When You Hear AHS? (Please Explain Your Choice)

I would of told him to invest in life insurance if hes riding like an idiot at 140. $20/day for oil heat is $600/month , if he thinks thats cheap he must be making alot of cash at his job.

stoker-man wrote:

whistlenut wrote: WHY BURN CASH......coal will be less than 1/2 the cost of oil.....every dollar you save buys down the price of a new or new to you coal boiler. I'm putting my money on the folks in and around PA who allow us the luxury of staying warm afford-ably.

Last night I had an extra $10 off per table coupon (expires today) at Outback and as I gave it to a nearby table, a guy said "Don't I know you from somewhere". Hadn't seen him for 10 years, but I recognized him as a former co-worker. When I-78 opened up, he used to pass me with his crotch rocket doing 140 MPH, so he said.

When I told him I was at efm, he said he had a DF in his house and was using oil for the last 8 years, since he bought the house. He said the auger and everything else is there, but he didn't know what to do with it. Anyway, he said his oil bill was only $20 a day, so he didn't care. When I told him that coal was half the price of oil, he still didn't care, but at least it peaked his interest in coal.

coalnewbie wrote:My third winter with coal. Looking around this is my impression. I don't want hydronics - too complex and the more I fiddle around the more sure I am of my choices but I respect those that have a different opinion. If I did change my mind, AA, EFM and AHS seem well made units. However, when I look at AHS I see a hopper 8 feet from the ground and I am a girlie man that is too fragile to shovel hundreds of pounds a day into the hopper. There must be auger set ups to do this but it looks to be too much trouble. So AHS remains a best kept secret, well made, long lasting and very efficient. If I am President of AHS and one of my products is a best kept secret I would fire the head of sales and marketing. If it's so good, the promotional material is wrong. Look on Ebay and Craigslist, the world is full of coal stoves being sold. Why? Coal is too much trouble for them and they lack the knowledge and of course are swayed by popular opinion (sheeples). Now I am lazy, untrained and stupid but I understood the need to get off of oil but I got the message somehow and went to coal college, got a minimal passing grade and now I will never go back. That is the marketing challenge and you are not rising to it. Oil is over $90 and headed north and a lot of people are getting the message. That presents a great opportunity to create more business for yourself but whining on this board perhaps shows you are not up to the challenge. HAH, and my wife tells me I lack sensitivity.

Sooo, marketing 101 - set up a focus panels from board members here mixed with other neophytes and include those that have bought coal stoves and given up, craft questions carefully and pay attention to the output. Oil will be $150 by the end of 2012 and you have a product that solves a lot of problems. As Charles Darwin said - "adapt or die".

Personally, I am not sure why AHS doesn't take a more aggressive role in marketing their products. What a shame becasue they are truly a game changer for those, like me, that want to stay warm and comfortable without having to waste a personal fortune.

As stated earlier in this thread, the newer hopper is only around 6' or less. Even my version is just barely over that. I do have an auger system that feeds the hopper when I choose to do it that way. I have a 8 ton bin and other than wasting time loading the hopper and removing the ash I don't find problems with their setup at all.

I have my system routed through my Oil furnace's (shut off 99% of the time) hydronic system and the heat is evenly distributed through 4k feet of living space and the basement area stays warm and so does the garage area though they are not heated to the level of the living quarters.

I think that there are so many stoves on the secondary market because many of those purchasing coal units think that simply burning coal makes for great heat. Well it doesn't. Many people, myself included in my first foray into coal burning 25 years ago, just burned the stuff hoping to get gobs of heat from the machine. Sure, plenty of heat if you were in the room where the system was located (Alaska 90K unit) but you couldn't get that heat to any other part of the house for the most part. I didn't know how to burn it efficiently and so, I gave up on it after two years and threw away (can't believe I did it) the Alaska. 3 years ago and 20 years after the Alaska I got the AHS 130. It took me until the first full winter (last year) to more fully understand how to burn anthracite correctly. I set up draft with a manometer and supplied fresh airflow, tracked coal usage, boned up insulation where I could and cut the amount of coal I used in a day by nearly 40%. I can now keep my house at 70F down to 9F outside on 110 pound of pea per day. That's about $10 per day. My oil burner burns 1.5 gallons per hour and would surely be on half the day to keep the house at 70F (that's 18 gallons @ $3 per gallon or $56 per day). That is efficient burning and savings.

