EKO-60 first firing!

[zadwit]

I've been working on my EKO-60 ,with 2 five hundred gallon propan tanks for storage, since last April and today I fired the boiler up. It smoked a little at first then as it got hotter, burned cleaner though there was still a little smoke. My fan shutters are 1/2 open and the secondary air is 3-1/2 turns open. There is another air slider I guess under the front cover.Not sure if I need to add more air or try to find drier wood.
It took about 6 hours to heat the 1100 gallons of water from 40(f) to 135(f). The boiler output seems to run 175 to 180(f). I have a danfoss for return water protection and a UPS 26-99FC 3 speed circulator pump set on low speed.The hot water goes in the top of the tanks and the cool water is pulled from the bottom of the tanks. I could feel the stratification as the top warmed up first and there was definite line between hot on top and cool underneath. Most all the plumbing is 1-1/2" steel pipe. eventually I will pull hot water off the tanks to a heat exchanger, then from the heat exchanger to the fossil boiler. A super stor DHW tank is in the future as well......I'll try to post some pics tomorrow.
There seems to be a lot of tar in the upper chamber where the wood goes. I will try to find a few pallets and burn them as a test to see if maybe the wood I used today is too wet. I have the tanks housed in a 16x16 fram shed built beside my garage and house. After it burns for about a hour, I can open the top door and poke the wood with a poker, then close the door and turn the controller back on. The lower chamber has bluish/orange flames coming out but they only last for about 15 or 2o minutes, then when I look in the lower chamber, there is heat and a fair amount of smoke and I can't see the flames as all.......

I think I need to fine tune it and get some drier wood...
ALL in all I am pretty happy.!!

 

[jebatty]

That first burn is both exciting and little anxiety producing. It took me a number of burns to get reasonably close to where my Tarm is now, just purrs.

It took about 6 hours to heat the 1100 gallons of water from 40(f) to 135(f).

That's a lot of btu's! I calculate nearly 875,000, assuming the entire tank came up to 135. (1100 x 8.35 x 95)

There seems to be a lot of tar in the upper chamber where the wood goes....After it burns for about a hour, I can open the top door and poke the wood with a poker, then close the door and turn the controller back on. The lower chamber has bluish/orange flames coming out but they only last for about 15 or 2o minutes, then when I look in the lower chamber, there is heat and a fair amount of smoke and I can’t see the flames as all.......

Assuming the Eko is quite similar to the Tarm, the upper firebox chamber will get tar/creosote coating the walls and top, but it should not get very thick. The nozzle at the bottom of the firebox and the bottom of the firebox itself should not have any tar/creosote and there shouldn't be any tar/creosote dripping down the sides onto the bottom. The fire in the firebox should be getting hot enough to burn most of the tar/creostoe off and only leave a good coating. The upper chamber produces the wood gas which burns in the lower chamber.

The bottom chamber with the ceramics is the where the wood gas burns, and when operating properly it will be like a blast furnace with an orange to blue to invisible flame roaring in the tunnel. There should be practically none to no smoke in this area, no creosote, and only a fine gray ash in a very small quantity compared to other wood burning stoves.

Recommendation: get a good fire going in the firebox with the bypass damper open before closing the damper. Use smaller (5") rather than larger splits. This should produce a quick gasification process. Your air adjustments are different from mine, so no specific advice, but in general wetter wood requires more air in the lower chamber and drier wood less air. For your first burns try to be consistent in the moisture content of your wood, type of wood, and size of splits, so when you make adjustments, you are comparing apples to apples. If your outside temp is quite warm (60+ for example), you may not be producing a good draft. The Tarm burns much better with outside temps below 40.

My learning process was excitement/anxiety, frustration, and then great satisfaction. Also have to say that after one full season and ready to start the second, I'm still learning a few things related to type of wood I'm burning, the size of my splits, dryness of the wood, amount of wood to fill the firebox, and some other things which I've probably forgotten.

 

[markpee]

Just curious - how far apart are your boilers? I am starting to set up, and will soon be where you are - good luck!

 

[Eric Johnson]

My 60 took awhile to break in. You've got moisture still trapped in the refractory that has to work its way out, etc. I got smoke and after a few burns and fooling around with the air settings, it settled down and worked like I hoped it would. My advice is to fire it up as much as you can get away with and you'll pretty quickly learn how to operate it to your expectations. Experimenting with different species and dryness is also a good idea. Yes, the top chamber gets a good coat of creosote, but that should be the only place you see it. Occasionally you can scrape it down into the coal bed with the scraper tool if ti makes you feel better.

 

[zadwit]

Here are some pictures of my EKO-60 install

 

[Mack The Knife]

Congrats!
It sounds like you are ready to enjoy the winter months!
Sometime in the next 8 weeks I hope to feel the same euphoria.

 

[Nofossil]

The lower chamber has bluish/orange flames coming out but they only last for about 15 or 2o minutes, then when I look in the lower chamber, there is heat and a fair amount of smoke and I can’t see the flames as all.......

