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[woodedacres]

anybody have trouble with there honeywell aquastat? mine will not regulate temp in either direction. set for 160° boiled the water level float out. manually turn down temp to get draft fan to shutoff and it will not kick back on. have 5° differential set tried 10° same thing. this is a new install in January. ncb250 coal unit

[Scott7m]

anybody have trouble with there honeywell aquastat? mine will not regulate temp in either direction. set for 160° boiled the water level float out. manually turn down temp to get draft fan to shutoff and it will not kick back on. have 5° differential set tried 10° same thing. this is a new install in January. ncb250 coal unit

I personally havent seen them go bad, but m sure they do.  Call nc and have em send you one, hows it doing

[woodedacres]

called Eric and they are replacing it. i think it is 1 of many issues contributing to my inefficiencies. i was telling them that there has always been as much as 20° difference between the gauge and stat setting. they said it shouldn't be more then 5°. Also the gentleman that installed my pex has it just below the surface. i have a racing stripe in the snow. Eric said based on his calculations we are loosing close to 3,000 btu's an hour through the pex which isn't terrible but not right. I am still using more material than i think i should but learning i don't always have to load the stove full. i went through 1 ton of ky coal in 3 weeks. seems way to much for me. i am tweaking and learning. i think the stat is a major thing. it is sticking too often. just this afternoon i put about 20lbs of coal in. as i walked away it went in to idle mode. watched for awhile and it opened again. it ran for 45 minutes before it idled again. i currently have the stat set at 155°. i don't think it should take that long to recover 5° maybe 10°. i was loading more coal because i thought it was the reason i would occasionally loose fire. it was the stat not kicking back on and finding the stove at 90° or colder. i hope when i get the new one i can get a better handle on it

thanks again for all your input.

[Scott7m]

I never bury the line very deep, you don't gain anything really by burying it down deep, you may not see it on the surface but your still losing it.....  The stripe could be mainly because it's bare ground instead of losing heat. 

1 ton in 3 weeks...  Good grief....  Bet your wishing you'd stuck with gas

[woodedacres]

just don't know what i am doing wrong to consume so much energy. got draft fan on notch 2 and burning great

[Scott7m]

I donno...  I've never seen a draft fan adjustment make a very big difference, some but not a lot...

Your going through a pile of energy and it's not even cold

Imagine if this was a bad winter with highs in the teens and lows 10 or 20 below

[RSI]

How much smoke are you getting out the chimney? If it is smoking much you are losing a lot of fuel that way.

How much gas were you burning in the same amount of time that you burn a ton of coal?

[woodedacres]

Only smokes on refuel. After say half an hour nothing.

[woodedacres]

I seriously hope it was/is the aquastat. I could have it set for 160 and the gauge read 175 turn the aquastat down to see when it was going to shut off and wouldnt trip till 120. Then turn it back up and it will turn back on at same temp. And the water is 45 above when it would turn on.  Then boil over then not turn back on loose flame. I have battling a mess

[Scott7m]

None of that makes sense......    Is your fan off when it reaches 175???

It's common for coal to spike over 12-15 degrees.....

[woodedacres]

No, the fan will not shut off. The aquastat sticks. When i have the time to monitor it i will at times find that set at 160 the gauge will read 175 or higher as high as 205 and the blower is still running. It got so hot at some point it melted the thermal grease from around the stat bulb. So what i do is manually check to see when the stat may turn the blower off. I can at times turn it down to 100 before the microswitch in the stat clicks. I have got up in the morning to find my water level float and cap laying on the roof of the stove water at 200 plus blower running and the stat set at 160. I again check by dialing it down to see when it is going to turn off the blower and it basically wasn't going to because the stat thinks it was only 100 or abouts when i hear the switch click

[Scott7m]

I see...  Def a bad stat

Didn't you say you used 900 dollars in gas one month? 

[woodedacres]

yes last February 2011. here it was in the teens during the day and below zero at night for most of the month last year. unusual temps. and we weren't in a plan for gas. we were paying alot per gallon. i think the stat has been my problem all along. James at NC said the temp gauge usually runs a few below what the aquastat is set for not above. any truth to that statement from your experiences?

this thing will stick the other direction too. won't open the draft fan and i will loose my fire. it will close for 4 or 5 hours drop to 70 to 90. i thought it was normal because i had nothing to compare it to being my 1st experience with an owb. then i start seeing others posting how accurate there's is and got me wondering. Eric said they have used honeywell for along time and have only had  2 fail. mine and another about 2 weeks ago. so they don't know if they got a bad batch of stats or if it is just isolated incidence. i did a search on here and see other boilers with same stat have had sticking issues.

this forum and your input have been a valuable asset.

[RSI]

The temperature gauge they use isn't real accurate and almost always read lower. I have never seen one read higher. It is at a lower point in the boiler too so the actual temperature there could be a little less.

The tube from the bulb to the aquastat didn't get kinked did it? THat is the only thing I can think of that would cause your problems. If it leaked then it would never work at all.

[woodedacres]

RSI, from day 1 my gauge has read no less than 10° hotter than the stat. right now my stat is set at 150° and the gauge is between 165 and 170 and the blower is running. i just checked this not 5 minutes ago. i dialed the stat down to see when it would  turn the blower off and it was between 130 and 125. that is seriously messed up. new stat on the way. i did not notice any kinks in the bulb or the line to the bulb.

thanks for your input