In January I decided to take my draft inducer off and see how my boiler would run. My normal chimney draft with this boiler is around .03 wc. I ran this way for two months before I put the inducer back on. Now it is running at the suggested .06 wc. Wow, what a difference. The boiler gets up to temp much quicker and more importantly the chimney goes NVS (no visible smoke) much, much quicker. I would dare say with out the inducer, the boiler was probably not reaching gassification mode very often. So for those of you that have not got a manometer and tested your draft, you may want to do so. You might be surprised how much better your boiler will perform with the suggested draft for your particular unit...
Draft for Seton style boiler - Lesson relearned
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I too would recommend a manometer for all burners--be it a Seton, EKO, Econoburn, Biomass...........I installed mine and monitor my draft all burning season. Dwyer Model 25 is about a $35 item on Ebay.
I measured mine and it was right around .03-.05 which is right in spec but I still get a lot of smoke roll out whenever I opend the doors to load fuel. I've also been thinking about getting a draft inducer. Where did you get yours from?
A manometer can be as simple as a hand held instrument that you insert the end of the tubing on instrument into a drilled hole in chimney pipe. Or you can install a unit that mounts on the wall and is attached to chimney pipe permanently taking constant readings. As NNYorker pointed out, you can buy them fairly cheap on ebay. You can also check Dwyer instruments for retail...
sparke said:
OK thanks, thats what I thought. I believe they also have to be level to get an accurate reading?
Pat
sparke said:
Ahhhhh
The practical beauty of induced draft. In a perfect world, it's nice to dream about a burner that requires no external means of draft aside from the chimney it is connected to. The real world dictates something different. A wood stove that fires at a steady rate of maybe 30-40,000 btu's is one thing. A boiler that produces 100K or higher and has to cycle the fire on/off is always better off with an induced draft IMHO.
ISeeDeadBTUs said:
It's the Econoburn EBW-100. Right now it's overkill for this time of year so I'm just loading smaller hot fires at night and letting it burn out by morning. My house is new so the hot water tank is very well insulated. I think a draft inducer would help because there is some smoke roll out when I open the doors. Although i'm learning to light the fire with the lower door open which lets the nozzle act as an turbo air feed and really gets the fire going w/o haveing some fill the room(keep the upper door closed). Then when I fire up the stove I go through the loading proceedure and it's working ok. I find these things are like an old car or truck in that you to fiddle with them to get them to your liking. Once I get thermal storage I'm sure the whole process will be much easier.
The meter was my installers. We measured the draft on the first fire which I got going pretty good. Too much actually which lead to my not so great experience with idleing. I need to pick up one for future use sooner or later though.
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