Anyone burning coal in a Biasi 3 Wood/Coal

It was a good night last night. I am very happy with the results of the stove. It kept the house toasty at 72°(under 10° outside)with the oil burner napping the entire time.
How do you know when it's time to shake down the ashes? I lit the stove around 4:30 pm last night and I guess I finished loading it with coal around 6pm. I added a few scoops around 11 pm before going to bed.
It's almost 10:30am now. It still has a pretty good bed of red glowing coals. Do you go by time, the way it looks or dropping temperature? I don't want to wait too long and lose the fire altogether.

try to get into a 12 hr. schedule,shake,load,ashes. If you have a hard time getting the fire going again ,try 10 hrs. or maybe a few scoops sometime in between.Load as much as you can,8" minium.Make your coal scheule around your work schedule Dennis

Timster wrote:,not to sure how to hold fire bricks inside the Biasi.

Look at the picture of the fire box in this thread. The bricks are not in position but you can see the flat portion outside of the grates where they go. Bricks are laid up like any wall with interlock as much as possible. Retort cement mortar with as thin a joint as possible or even laid up dry. Full size bricks on edge. The boiler wall on one side and coal on the inside hold them.DuoMatic Olsen

Does anyone add coal before shaking (poking in my case)? The reason I ask is that after poking through the grate and knocking down the ash I had a tough time getting the new coals to light after adding them. My guess is that I was too agressive i poking the coals and disturbing the bed too much. I thought that adding some new coal first and giving them a chance to light before poking may work better.

I would suggest shaking down when there is a sufficient bed of coals. You want to be adding coal to the fire as few times as possible for convenience sake. Shake down the ashes till you get some red coals falling through the grates then poke it from the top a little bit and spread the hot coals evenly on top of the grate to keep the fire going around the whole boiler. Cover the hot coals with enough coal to get you to the next shake down period. I like to shake it in the morning and then before bed so I load it up as much as I can.

I tried adding fresh coal before shake down.It was much harder to poke the fire down with all the fresh coal on top.When i shake and poke down(don't stir/don't disturb bottom half of ashes) then level off top of bed and usually open top half with glowing coals,the the fire takes off quicker. Thats works for me. Dennis

I think that i understand what I did wrong. I was waiting until almost the end of the burn period when the stove was starting to lose it's heat. Then I started poking & disturbing the bed too much. I'll try to get too it a little earlier in the burn and take it a little easier on the poking/shaking.

I did find and set up that security camera that i now hace focused on my digital aquastat. I can now monitor the water temp. on my living room tv without running down the basement. When I first hooked it up the picture was perfect but the temperature did not show up on the tv screen! The camera has infrared LEDs for night vision but the temp. display was red and was invisable to the camera. I had to put a shield on the front of the camera to block out the infrared.

Bob B,
I load my boiler10" deep in the fall/spring and 13" deep winter/cold. You will not burn any more coal with a deeper bed just longer burn times and more red coals deeper down and help recover the fire faster.You only burn more coal when you have more of a heat demand.Just don't stir or move the ash around,it will make clinkers. Hope that helps. Dennis

EDIT: you will have to find how deep to make your bed.If too deep it may over fire your boiler and dump water.Just keep making your bed deeper untill you find you get good burn times along with enough red coals left to restart your new fire. The deeper bed will also give you quicker recover times when you have a higher heat demand.

If you read the manual you will find that this boiler is for burning "wood or soft coal only",

that's the reason it is designed as such.It has a secondary combustion chamber to be able

to burn all of the hydrocarbons released in the early combustion process, whether it be

wood or coal, the gases are burned in the secondary chamber with the additional oxygen.

This is a good basic design for these fuels.


BigBarney

The boiler burns hard coal and does a fine job with it. The original boiler manual from the first couple seasons the boiler was introduced in the US stated that it only burned soft coal and wood because it did not go through all the UL listing yet to be able to state that it was a hard coal burning appliance at that time. It has since been all approved and the shaker grates are available for burning hard coal. I have been burning with and without the grates for a few seasons now and would only recommend this boiler as a coal boiler and not a wood burning boiler.

I do have the shaker grates and when i load it up i put enough in so its coming back out over the front grate. When i shake it down i use a piece of metal bent in an L shape and move it back and forth up from the bottom to get most of the ash out. Then i add a little coal give it a few minutes to get going well again and shake it 5 or 6 times till i get hot coals coming out. I give it 10-15 minutes and add more coal. When i shake it down i still have a 6-8" bed of coal left, if i let it go i would still get about another 12hrs before it went out. Cleanout is a little easier with the shakers but they do leave alot to be desired. I have had to modify them already, the nubs on the handle that lock into the shaft of the first grate both snapped off and i had to tap them out and add my own little nub. If you have the grates you know what im talking about. With that said and modifications made i am quite happy with the change to coal overall. I check it twice a day takes about a half hour each time, once at 5am and again at 5pm. No creasote, not waking up at night becasue the fire went out, its just so much easier. It may cost more then wood, but its still cheaper than oil. My mother lives in a home with roughly the same square footage as me and so far she has put in over $1200 in oil. I have burned just over 1 ton of coal since mid Nov. and i keep the house at 72deg. She keeps her house between 65-68.

I am using a 1/2" steel rod with a 1" bend in it at 90°and another 90° bend of 4" on the other end that I use as a handle. I am inserting it straight through the front grate of the ash door. I run it through each of the vertical slots and twist it as I push it all the way to the back of the stove. This seems it get all the ash off the bottom of the pile. I have tried a few times poking down through the bed but it doesn't seem as effective and I really messed up the bed.

I am loading the stove (without the grates) to the level of the bottom of the loading door. It's about 9" deep and seems to be enough to burn for 12 hours and heat 2 zones (71°downstairs and 60°upstairs with no one using it) and make enough hot water.

I'm still having the problem of slowing down the fire when I shake the ash down and add coal. I am going to follow you spidy and add a little layer of coal after shaking and then WAIT till it gets going before I add any more. The last few times I put a layer over the whole bed and it took a long time to get going again. The stove dropped down to about 100° and just wouldn't get going for about an hour.

I have no experience at all. Not even with a fireplace. so this is my first attempt at burning any solid fuel and I am getting a kick out of it! I really appreciate this site and all of you for adding your advice and comments. I can't believe how far I have come in such a short time and never would have known what to do without you help( get a barometric damper, a CO detector, using the rod for ash). So THANK YOU all. After burning about 10 forty pound bags so far I am so pleased that I have ordered 4 tons to be delivered next week.
Note to Spidy: Yes, most of that creosote that was built up on the insides of the stove has disappeared!

Bob

You will soon be a pro. We all started like you and we all have our ways of doing things. In the end you will be happy to be saving a lot of money by burning coal. The biggest kick I get out of it is that the coal I am burning and the trucker that trucked it and the retailer I bought it from are from USA!!

I couldn't agree more. I HATE buying heating oil . If I knew that the oil was at least coming from the USA it would take some of the sting away.

I agree l40knocker I prefer to keep my money in the USA. From beginning to end user even better. Bob B sounds like your heading in the right direction glad to hear its going well. You will be a pro in no time. Nice to hear the creasote is going away lol. It's suppose to be close to zero tonight i loaded the stove up around 5:30 im sure it will be toasty in here.