Residential Coal Boiler / Hot Water Design.

Rob R. wrote:

north jersey wrote:I don't intend to rely on the coil exclusively; maybe just during the transition between seasons and during the summer. The boiler is a little on the small side for my house, and I'll probably be using all of the output for heat when he have another winter like this one (we hit -15° one morning in February). I have an electric water heater now.

The low profile baseboard is installed at this point.

The amount of baseboard in each zone is an important thing to consider when mapping out the piping. Is there an oil or gas boiler in the house?

No oil or gas boiler. This is a modular "model" home. The baseboard on the second floor is in place, and the first floor baseboard is stubbed through the floor.

I'm still very interested in hiring someone for consulting/design services. I have a proficient plumber helping me, but I don't think he has a lot of experience with solid fuel hot water systems. I'm going to commence work next week if I can.

I apologize for not responding sooner, but my daughter got hurt, and we've been fighting with NY CPS for the past week (I've learned my lesson about crossing the border).

Follow the advice of Whistlenut
and maybe read a little here - some of my posts were done when I was sober
I Need Help.. Keystoker KA-6 Install.
Do a heat loose calculation - do it YOURSELF!
why did you pick that VF-3000??? is it correctly sized for the load? How do you know? Please don't say some salesman stood in his store and told you it would be fine.
buy the books and teach yourself - or be doomed to the mercy of the lowest bidder you pick
and BTW if the bidders your picking are unfamiliar with the products your asking about

MOVE ON to the next guy - don't look back

I bought the Harman from a forum member because it was a good deal. I will look over the info, but work has to commence next week, so I probably will rely on someone else's expertise. I was hoping someone on the forum would like to make a few easy bucks.

There is nothing 'easy' about a wet system install.
But knowledge tends to clarify and bring focus!

My responses are limited
You must ask the right questions

Hence my desire for some consulting help. I have the labor, I just need to make sure we're doing the right thing. I'm willing to provide generous compensation to someone who can provide a written installation plan or design.

I'm located in the northwest corner of New Jersey over the bridge from Milford, PA.

Anyone interested for $200?

I don't need isometric CAD drawings or anything, just a system description I could hand over to a journeyman plumber.

I don't see any journeyman plumber worth his pay rate needing any design pointers.

The fact that this water system is fired by coal, matters not.

McGiever wrote:The fact that this water system is fired by coal, matters not.

I was thinking the same thing. The fact that there is a stoker instead of an oil burner does not change the piping strategy. Just have them pipe it up like an oil boiler with a bypass. I suggest the bypass (or call it an equalizer) to help prevent stratification in the boiler.

Did you get the factory controls for the VF3000? If not, you will need to get a timer and aquastat.

Some of the earlier posts touched on this, and before $ gets spent on the installation I thought it would be worth revisiting. I like Harmans, and AFAIK the stoker in a VF-3000 is basically the same as the one in a Harman Mag, which was my favorite stoker stove. However, a VF-3000, along with similar units produced by other manufacturers, is pretty small on the scale of available stoker boilers, and it seems like every time we have a cold spell the forum receives a wave of new threads and posts from people who have installed small boilers and are unhappy when they can't carry the load in specific situations.

As a starting point, it's usually not hard to measure the amount of radiation to which the boiler is to be attached, and determine the heating load associated with powering that radiation (e.g., lf baseboard x applicable btu/hr/lf baseboard x pickup factor for distribution losses). To that should be added a reasonable allowance for DHW. The OP already seems to be aware that the boiler might be undersized. Doing a little homework now could shed light on whether it might be advisable to "trade up" before sinking $ into the install, or whether the actual load realistically might be manageable with a VF-3000.

Mike

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/primary-secon ... ers.11837/

above are some ideas you can copy
I don't post there much over there, so I don't' care about all the hard work put into those threads by others
think coal in place of the wood things they chat about
add in your oil boiler for a back up
and you will get close enough

Pacowy wrote:Some of the earlier posts touched on this, and before $ gets spent on the installation I thought it would be worth revisiting.

unfortunately Mike it appears the user only wishes for that illusive silver bullet and doesn't want to spoon the sour medicine

Well I tried.

The funny thing is I don't recall any/many of the people who have complained about coming up short having any awareness or belief that this would happen at the time of installation. It's a little out of the ordinary to hear "the boiler is a little on the small side for my house"...but I'm planning to install it anyway.

Mike

I'll be feeding 160 feet of baseboard (Argo low-trim?) and three Slant/Fin kickspace heaters.

This winter we relied on electric resistive heat alone (oven cranked up to 500° with a fan sitting on the oven door, a couple 8-foot strips of electric baseboard, and four or five 1500W space heaters). We were using roughly 16kW of electric heat, which corresponds to ~55,000 BTUs. The second floor was not well heated.

Once we close up the holes through which I can see daylight, I believe we'll be in a lot better shape. I can always add insulation in the attic, seal and insulate the rim joist, and install garage doors (the garage was completely open all winter). This is a modular house we set last fall, and it isn't fully buttoned yet up with no siding at either end of the house; we had air blasting through gaps in the sheathing.

I have a little over two weeks for the final CO. $250 anyone?

I'm not a hydronics pro, but the back of my envelope says to run that baseboard you need maybe 90-92k btu/hr of gross boiler output and to that you need to add maybe 20k btu/hr for the kickspace heaters, for a total of 110-112 k btu/hr assuming 0 goes into hot water. IIRC raising a 1 gpm flow by 70 degrees requires 40k btu/hr, so the capacity that ought to be allowed if you want to also save on DHW costs depends on your pattern of usage. If you allow say 20+k btu/hr for DHW, you're looking at needing a boiler that can produce 110k btu/hr (with 0 DHW) up to 130+k btu/hr of gross output. I think that stoker carries a rating of 105k btu/hr input; to get the needed boiler output you'd need something about 45-70 percent bigger.

If you're using all electric almost any amount of coal supplement probably looks good, but to get proper system performance it looks to me like you need a bigger boiler. And I haven't even mentioned all of the reasons you might want to provide some excess capacity.

Mike

P.S. The 55k btu/hr figure you mention is an interesting starting point. You've already pointed out that it is low because it doesn't effectively heat the living space. To that I would add that it can't be compared to the rating of a hot water radiator unless you take into account the distribution system losses that occur in the movement of the hot water to the radiators (pick-up factor). Right off the bat you can add 15-20+ percent for that alone.

P.P.S. No charge.

Well, perhaps I could augment the boiler with an electric tankless water heater at a later date. I'm not sure I could procure another boiler and chimney in time, and I might as well use that 320A service for something.

Should I make the check out to "cash?"