and 2000 sq.ft walkout to water heat. Upper is now water to air and lower is Myson radiators. 186000 btu gas boiler supplying hot water at 176F. House is 9 years old, very well insulated and quite air tight. The TLC had no problem heating the upper floor in all but the coldest weather, then I light the cookstove as a back up. I am converting because the lower floor was unused, but now will be my wife and I,s home as we turned over our small farm to our children.

Glad to hear 1” pex is large enough. I have a 500,000 btu flat plate water to water to connect boiler to existing system. Then each is separate, and only the boiler needs freeze protection.

I built and installed the heating myself. Everything works well, EXCEPT, the domestic water heater. That is a large electric tank with a flat plate and a pump. I never thought it out properly ahead of time. It’s very inefficient, and needs to run too frequently. Thus input on tank in tank, or anything else.

Robby

[quote="Robby"]

Question for ya....I have a TLC-2000 too & have never burned anything but Anthracite. Does you window stay clear burning Bit?

Yes the window stays pretty clear. If I fill the stove poorly, not one side at a time, then window will get sooty. If I then let it burn hot, maybe upwards of 500F, the window will burn off. I cannot find a coal thermometer, only some made for wood stoves. I find both my coal stoves run at much higher temps when putting out substantial BTU's. It is difficult for me to gauge the actual BTU output, but I think 60,000 is about right at max.


Robby

Hi Robby, I have my plate exchanger for the DHW in the cold water supply line to the DHW heater tank.. whenever I use hot water, the cold supply water to the tank gets preheated to 150-180* and preheats the tank.. the propane burner will only run to keep the tank warm if I haven't used any hot water for most of a 24 hour period.. Usually I run a few gallons of hot water at night to preheat the tank for the night..

How do you have your plate exchanger set up for your hot water??

Greg L

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I have no way of making a drawing, then putting it on the site. Therefore I will try to describe how my water heater is hooked up.

Standard electric 80 gallon tank. Plumbed to the lowest opening with ¾ line. Immediately a well for white rogers aquastat, then up to Taco 3 speed pump, through a flat plate exchanger, up to very top of tank.

When the aquastat call for heat it supply’s power to pump and to zone valve on main heating manifold. Hot water then flows from manifold through flat plate and heats water.


The problem is, with very little water used the cold water drops to bottom, causing aquastat to turn on, THEN CIRCULATING THE ENTIRE TANK. I know its still the same amount of BTU’s to heat the water, but pump runs almost every time you use hot water.

That's why I am looking at a specialized water tank.

Robby

The Triangle Tube domestic hot water heater looks a lot like my Weil McLain unit. See: http://www.weil-mclain.com/downloads/li ... luslit.pdf
The Weil McLain unit uses a stainless steel tank within a steel tank and is made in Europe. It just has the Weil Mclain label on it. I suspect the Triagle brand is the same unit. I'm very happy with mine. It's piped so that domestic hot water can be heated with either my coal or oil boiler.

They do look identical don't they. I bet your right. I've noticed there are a lot of goods marked with different names, different prices, etc. I will order one today. Thanks!

Robby

I have one of the old style tank in tank Weil Mclean supercells hooked to my oil boiler since 95. I live in lime country with all sorts of corrosive minerals and not a hint of trouble to date. 40 gallons set to 120 gets 3 of us by nicely but of course thats using oil, I can't say beyond that other than its very well made, wrapped and mine has another bigass wrap of insulation around it in a home made add on. Ugly but helps. I would surely buy another .