can we talk about coal?

I haven't seen much talk about coal, I haven't been e member that long either. I have a customer who has harmon magum stoker. she has asked me to look at it while I am installing her new in floor radiant heat. can we discuss coal here? I don't want get in trouble here. I have enough at home. thanks, chris.

brenndatomu said:

I don't think it is a problem to discuss coal here, but I haven't seen a whole lot of coal talk here in the last couple years that I have been lurking around here. What's your question?
Just an FYI if you don't get answers here go to nepacrossroads.com, that's all coal talk all the time. More coal info than most people would ever want to know! Not tryin to run ya off though...! Welcome to hearth BTW!

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thanks, that will be my second resort. I feel comfortable here so hopefully we can figure it out.
ok. so my customer has a harmon magnum stoker. this is her third season using it and she just (yesterday) mentioned that the house is has soot/ black ash. all over it. it goes away in the summer so I can only blame this stove. it has been like this since day one. I have looked at the manual and nothing seems to stand out, but I don't know anything about them either. I am just curious what would cause the black ash. she calls it black stuff. this is a small house that is poorly built. the husband is a millionaire cob job artist. it drives me insane. he installed this stove and want's to do the radiant too! we will be installing the radiant while he is working out of town this week lol. the way she explained everything all parts are tight and it runs great. they do keep a fan near it though. will filling the hopper with coal cause this to happen? I don't know what else could really cause this besides a bad hx.

simple.serf said:

How is she filling the coal hopper? If the coal is at all dusty, when it is poured in, it will release fine black dust. Is the fan that they keep near it running or not when the hopper is filled?

I would think that you would be able to smell a bad HX. Have you taken a CO reading around the unit?

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I haven't been there since this has been running. I will hopefully be doing the radint this week and will take a reading then. i only have one combustion analyzer and my on call tech has it this week. i will have to get it from him. i am not real sure how she is dumping the coal, but i suspect this is the cause. i just need to be sure. i don't think the fan is that close.

BoilerMan said:

Check draft, coal is very sensitive to draft. Generally speaking stack temps are too low to make a decent vacuum on anything but a 30+ foot chimney.

TS

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i will check draft. i does go into a chimney but it's not 30 foot. and now that i think about it it may use the same one as the oil boiler.

BoilerMan said:

Most coal setups around here end up with some type of draft inducer, if it's not just dust from dumping coal over into the hopper...... It's been my observation that the ash is worse than the coal itself. That said, I have no expierence with bitumen only anthracite.

Be certain that they have a CO detector.

TS

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she does. I just replaced it 2 weeks ago when she signed a contract. I put one in with every new install and try to replace any one I see that is bought at an average store. they are just not good.

fuelfarmer said:

Check to see if candles are burning. We had a renter that called to say there was a black film on the walls. They thought the propane heater was causing the problem. The heater was not the problem. I had to show the renter the black soot on the ceiling over a candle that was on a high shelf.

A white Styrofoam cup will draw soot like crazy. Place a piece of tape on a cup and after a few days remove the tape. If there is soot in the air you can see how white the cup is where the tape was compared to the rest of the cup.

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this stuff is apparently throughout the house. it is a wide open floor plan a frame.