bucket a day heater

Hey all I've been a lurking and a reading for a while, lots of very informative folks here but now I have a few questions if someone can help me out on?
In trying to wean off the oil nipple a bit I managed to get my hands on an old peerless bucket a day hot water heater for free that I would like to tie into my heating system to supplement my oil consumption a bit. I guess my main objective is to try and utilize the coal on mild days and just pick up some of the slack when it gets really cold. I also wanted to safe guard myself in case of an extended power outage in winter. Never really happened before but always been a big concern of mine.
I'm currently running a 120k Utica oil fired hot water boiler which was a bit oversized when it was installed 30 years ago, since then all the windows have been replaced and have added a bunch of insulation.The heating system consists of 9 old style radiators which I could turn half of them off for emergency heating purposes as I have also installed a gas fire place which heats all of the downstairs when it is running. The heating system is all pump/burner operated right now but was originally a gravity fed system so all i need to do is add coal start a fire and the heat flows with no power needed.
My questions are I'm not sure how many btus that bucket a day heater can output, would I be wasting my time
trying to get any kind of heat out of it? I have one baro damper between the oil burner and chimney and was just going to tee of the oil burner and tie into the coal burner for the vent, would that be ok to do?
Thanks in advance for any thoughts or input...

Welcome to the forum rister
First, it is not acceptable practice to tie 2 appliances to 1 chimney. they can wreak Havoc on each other. 2nd, 1 am not shure on the btu output of the old bucket-a-day, but you might be better off installing a thermo-syphon system for DHW use instead. It would still help with oil consumption,and the heat off the heater could be enough to help also.

What size bucket? Even a small stove like a Franco belge which is about 45K BTU uses more than than a 5 gallon bucket a day and is only going to heat a few smaller rooms or keep he chill out of basement and provide a little heat on the second floor.

I think Yanche has a bucket-a-day heater, maybe he looked into it's BTU capacity.

Yanche??

Greg L..

I grew up in a home with a bucket a day boiler, actually two of them. The smallest one was used year around for domestic hot water. The larger one was used in the heating season to heat three very large cast iron radiators on the first floor. They were independent units sharing the same flue. The larger one was maybe three times the volume of the smaller one.

Yes, I did buy a bucket a day on Ebay a year ago. I gave it to J.C. While it could be put back in service, I just didn't think it made sense for me. My AHS 130 will burn for more than a week in summertime with no attention. I don't know it's BTU capacity, but I doubt it would be useful for winter time heat. The larger one we has when I was a kid was maybe four times the volume of the one pictured. It could heat our small home well on the first floor. The second floor sleeping area was cold, the only heat was that from open ceiling/floor registers.

That one is bigger than the ones I ever saw.The few that I've worked on or removed were a 1/3 that size.The small ones I've seen only hold about 15#of coal.
DON

I also have one of these boilers, but it is the smaller type it holds approx #15 lbs of coal. Does anybody know an estimate of the working pressure of one of these, as i was considering on hooking it up?

WPM wrote:I also have one of these boilers, but it is the smaller type it holds approx #15 lbs of coal. Does anybody know an estimate of the working pressure of one of these, as i was considering on hooking it up?

hi if anybody is intrested i had hooked up the pail a day boiler it works very well the only draw back is finding a good coal combination to fuel it with currently i am using stove coal which i have to shatter into a size in between stove and chestnut which seems to burn for about 8~9hrs with mid air. and when i use straight stove it only burns about 4~5 hrs then self extinguishes, and with nut or chestnut it burns for about 3~4 hrs and also self extinguishes. for now i have managed to keep it burning for about 1week 3days straight if anyone has any advice it will be greatly valued. also noted the avg temp in the house in both day and night cycles ranges from 68 at night to 65 in the day time ( i had used a NIST certified Extech data logger to accuratly track the temp range in my house these are avaiable at Grainger online) and has cost me in a months time, $20.00 in coal vs. $360.in natural gas this summer i plan to purchase a keystoker KA-6 boiler for my house and a hand fired wood/coal boiler for my pool / patio warmer (the patio warmer is great for spring and fall bbq's )and turn off the gas until hell freezes over.

I need instructions to install a bucket a day. The water goes in the top or bottom? the pump? we are hooking up 2 baseboard heater to it? PLEASE help Amy where to get a full instruction print out

Piping a bucket-a-day boiler will be no different that installing any boiler. Consider the tapping at the top to be the supply and the tapping at the bottom to be the return. You will need an air scoop, small expansion tank, pressure relief safety valve and depending how you intend to use it perhaps a circulator. Properly piped you could use it as a gravity flow system. How do you plan to regulate the heat? The two I grew up with were gravity feed and heat was controlled by manually regulating the draft. Over temperature rooms were cooled by opening the windows.

Hello Yanche, I'm wondering why you suggested the top pipe inlet on the small water heater should be Cold coming in, and the bottom one should be Hot going out.. I just started running a similar small American Radiator Ideal Model No. 50 with a hot water loop, and I did the pipes the opposite way, and I'm not getting very good hot water temperature but I think that's more a problem with the fire burning too low than with the inlet/outlets configuration. But I'm still interested in hearing from you! I had a hard time finding this forum but I'm sure glad I finally did.. I found it from Coalman's postings in another forum; thanks for the link ! If anyone has any detailed info on this model I would definitely appreciate hearing it. Thanks! Bob

Bobobuoy wrote:Hello Yanche, I'm wondering why you suggested the top pipe inlet on the small water heater should be Cold coming in, and the bottom one should be Hot going out.. I just started running a similar small American Radiator Ideal Model No. 50 with a hot water loop, and I did the pipes the opposite way, and I'm not getting very good hot water temperature but I think that's more a problem with the fire burning too low than with the inlet/outlets configuration. But I'm still interested in hearing from you! I had a hard time finding this forum but I'm sure glad I finally did.. I found it from Coalman's postings in another forum; thanks for the link ! If anyone has any detailed info on this model I would definitely appreciate hearing it. Thanks! Bob

He didn't suggest it the way you think he did. Read again...

You have a misunderstanding or a perspective problem. The source of the hottest boiler water is called the "supply". This is where the hottest water leaves the appliance. On a boiler is almost always on the top. The "return" is where the water is simply returned after some of the boiler water's heat has been used. It's almost always on the bottom. Think of it as an "in" and a "out". Out on top, in on bottom.

Hello Yanche and ?, Thanks for clarifying.. I must have read it too fast, or been too tired.. I think it was really late when I found the forum and started reading things. I fully understand you now and agree with what you said. Thanks again, Bob.