Your right. I need a meter. Tell me where to order one for 20-30 bucks. Had a buddy tell me by the way, he had a piece of wet wood he brought in, caught the water that came off of it for one day.... one gallon of water. I did not try it so who knows, but man.
What do you think of the flow thing Eric? What size of pump you runnin over there?
Eric, once you have gasification started from a new fire, you say you never lose that till the load is used up? I know dry wood is best, but im confident my wood is pretty good, but with no meter only a guess. And reading Nofossils findings on 30% wood......
For my part, gasification combustion never stops. It even has a little flame during idle.
For the record, 30% wood looks and feels really dry. All of it was cut a year ago or more. Most of it has been stacked covered for over a year. I was surprised at the readings. I had some locust that was cut down in 1998, and has been cut to log length, split and stacked for the last six months at least. seems dry and hard. Still 30%+.
I’ve got a Grundfos 26-96 pushing through a 200-foot 1” loop. I also have a 3/4-inch line being circulated with a Taco 007. It’s only a 100-foot loop. I’m thinking of putting a three-speed on that one, just to have one more thing to play around with.
Scott,
I forgot now - did you open or close the primary adjustments?
Before replumbing, put some sketches up here for comment. Keep in mind, I don’t have any automated mixing valve. Not saying they are a bad thing, but it can be done with a hand valve, too. But, my tank never goes below 160 during normal use, so my return water is never in danger of causing condensation problems. And if the tank is down below 160, I get it back up above that pretty quickly, then close the valves.
In my experience, if the wood isn’t totally dry, smaller pieces are better. Try a few loads where you split the wood smaller.
The actuator is the electrical device that sits on top of the valve body and makes it open and close when power is applied to it.
C.B. installed and really simple. I have to say, so far I am liking what I see from it, but we’ll see how much wood it consumes. Myself, my cousin, my dad, and probably my daughter could fit in it. I have to also say how little smoke comes from it at idle. I get more smoke I think. Believe me I’ll keep an eye on it.
I am into really good oak right now Eric. Did the old smack two pieces together and it sounds like I hit a grand slam. Nice hollow sound, but no real number to that I guess.
Before I had an automatic valve Steve, I had real problems from a cold start. I think I’ll be ok by either adding a pump like you said in the eko loop, unless someone here thinks the Laddomat’s pump would choke the flow from the added pump. If so I will switch to the termovar valve and eliminate the Laddomat. Maybe the Laddomat should be used on smaller sized burners, I don’t know. Maybe I should post a new thread about the laddomat, see if anyone else is using one...? This is suppose to be Steves thread, maybe I hijacked it.
Scott,
I don’t mind the hijack, but you’ll probably get more visibility on your question in another thread. Start a thread, post up a sketch of what you have and what you want, and wait for the feedback and suggestions!
If all goes well, there should be some pics here. A few of the tank and plumbing setup from when I installed everything and a few of the lower chamber from today. You can see how I have the tunnel setup and where the refractory has broken apart a little around the bottom of the nozzle. I also noticed some around the sides, too.
Edit - running into file size limits. More pics in next post. Home made turbulator on this one, too.
And, the U shaped pieces are in pieces. Each one is in several pieces, but they stack together tight enough to stay in place. I’m going to have to get some refractory bricks and just do the tunnel with those.
Sled-Mack Daddy, I think you need some new refractory. I would be a little nervous throwing wood into the firebox. It looks like it wouldn’t take much to knock the nozzle bigger.
Each “nest” of coils has two coils. The inner coils are supplied from the boiler, the outer supply the house. Each of those coils is 60 ft of 3/4 tubing. However, I just found that I get much better results by pumping through both sets while burning. I just need an actuator for a valve so that I don’t have to close it when the pumps go off.
I didn’t empty all the ashes out the top, as they were still red hot. But the area around the nozzle still looks good up above. Even the nozzle itself looks fine from the bottom. If it falls through, I’m screwed, and panic will start shortly thereafter.
Anyone had to replace that lower refractory on an EKO? I’m curious how hard it is to do.
Thanks for the pic’s. I think I won’t add the fire brick after looking at yours. It looks to me that you are getting errosion from the hot gases . My gasses don’t seem to blow back up like it seems it is on yours. I don’t think that the bottem fire brick is make of as high rated as the nozzel is as the nozzel doesn’t show hardly any wear. The top of mine doesn’t show any wear like that. But then I’ve only been running it this year.
I see that your tank is made from fiberglass. Do you see any problem with the high temp?
leaddog
I like the tank. I’m confused about the chimney. I’m a little shocked at the refractory.
I hope those firebricks on either side of the gasification trough aren’t holding the refractory up. I think we discussed inspecting the secondary air tubes to make sure that all is still well in there. With that much apparent degradation to the refractory, I’d be worried that the tubes are still delivering air correctly.
Why don’t you just buy new trough bricks, instead of screwing around with all that firebrick? I’d be worried that using a non-standard configuration down in the gasification chamber would change the dynamics of the heat transfer and possibly result in either poor performance or damage to the boiler. I think you said Zenon advised you to do it this way (and that’s good enough for me), but I still don’t understand why you didn’t replace the degraded U-shaped blocks with new ones.
I still have the stock U shaped pieces under the nozzles. Before I added the extra bricks, the flame would shoot out over the sides of the U shaped pieces, which would seem like it would cause more erosion on the upper refractory?
The tank is holding up just fine. It came out of an old printing factory where they had hot oil in it. I think it was a resevoir for a piece of hydraulic equipment. It has shown no signs of degredation from the hot water.
It’s not all that clear in the picture, but when I stick my head in there I can see a definite difference between the lower refractory and the next layer up where the air holes are in the nozzles. The bricks are not touching the top refractory, so I know they are not holding it up.
I may still buy some new U shaped blocks. However, I still do like the fact that what I have brings all the hot gasses to the front. This extends the burn time in the lower chamber and gets a bit more dwell time of the gasses on the side water jacket.
When I told Zenon last year that my U shaped pieces were falling apart, he was the one that actually recommended against buying new ones. He suggested I use wider bricks (so that they would stand on their own), or cast my own refractory, and leave the trough deeper and wider under the nozzle. He says that creates a better burn. I’ll send him the pics of my lower chamber, and see what he thinks.
That’s interesting about the bricks. Seems like it would be pretty easy to cast your own, though I don’t know about firing it, but I guess anybody with a kiln could do that. It would be nice to get a set of plans for building a mold in the optimum shape. Sounds like a fun project.