I attribute my satisfactionand success in using coal now in large part to the people on this forum that take the time to share their wealth of knowledge with the new guys. Had this forum been around twenty or twenty five years ago there is no doubt I would have stayed with coal over all those years instead of burning through all those valuable (then) greenbacks.

FYI ---- I HEARD THAT AHS IS SELLING NEW S-130 units for $5500.............. NOW thats a DEAL !!!!!

tom69z wrote:FYI ---- I HEARD THAT AHS IS SELLING NEW S-130 units for $5500.............. NOW thats a DEAL !!!!!

Look around on eBay

they sold an S130 on ebay for 5500, and a S260 for 6500... both had thermoash monitoring system as well as belt drives.

What I think after just a tad shy of 2 straight months of running our S130 Coal Gun is that it is very quite and dependable, and there is very little fuss. Just add coal and take out the ashes as required.

The only real downside I've noticed is that it prefers cold weather (and/or it prefers to be ran hard, with a decent and relatively steady load demand applied). On the warmer days of October and November when I was hearing the fan motor come on perhaps only every 6-8 hours or so I had a fair amount of unburned and partially burned coal in my ashes. Come December and with the more consistent heat demand this problem has completely vanished.

No pins or timers to mess with and alter as the season changes, as would be the case for many other boilers. Only the thermal ash grate motors activation temperature set-point is a seasonal variable, and from my limited experience (after fussing with it some) it can be left at the factory recommended 130 degrees F. permanently.

In addition, with only the wife and I at home we have not noticed any issues with it providing sufficient DHW, and we chose to go without any HW tank (direct or indirect). We only have a mixer valve and the boilers DHW coil.

When I hear AHS, I think--it's new, probably unproven by time, and looks like it's made out of sheet metal. I like the old, solid (5/16 boiler plate or cast iron), proven methods and designs.

So I hope you don't mind a few dumb questions: 1) does 'gassification' mean that it ignites the gasses leaving the coal fire as well as the coal itself? 2) how is that different from other boilers (EFM, AA in particular)? I know that the old baseheaters burn off the gasses--isn't that what the 'dancing blue ladies' are doing? 3) what is the increase in efficiency in real numbers with gassification? 4) how long have they been in service? 5) what is the lifespan of these units? 6) what are some of the honest down sides to your modern design?

lsayre wrote:The only real downside I've noticed is that it prefers cold weather (and/or it prefers to be ran hard, with a decent and relatively steady load demand applied). On the warmer days of October and November when I was hearing the fan motor come on perhaps only every 6-8 hours or so I had a fair amount of unburned and partially burned coal in my ashes...

...No pins or timers to mess with and alter as the season changes, as would be the case for many other boilers.

As you have discovered, there is a trade off between adjustability and consistent performance with a varying load.

swededoc wrote:When I hear AHS, I think--it's new, probably unproven by time, and looks like it's made out of sheet metal. I like the old, solid (5/16 boiler plate or cast iron), proven methods and designs.

So I hope you don't mind a few dumb questions: 1) does 'gassification' mean that it ignites the gasses leaving the coal fire as well as the coal itself? 2) how is that different from other boilers (EFM, AA in particular)? I know that the old baseheaters burn off the gasses--isn't that what the 'dancing blue ladies' are doing? 3) what is the increase in efficiency in real numbers with gassification? 4) how long have they been in service? 5) what is the lifespan of these units? 6) what are some of the honest down sides to your modern design?

It sounds as if you are describing AHS's Wood Gasification boiler. Mine is the S130 Coal Gun, which is very much like like the old tried and true AA 130. The design dates to 1946. I think AHS came along in about the mid 1970's, first as Eshland, then later as AHS. I believe Eshland actually made boilers and/or boiler components for AA before deciding to go it alone after the AA patents expired. They are therefore essentially clones of the AA, with the fundamental difference being gravity feed instead of auger feed. Peel away the S130's insulation and insulation jacket, and it looks just like the AA130 underneath.