Coal Fired Hot Water Heater

Hey, guys. What do you think the market would be for a small coal fired domestic hot water heater. You know, like those bucket a day jobs. What ever happened to things like that? Why are they not made anymore? It sounded like a pretty neat idea some manufactures were producing. Any thoughts?

sounds neat but I would not be interested.

I heat hot water with fuel oil. 80 gallons a year for 2 people and almost no maintenance.

DOUG wrote:Hey, guys. What do you think the market would be for a small coal fired domestic hot water heater. You know, like those bucket a day jobs. What ever happened to things like that? Why are they not made anymore? It sounded like a pretty neat idea some manufactures were producing. Any thoughts?

Oh but they still do make them DOUG about 25 Minutes from me What Happened to them was Electric & Gas hot water heater where invented . Made life easier. When they where Populer at the turn of the century and there was nothing else besides to heat you water on a wood or coal stove . They where very Populer then . Also some coal & wood fired kitchen stove's had water tanks mounted on the back sides or above them to heat the water both of my grandParents had & used them on the coal fired kitchen stove and they used the bucket a day to heat the water in the bathroom . I
remember filling them with coal and taking out the ash.

http://cgi.ebay.com/BRAND-NEW-BUCKET-A- ... 7C294%3A50

coal berner wrote:Oh but they still do make them DOUG about 25 Minutes from me

Hey, coal berner, What is the name of the company and what is it that they make? Thanks, DOUG

Why not Just put a hot water coil in your coal stove and circulate thru your hot water tank.

I'm so tempted to push "buy it now". It's a beauty! I'm thinking to run the AA all summer will be wasteful. I've had thoughts of building a teeny tiny boiler....just like the bucket a day! Ohhhhh, drat.

WNY, I'm thinking of all year usage. I usually don't fire her up during the warmer weather. So, how else can we knock off the hot water tank? With three kids, a beautiful wife that likes long showers, and me, all the baths, dishes, and laundry, and constantly cleaning up after them with hot water, the hot water tank eats up $120.00 + a month just in natural gas to heat all that water. It seems that the 50 gallon hot water tank is rarely not firing up. But we always have just barely enough hot water at any one time to do the job. But, it's been handling the load. I'm trying to get a plan ready for a summer project. I wonder how much more efficient burning coal or wood would be compared to the natural gas. Any thoughts? DOUG

Build yourself a solar "preheater" and you will use less gas/oil/electricty.
find an old hot water tank.....strip it down.....paint it black......run your cold water thru it and into your existing water heater. you will be surprised how hot it gets and how much money you'll save. Drain it down before winter and go back to heating with coal.

Now that's a different thought. I have a used electric hot water tank I was going to use for extra storage. Does anyone know if is is possible to use the heating element screw holes for circulation. If so, are they standard pipe threads and what size are they?

Yes you can use those holes. They are like 1" 1/4 in size just reduce them down.
I would send you a picture of my set-up but it is covered for the winter and has 18" of snow on it.

The electric heating element thread size is NOT a national pipe thread (NPT) size, the pitch of the thread is larger. If you want to connect NPT fittings you will need to make an adapter. One way would be to take an old heating element and use the exterior metal to braze a female NPT fitting. Just trash the heating element part and bore a hole for the NPT fitting.

Yanche, Thanks for the tip. That's a great idea. I'll have to fabricate two up.

Glad this subject came up. I picked up a used electric hot water heater to use in my system somewhere. i strip the outer sheetmetal and insulation off, took out all the fittings and with a flashlight took a look inside. Whatever the coating was on the inside was crumbled up in a heap at the bottom of the tank. So with a jet water and a poker i was able to get it all cleaned out.
Question, what can i do to recoat the inside of the tank so it can be used as a pre-heater for my DHW? I was told if i didn't recoat it with something that my hot water would turn black from the pre-heated water sitting in the raw steel tank. Anybody know anything about this?

Hey guys, just thought of another reason why a little bucket-a-day coal boiler might be good for heating hot water thur the summer. The radient heat off the the little boiler might be enough to keep the humidity down in the boiler room during the warm humid summer days. So may prevent the main boiler from rusting during summer shutdown. What do you think?

JB Sparks wrote:heat off the the little boiler might be enough to keep the humidity down

Give it a try....report back! *smile* It might just help.