Why Wet Coal SUCKS! Cleaning Vac, Outside, -14°F ...

Now I know what you're wondering ..... what does wet coal have to do with a vacuum cleaner .... and why was it outside, you ask? Well, I'll tell ya ... because I need to vent!

Awoke at 04:00 to the screech of the CO alarm. House reeks. WTF ... so, head down the basement to check out the boiler. Water is 138° ... set point should have it 30° higher. Fire is looking REAL shallow, way back towards the hopper too. Watched it for a bit - doesn't seem to be feeding. Grabbed the nut that holds the paddle in place - it was spinning, so no mechanical failure. Ran my poker down through the coal, and then into the fire to move it along. Went upstairs for a bit .. came back down 5 minutes later, look at fire - still hasn't advanced.

F&$@#!!!!! Wake my wife up due to loud swearing.

So now I get to venture outside. Mercury thermometer says -16°F, weather station reads -14°, wind chill -18° or so. Oh, good - the wind died down. So I drag my shop vac up the stairs rather violently, knocking everything that was in my way down. Cats ran in 4 different directions, so they were safe. Now I get to clean the vac and filter with compressed air, so I can vacuum the 120lbs of wet coal out of the hopper, so I can figure out WTF is going on with this damn feeding situation.

That was fun. 10 minutes of lung-burning air and clouds of coal ash. Just what I need to keep my asthma in control! Long story short, I froze my balls off, but got the vac clean. Sucked out all the sopping wet coal, which filled vac to the brim - had to pick up the 100 lb vac, and dump it into a 5 gallon bucket. Several pounds end up on the floor. Continued vac'ing the rest out ...

Found the paddle completely jammed with wet fines, so that the paddle was totally round, and unable to move anything. Also found my polyurethane plastic sheet had cracked and wedged sideways in there (put that in to help coal bridging - it didn't), blocking the coal even more. Ripped the side pieces out, but left the big piece in back, since it gives me an extra 2" of hopper up top. Scraped all the chunks that were welded to the feed plate, and sides of the hopper. Grabbed 2 bags from another section of the basement, high above floor level - nice and dry inside, so I dumped both those in, then dumped the contents of the bucket on top if it. Going to leave the remainder in the vacuum with the top removed, so it will dry out a bit.

Yep ... wet coal SUCKS!!!! And of course, it had to happen as we set records in central MA for the coldest night in decades. Story of my life!

Moral of the story? Keep your coal DRY. Or, at least, dryer than mine was. Before I went to bed, I threw a bag in, and it was DRIPPING. That's what caused all this. Lesson learned!

I have two large Walmart Blue totes that I dump the coal into and it helps...but when I scoop some with my cod hod to dump into my hopper it's still damp or wet depending on ones interpretation of wet. The bottom of the tote is loose water so the draining/tote method works or helps it seems. So what I do now is have 2 coal hods. After I tend the stove for the day or night I fill up the totes and leave them on the stove top. So the next time I tend the first two hod's I put in are the dry hot ones. Then any damp coal added after must dry somewhat while the dry hot coal is being burnt..

I normally never have issues like this. Just figures that I happened to be at the end of a stack of coal - grabbed the last 3 bags off the bottom ... on the coldest day in decades. Just my luck!

These sit right in water when it rains out, so it must've saturated the bags. That pile was stacked right next to the basement river, almost in the middle of it. Normally just sitting with one corner cut off is enough to dry them out. Not this time. Should've poked some holes in the bottom - must've been full of water ...

Smitty

From one fellow "knuckle drager" to another have you asked yourself would you be dealing with this issue if you kept your hand fed instead of going all "girlie man" with some star spangled automatic thingamabob????

ONEDOLLAR wrote:Smitty

From one fellow "knuckle drager" to another have you asked yourself would you be dealing with this issue if you kept your hand fed instead of going all "girlie man" with some star spangled automatic thingamabob????

Then he would be back to dealing with the rocks and jammed grates. Not sure which is better.

Smitty, I doubt you will dump a bag of "flooded coal" into the hopper again, but I think it would help you to get some kind of container to stage the coal in. That way you get to see what comes out of the bag, and if it is really wet you can let it dry.

One of the biggest reasons I got away from rice coal. Wet, clumpy, fines, and it takes a lot of manual labor to move it.

I feel your pain.

Now I have to go to my bin right outside my kitchen door and bring in a hod of nut and pea mix. It don't clump.

Yeah, Captcaper has a good idea there - I may start doing that, and drill one hole in the side, so that I can tip it and let water drain out.

Still wouldn't go back to the hand fired - compared to that, this is a walk in the park! I was just venting a little. Still warm, so all is well .. aside from a little CO coming back out the hopper. Stoker hasn't stopped running all night. I think my plastic is making it worse - it seems to smell the worst behind it. I think I created a small chimney there. Always something!

I put a fan on top of the stove which blows into the hopper. It helps dry when using bagged coal. The loose coal of course is dry by the time I use it.

Another good idea. Thanks Gary!

It's the Goldilocks thing with coal. Too wet is no good. Too dry and you have too much dust and mess. It needs to be JUST RIGHT! And in my opinion that means slightly damp. I have a garden hose at my inside coal bin and I spray the coal with a fine mist as it is being sucked into the auger. Keep the dust down and slightly damp coal flows perfectly. Sorry for your troubles last night Smitty, especially on such a bitter cold night.

I agree with Terry, too dry make too much dust, too wet no good either. Slightly damp is just right.

The flat beds with hoppers seem to be more sensitive to wet coal then the underfeds. When I had the Alaska stove I lifted a bucket of rice and dumped it into the hopper, not realizing how much water was in the bottom. It went right through the coal and down onto the grate, extinguished the fire immediately.

I fill the EFM bin with a vacuum setup made from an old shop vac, I wet the coal in the other bin liberally, if it's not thoroughly wet then it's dust city down there. So far so good with the boiler.

I was wondering how you guys make out with wet coal just this weekend. Picked up a pallet of Kimmel's in bags last fall. It's still soaked. Runs through the AA just fine though as it's inside the garage.

Just brought a supersack of buckwheat in and that's frozen in the center like a big ball of coal. Should warm up pretty well today though.

Keep pluggin Smitty!

SMITTY wrote:I normally never have issues like this. Just figures that I happened to be at the end of a stack of coal - grabbed the last 3 bags off the bottom ... on the coldest day in decades. Just my luck!

These sit right in water when it rains out, so it must've saturated the bags. That pile was stacked right next to the basement river, almost in the middle of it. Normally just sitting with one corner cut off is enough to dry them out. Not this time. Should've poked some holes in the bottom - must've been full of water ...

Bad bag ! Bad bag ! Weeing all over your floor. I got 5 tons on pallets what I poked holes in every 40# bag to get the water out.

Wet coal is an issue for all but this tread highlights why I went with an insert vs other types of designs that has moving parts.

SMITTY wrote:<snip>

F&$@#!!!!! Wake my wife up due to loud swearing.

My wife would have just ignored, thinking I read something on the internet about wet coal.

I hear all this about wet coal and all I think is,,,,,,,,

Why don't they just drill some holes in the bottom of the hopper??????