joynerdustin wrote:Thanks for all of the insight gentlemen! There are very few people around who have experience in this type of thing. This Crane Boiler I'm looking at can be had for very little cost, next to nothing really. I would love to just buy a complete factory made Anthracite Stoker system but my geographical location makes the cost of Anthracite less cost effective than heating with Propane (at the moment propane 1.08$ a gallon. Ant coal 300.00$ a ton at Tractor Supply Co)
Bit coal can be had for 90.00$ a Ton locally. What is the Cost of a new 150000 BTU Conversion Bit Stoker?
If you've not found it yet, take a look at this:
EFM = Electric Fireman (New Project Alert) I took an EFM 350 boiler and built a new base for it to convert it for use with an Iron Fireman bituminous conversion stoker that I rebuilt. As of 5 or 6 years ago, a new Wilburt S30 stoker (the current equivalent of the old Iron Fireman) ran about $4500. You still need a boiler, of course, and the Burnham 4N-63A was recommended. This is the smallest of the commercial firebox boiler line, inherited from the old Kewanee Type R boilers. The boiler was quoted anywhere from $7500 to $12K to me. It is still a BIG boiler - 324K BTU gross output - but being a multi-pass firetube design, it will be very efficient. Needless to say, it was completely outside of my budget to go with new equipment. Luckily, another forum member here, Greg Long (LsFarm) found a stoker and boiler top for me that were solid (if cosmetically challenged) for a great deal. I spent several months stripping paint and rust, fabricating some new parts, welding a base and painting everything. Finally, a load of Knight Hawk coal was picked up and we were off and running.
I would have much preferred to have been able to find an old hand-fed coal boiler since they were what the stokers were designed for. Pull out the grates, remove the ashpit door, stick the stoker in the hole and brick/cement everything in place - done. I knew there were boilers out there yet, but chances of me coming across one were slim since I have no connections with scrappers, contractors, or other people that would know where any might be found. The other risk (as already mentioned) is getting a boiler with a decent amount of life left in it, not cracked or leaking.
But, for burning the coal we have, a stoker is
very highly recommended. I grew up in S. Indiana, and I "fondly" remember my dad trying some of the neighbor's coal (he was a foreman at one of the local mines) in our add-on wood/coal furnace. Burning it was something akin to a cross between a tire fire and a Union Pacific "Big Boy". Oily little strings of soot would rain down from the sky while burning it and chimney cleaning was a weekly event. Nasty nasty nasty. I think the stoker coal I had was higher quality (and didn't have yellow sulfur deposits all over it like the Indiana coal), but it is all still high volatile coal. Burning it with a stoker is essentially smokeless, and in my opinion is the only way to burn it.
I'm sure there are ways to piece together parts of anthracite underfeed stokers to burn high-volatile bituminous, but it really depends on the particular coal. Some tends to swell and stick together and form "coke trees" but some burns freely. Age of the coal can have a big impact there - fresh coal will tend to coke much more that if it is allowed to age for several months. The way these conversion stokers are intended to work is that the firepot is surrounded by refractory cement up almost level with the top of the pot. There is no ash pan. The fire builds up to 8" to 12" deep in the firebox and once or twice a day the ashes are removed as a "clinker" - melted together in a ring around the firepot. The rest of the loose ash is left behind. This deep firebed serves to promote a hot and clean burn and assure complete combustion of the coal. Anthracite stokers let the ash fall over the edge of the pot into the ashpan. With bituminous coals that tend to coke, this will usually lead to unburned coal in the ashes since the large coke chunks that form aren't allowed to stay in the fire long enough to burn completely. A rotating ring style stoker might work better at keeping the fire "loose". There are some youtube videos of an EFM with rotating ring stoker burning bituminous.
I often wonder how many old stokers and/or boilers are still out there, stuck in a corner of some old basement after being pulled out of service when the house was converted to oil or gas. All through the upper Midwest people heated with coal until the post-war era, and many probably long after that. Notoriously thrifty people, nothing would be just thrown out, but kept around "just in case".
Chris