Best Boiler for Me Advice Needed

I am a new member that needs to make a change

I currently have a had feed Newyorker WC130, which can burn wood and coal, but I do not like it for coal and wood is too much of a PITA.

I would like to go to a automatically feed boiler system. I heat about 4000 square feet, 2800 of that is raidant floor heat and the rest HW baseboard. I have a oil boiler as back up. Currently my wood boiler feeds hot water to my oil boiler and my oil boiler circulates everything. I have six zones each controled on their own thermostat. I would like to keep my same set up, but have a direct vent coal boiler that I just have to feed a couple times a week rather then 6 times a day.

Please let me know if any of you have similar setup and how you like it.

Thanks

valleycoal wrote:but have a direct vent coal boile

There's only one boiler that I'm aware of that the manufacturer recommends for power venting and that's the smaller Keystokers. The larger boilers can stay lit for hours once power is lost so they are unsuitable for direct vent. How are you venting your hand fired coal boiler now? Please don't say you're power venting it because you're putting yourself at risk. Power venting is only possible on the small stokers where a relatively small amount of fuel is being burned, they go out in a very short amount of time.

If you want to run a coal appliance and keep and existing system like a oil or gas boiler and you need to power vent what you should do is vent the coal into the chimeny and power vent the oil or gas boiler.

Having said that if you're going to take the steps to invest in a stoker boiler you might as well consider getting one that is going to heat your whole house, dump the oil boiler altogether or leave it in place as a backup system. The small boilers start around $5K for the Keystokers and the sky is the limit from there. It's quite an investment even for a small one so I don't see the point of not going all the way.

As an aside you should not have to feed it 6 times a day unless you are really pushing it. There's a recent post similar to yours: Bought A LEMON

If you need to feed that boiler 6 times per day it is probably undersized for your heating load. Before you step out and buy a new boiler do a heat loss calculation on the house to ensure the new boiler is the appropriate size.

My wc-130 is not power vented, by oil is. I have it hooked up to a stainless steel chimney. I was hoping that I could power vent a coal boiler since the stack temp is lower. I have a backup generator so power is not the issue. Convience is.

I am having a hard time keep a fire and I think it is because I am not putting enough coal in at a time. I am using Kemmel's nut coal, but don't put in more then 50 pds at a time. I think I need to start off with 75-80.

When you re-feed, how much do you put in, How thick of a layer of coal can you put on top without extinguishing the fire.

Check that thread I linked to above, it's the same make of boiler and that poster was having the same exact issue. He seems to be on the right track to get it working properly. When you fill a coal stove you should fill it all the way. You control fire via the draft.

valleycoal wrote:I have a backup generator so power is not the issue. Convience is.

This is a safety issue. For example you go to bed, the power goes out and the generator is not turned on or fails to kick in you're going to have CO gas backing up in your house and that will kill you. This is not an issue with the smaller stokers because they go out by themselves in about 20 minutes. A large boiler like a EFM is going to burn for 4 or 5 hours, a hand fired boiler like yours will go for 12 hours at least when set up properly.

It happens every couple of years here locally because coal is so popular. I'm just giving you a warning, don't be the next dead guy.

Thanks, I did read the post above and hopefully it will help. I will try more this weekend. Thanks for the advice on the powerventer. I never thought of that. I will not be going that route.

For the guys that have the wc-90, how long do you typically shake for. sometimes I shake for 60-90 seconds and nothing falls. Does that mean I don't have ash or that my shakers are not working well enough.

Also, am I correct in saying that you should never poke a coal fire or spread it out.

if you already have the stainless chimney, continue to use that for the solid fuel boiler. The oil is already setup on direct vent and since it's the backup you are not incurring extra electric charges by running the power vente all the time....

You could also look at my posts. I installed a Keystoker Kaa-2 for about $4000, soup to nuts, a few months ago. Our houses and zoning sound smilar. The Kaa-2, honestly, is too small for Central New York so my oil unit is always on standby. But, I had space considerations and I did save a significant about of money going with the little one. Since October, we've burned about 8 gallons of fuel oil. Usually because of showers. We have 9 living in the house. Now burning 60-90# per day.