I'm building a homemade boiler

Is it wrong for me to be excited about next year already. You guys make me wish I plumbed the house first then the garage. I hope the storage is what I'm lacking.

I'm liking it more now then when I first started it up. I honestly never thought that the weather conditions, wood condition, or so many other factors come into play.

I was always basing my fire conditions off of what I've seen my dad do with his wood furnace. But I learned real quick a boiler is not a wood furnace. My dad always made it look so easy to build and sustain a fire. Of course he's been with the same stove for over 30 years now. So I guess it will get better with time.

I was running the garage so warm because that's my only heat load on the boiler. it was the only way I could make the boiler do work in this warmer weather. I'll be turning it down when the weather stays cold. Other wise the boiler would idle for hours on end. I know I'm burning more wood this way but it's better then just make creosote like crazy.


Another successful night last night. Only down fall is I burnt up my flash light. I had a little LED magnetic light I would stick on the inside edge of the door while loading at night. I shut the door last night and went in the house. I came out this morning to a very sad looking melted clump. But other then toasting my light I had a good pile of coals to get the new load of wood going again.

I did my weekly HX clean out this morning and I got this much black crumbly stuff. Is this alot for a weeks burning? Tape measure for size reference.




And just because I didn't post a pic of my tools during building. I have a ash rake I built from stainless steel pipe and a piece of scrap. And my HX brush I got from a local pizza place, they used it to clean their ovens. It's got an aluminum scrapper on one side and a brass brush on the other side.

There is the same crumbly stuff in the chimney but I haven't cleaned that out yet. It's not too terrible in the chimney though. All of that in the picture is from the heat exchanger.

Tonight I went out to load the night run in and I went in the garage to adjust my thermostat and noticed my pump is started to make some noise. It started out as a kind of whine but then went into what sounds almost like it's pulling air through but I can't see any air in the line when I shine a light through the pex lines. The coils don't sound like there's any cavitation going on. I turned the speed up to speed 2 and it quit making the noise. Any thoughts what it could be? Should I be worried?

I came home from work today to see that some water had ran out of my boiler vent at some point today. I'm not sure why all the sudden I would have water coming out. It hasn't had any water come out the vent since I started burning. Is there any reason that I'm getting water from the vent line all the sudden?

Mine is an open system yes. I have a stand pipe for my vent line very similar to a garn vent line. Here you can see the pics of my vent system.
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/im-building-a-homemade-boiler.145689/page-2#post-1964868

The stand pipe goes up inside the top access to the boiler then it's open to drop down and run out.

The only 2 things I can think that may be causing this, 1) is there was a creosote fire inside the fire box that got super hot and the aquastat shutting down the fan wasn't enough to kill the blaze causing a slight boil over. Or 2) there is finally enough condinsation building on my top cover that it's dripping down into the pipe and running out.

My circulater pump runs constant and my aquastat is set to shut off at 170. I have watched when the aquastat shuts down and the temp still runs up but it stops at 172, every time I have observed it anyway. I guess I'll have to keep an eye on it when I get a chance to.

I have a 120 gallon tank for my firebox then it's lined with fire brick and refractory so I probably have about 12-13 cu/ft of useable burn area.

The amount of water on my concrete outside the boiler shed wasn't a lot when I looked at it but it's hard to tell how much may have evaporated before I got off work. My vent line is hard plumbed into the boiler shed wall. I could try to disconnect it and run it into a bucket to check that theory.

I'll try to turn my aquastat up alittle. To help with the creosote. I'm going to let the temp run down alittle and build a hot fire in there to try to burn it this weekend.

Well, as of this afternoon after work I have decided I'm only going to burn this thing at night until temps get and stay cold outside. I'll just shut the whole system down before I leave for work and then refire at night.

It's 50 outside right now and with my garage forced air running constantly, because I have the drive in door open, it took almost 10 minutes for the boiler to drop 1 degree. With that math it takes almost 45 minutes inbetween boiler fan running at 4 degree differintial. I'm not going to idle all day, that's just rediculous. With temps in the high 40s and the door shut all day the garage will hold some heat until that night. Hopefully it gets cold soon.

This morning before work I ran the temp up in the boiler to 180 degrees and shut everything down. I do think I found out where my water running out the vent was from. When I ran it up to 180 a big air bubble found its way to the access opening and bubbled up into the opening and splashed a bunch of water out the vent. The water level is almost level with the top of the vent stand pipe. With the top being flat on my boiler it traps air in the corners. When the water expands it pushes the air bubbles to the access opening. So that was good to find out.

But I'm alittle concerned when I shut my pump down one of my heat exchangers in the garage made a horrible bang noise. I'm not sure what that could have been but I plugged my pump back in and then unplugged it to make sure that's where the noise came from, and it did it again.

I left for work at 530 this morning and got home at about 3 this afternoon. From 180 degrees this morning it dropped to 172 while I was away. No pump running, no fans running, I thought that was ok.

I have thought of adding in an air separator. Mainly because I don't want to keep driving air through my pump.

This warmer weather is going to get me a chance to build my new fire grate. I will be forcing air through the grate to warm it up then it will exit out the top inside the firebox just before my flue exit, pushing the flue gases back down into the fire box for hopefully a reburn.