Vertical Feed Auger System

I was contemplating building a coal bin in my basement directly under my stoker stove and feeding the stove with an auger feed vertically out of the bin to the stove. My question is whether or not a small (2 1/2") grain auger would work in the vertical position?

I built a horz auger to feed my VF3000 here is the link, you might get some ideas from it:
Homemade Auger Feed Coal Bin

I don't know if that grain auger will work
when I was looking into augers it seems like all the augers are set up at like a 45* angle.
I have never saw a straight up vertical one.

here is a picture of a auger on a coal boiler

syncmaster, How's the "post hole auger" working out?

it works good.
did you read my post about it?
like I said in the post if I did it again I would try to get a 8 or 10 rpm motor instead of the 4 RPM that I have now.
I have a 250# hopper and I usually fill it when it is a little more than half way empty and empty the ash pan.
it takes about 4 min to fill the hopper with rice coal... thats not bad.... but it would be better if it was 1min.

I thought about putting a photo-eye in the hopper and having it turn on and fill automaticly but then I realized that I still have to go down to empty the ash pan so it didn't make much sense to make it auto fill.

syncmaster wrote:then I realized that I still have to go down to empty the ash

Buils a vaccum cleaner on a 55 gallon drum, make a steel hose into the ash pan... have the vac come on when the electric eye calls to fill the bin. Let us know how that works out! (I''ve actually been running that idea through my head. Have a season's worth of 55 gallon drums on a trailer outside the boiler room, change vac head as each drum is 3/4 full. Once a year tow the trailer to camp & empty the ashes)

Freddy wrote:

syncmaster wrote:then I realized that I still have to go down to empty the ash

Build a vaccum cleaner on a 55 gallon drum, make a steel hose into the ash pan... have the vac come on when the electric eye calls to fill the bin.

freddy,
I don't think the vacuum will suck it all out, itr will probly suck out all the ash within 2 inches of the nozzle.
you would have to move the nozzle around to completely empty the ash pan.

here is how I handle my ash:
I have garbage pick up every 3 days so the night before garbage pickup I swap the full ash pan with a empty one.
let the full one cool for about an hour then stretch a garbage bag over the rim on the full ash pan and turn it upside down so the ash goes into the garbage bag and I let it sit upside down for 5 min(to let the dust settle) then I lift off the ash pan and tie the garbage bag and put it out with the rest of the trash. this is the best way I have found.

A Vac wouldn't have to empty it all, as long as it never overflowed it should be fine. It would look like a coal bin after the auger has made an upside down empty vulcano.

Ashes can't go in the trash here. Our trash gets burned to make electricity, there's no BTU's in ash. But, I'm not sure if that's the reason, I think they had a few garbage truck fires some years back & passed a rule of no ashes allowed.

So I am thinking that no one has any experience with a vertical feed auger?

I have never seen a auger used in a vertical position nor do I think it would work very well if at all.
The only ones I have have seen are completely horizontal or sightly up hill at 45 degree max. A completely vertical application calls for a bucket elevator.