Yeah - drier wood seems like a good idea. Once the unit is gasifying (for me, after about six minutes of startup with the bypass damper open) you should never have visible smoke in the lower chamber. Any time the fan is running, you should have blue/orange flames and no smoke at all.

Sounds like you have enough moisture in your wood to kill secondary combustion, though it might be an adjustment thing. I agree with your pallet strategy, though I'd mix in a few greener pieces. A load of all kiln-dried wood can be too dry and cause 'puff-back'.

 

[mpilihp]

Im reading this thread to understand how to calculate what it SHOULD take to heat a storage tank up and I get the math, but how about the using of that stored heat. I know I should do a heat loss calculation but thats quite involved and would like to get an understanding at a higher level.

My oil boiler puts out 85K btus, could I not figure out what my heat load is by how much it runs? IE to figure out what my heat load for just DHW, Ive been monitoring the boiler run time each day, to make it simple lets say its 1 hour a day. How can I figure what the BTU requirement is for DHW? It is not a cold start boiler so there is heat loss in the boiler as well, again just want to get an idea of how to calculate this going by what my existing Oil boiler is using,

THanks

~ Phil

 

[zadwit]

I took the front cover off the EKO-60 today and sure enough, the shutters were fully closed. I opened them 1/2, put everythign back to gether and set the secondary air at 3.5 turns out, (open) and the shutters on the fans to about 60% open. I fired the boiler with small pieces of dry spruce wood and birch bark. After about 10 minutes, I was getting bluish orange flames shooting out the bottom into the "U" shaped blocks in the bottom chamber.I added more spruce until the upper chamber was a little less than 1/2 full. The boiler water temp started to climb faster than I have ever seen it go and the exhaust stack , after about 30 minutes run time was clean, no smoke at all. The stack temp ran about 200(f) like it always does.
Now to connect hot water output from the tanks to the fossil boiler....using a heat exchanger and also installation of a superstor DHW heater...
IT was 70 today here in Fairbanks and the leaves are changing color warning of the impending "termination dust". One of the local saw mills told me there is rush on firewood and they are delivering 12 cords a day. I have about 13 cords so hopefully I can make it thru this winter....

Enclosed is a picture showing the air shutter closed, the ones behind the fan cover.

 

[zadwit]

The biggest part of this was pouring a 16x16 concrete slab and building a shed and getting the propane tanks, sand blasting them, welding flanges onto them and then setting them inside the shed. The actually running of the pipe and stuff was only about 1/3 of the work involved, but I'm not finished yet.

 

[Sizzler]

I took the front cover off the EKO-60 today and sure enough, the shutters were fully closed. I opened them 1/2, put everythign back to gether and set the secondary air at 3.5 turns out, (open) and the shutters on the fans to about 60% open. I fired the boiler with small pieces of dry spruce wood and birch bark. After about 10 minutes, I was getting bluish orange flames shooting out the bottom into the "U" shaped blocks in the bottom chamber.I added more spruce until the upper chamber was a little less than 1/2 full. The boiler water temp started to climb faster than I have ever seen it go and the exhaust stack , after about 30 minutes run time was clean, no smoke at all. The stack temp ran about 200(f) like it always does.
Now to connect hot water output from the tanks to the fossil boiler....using a heat exchanger and also installation of a superstor DHW heater...
IT was 70 today here in Fairbanks and the leaves are changing color warning of the impending "termination dust". One of the local saw mills told me there is rush on firewood and they are delivering 12 cords a day. I have about 13 cords so hopefully I can make it thru this winter....

Enclosed is a picture showing the air shutter closed, the ones behind the fan cover.

That's exactly where mine were at from the factory. I opened them up about half way and back out my secondaries 6 full turns. Seemed to do the trick.

 

[lanichol]

The biggest part of this was pouring a 16x16 concrete slab and building a shed and getting the propane tanks, sand blasting them, welding flanges onto them and then setting them inside the shed. The actually running of the pipe and stuff was only about 1/3 of the work involved, but I'm not finished yet.

Did you insulated the propane tanks (I assume water). How did you get from the tanks to the house without the risk of freeze.

 

[zadwit]

The 16x16 shed is 2 feet from the building wall so I cut a square hole in both walls, and built a box and so now I run the 1-1/2" pipes thru this box in the walls.
The shed is insulated and the tanks have a 2x4 box built around them with 2" blue insulated foam board attached to the box. When the tanks are 165(f) the inside of the shed is 85(f) so I know I need more insulation. I also have old sleeping bags on top of the tanks to further help insulate them.
I haven't completly figured this all out but I plan to add some kind of emergency back up heat in case I have to leave for extended periods like 2 or 3 weeks at at time in the winter. I have the ability to drain the tanks so this will help, but I need to drain the water side of the heat exchanger as well which I think I can do at the "y" strainer installed next to the heat exchanger.