I was intrigued by a post a couple of weeks back regarding the location of the refractory bricks in the lower chamber of EKO's. The two most popular options seem to be either right under the nozzles (centered in the chamber) or pushed all the way to the back of the chamber (away from the door). The benefit of pushing them back as mentioned was to prevent ash from pushing behind the bricks and under the HX tubes where it can't be easily cleaned out. The benefit of centering the bricks seemed to be more of an OCD requirement to have things "symmetrical".
For the record - I was one of the "centered" brick placers mentioned above.
Well just over a week ago I gave my lower chamber it's mid-winter cleaning. Pulled the bricks out, got it nice and clean and put the bricks back in. I decided to give the rear placement of the bricks a shot. Well I'm here to tell you - it makes a difference in how my EKO 40 performs. I'm going to give this more time but after roughly 10 days of burning this way my initial findings are this:
1.) Time to go from cold startup to strong running is longer.
2.) Once she's really cranking my flue temps seem to be higher.
My initial thoughts are that pushing the bricks back prevents the flow of heat from really utilizing the center HX tubes, hence the higher flue temps. This, in my mind, seems to have a negative impact on performance as does the longer startup process.
This may all change next week when our weather gets back into a more average winter pattern. But for now I'm 80% convinced that pushing the bricks back to the wall isn't necessarily a good thing. More to come...
For the record - I was one of the "centered" brick placers mentioned above.
Well just over a week ago I gave my lower chamber it's mid-winter cleaning. Pulled the bricks out, got it nice and clean and put the bricks back in. I decided to give the rear placement of the bricks a shot. Well I'm here to tell you - it makes a difference in how my EKO 40 performs. I'm going to give this more time but after roughly 10 days of burning this way my initial findings are this:
1.) Time to go from cold startup to strong running is longer.
2.) Once she's really cranking my flue temps seem to be higher.
My initial thoughts are that pushing the bricks back prevents the flow of heat from really utilizing the center HX tubes, hence the higher flue temps. This, in my mind, seems to have a negative impact on performance as does the longer startup process.
This may all change next week when our weather gets back into a more average winter pattern. But for now I'm 80% convinced that pushing the bricks back to the wall isn't necessarily a good thing. More to come...