Help needed.....just can't seem to get it right.

[vtwoodheater]

I won't say I am 100% sure its not a restriction in the fire tubes, but there are 6 of them at 2 1/2" diameter. The most crud I have ever cleaned off them is about 1/8-3/16". There is plenty of natural draft as measured with a manometer.
I am leaning towards too much primary air and ending up with a right side up fire, thus the piles of coals. I know when I stick the poker tool down through the nozzle, after clearing the smoke, it's off to the races again.
So what constitutes a "good bed of coals"? 1" deep, 2" deep? I know when I load up a lot of the playing card size pieces and walk away for 5-6 hours I end up with about 5-6" coal bed.

I will keep adjusting the primary and see what happens. 5 degrees tonight, gonna load her up. I still don't have to go outside to do that.

 

[hondaracer2oo4]

Well I have a heatmaster g200 gasser without storage and the firebox is 15 cubic feet. I don't ever put more than 2/3 of a load in it though which is for negative degree temps but I like a 2-3 inch deep bed.

I would keep knocking that primary air down

 

[vtwoodheater]

Until this weekend, looks like the crutch for now is bigger splits.

Thank you for all the help.

 

[hondaracer2oo4]

Any update over the past few days?

 

[vtwoodheater]

Been busy with work and coaching girls basketball this week. Oil is cheap so I have the gasser shut down for now. Hopefully Friday night or Saturday I am going to tear it all down, clean the exchanger tubes, vac her out good, eliminate all the easy stuff.

Maybe the fan blades fell off the shaft? That would be easy. I think I read about that happening to someone before.

When I get it figured out, I will let you know.

 

[vtwoodheater]

So, ended up being a primary air thing, a draft thing, and a maintenance thing.

I cleaned the fire tubes, vac'd the bottom out, ran a brush through the chimney, checked the fan, etc. Nothing out of the ordinary.
I was playing around with the air settings, and just couldn't seem to make a difference with anything.

For some reason I opened the primary air shutters 100% to get some more air up top and I guess you need to run a brush through those passages every now and then. Never did all last year.

Surprised it ran at all. Worst part is, that is the easiest spot to clean on the whole thing. Oh well, lesson learned.

Thank you all for the help.

 

[maple1]

Hmm, reply #7 was on to something.

Or found that nut like that blind squirrel.

Glad you got it figured!

 

[Boardroom]

Hi Guys.
Life got in the way and I got a away from the forum for a long time. This is the first I have read or heard of how deep the coal bed should be. I can load up my boiler and half of it will be coals after a few hours of good burning. Sounds like that is not the way it is suppose to be. Does anyone know of any other threads where this is discussed, or even better a pic of what the firebox and coals should look like?
Thanks for bringing it up VT. I forgot how good at this all you guys really are.

 

[maple1]

I can load up my boiler and half of it will be coals after a few hours of good burning. Sounds like that is not the way it is suppose to be.

In what way? That doesn't sound far off me, really. I'm also not sure the coal bed needs to be very deep, and the depth of it would also likely depend a lot on the type of wood being burned.

I think at times my bed might get too deep and the gasses have trouble making it through, slowing things down a bit. But it all burns away eventually.

 

[vtwoodheater]

So, just a little update:

After searching and reading for what seemed like forever again (my wife is getting annoyed at the computer time), I came to the conclusion that maybe I need more air and maybe not be concerned about length of burn time and color of the flame.

Last nights burn wasn't really that great again. Been fooling around with settings here and there.

I set the fan at 100%, primaries at 75-90%, and secondary at 5/16-3/8" open, this morning. Got a bed of coals established, and at 9:00 loaded threw an armful of wood in. Lots of load on the boiler, it warmed up to 18 degrees today. After watching the boiler pump cycle on and off for the next two hours, I changed the pump hysteresis to 10. Factory setting is four degrees. This took care of the pump cycling. There was at least one zone calling for heat all day. I threw another armful in at noon or so, and another at 4:00. At times there is a lot of blue flame, other times orange, but always strong.

When I got home about an hour ago, I covered the nozzle with the coals and loaded her up. After 12 hours of burning, the whole house is 72 degrees, and 1000 gallons of storage was raised 55 degrees.

I might just leave it like this for a while and see how it goes.