Eko Punget/Cresote Smell

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solarguy

New Member
Hearth Supporter
Jan 14, 2008
147
southern, nh
www.heatnh.com
Before I begin, a little background. Whenever I have set up any fossil fuel appliance for proper combustion there is the proper air to fuel ratio. Whenever a flame has been white in color it signals the presence of too much air.....

In regards to the Eko, many have complained about the burning/cresote smell that emits from the upper chamber door. I have heard this from many of our customers & it has been a hot topic on the wood boiler forums. I have been told that a new gasket should be forthcoming to correct the situation but a little voice in my brain kept saying the gasket is not the problem, we are overpressurezing the upper chamber & therefore creating the gasket leakage. If you are getting alot of upper door gasket leakage, close down the fan shutter to 25-30% of it's opening, open the secondary air inlet 1.5 to 2 full additional turns. The end result will be gasification with an orange & blue flame, not blazing white light. It will take more effort to start the boiler up & acheive gasification but it is worth it. You'll end up with little longer burn time, the boiler is less likely to idle, fly ash is less likely to collect & plug the boiler breeching, more importantly, there will not be that punget burning cresote smell emiting from the upper door gasket. Any smell that does emit from the upper door is small in comparision & quickly dilutes.

I experimented with my boiler first & the results were favorable. I then experimented with air settings on 4 boilers over the last 48 hours belonging to customers that have been down right brutal over this issue, their feedback back has been very postive. They all pretty much said the same thing, "the smell from the boiler is no longer objectionable".

Bob
 
Did you notice any changes in the heat output of the boiler. I've noticed with a whiter flame, I can slow down the air flowing through the boiler and still get the output. I understand the principle your attempting to achieve but if the boiler is not located in living space will it still produce the output as before?
 
I got the new controller and have found that reducing the blower speed to 50-60% once the boiler is up to temp creates a blue flame, extends my burn time and burns a lot cleaner, as evidenced by the deposit left on the secondary combustion chamber door. Cave24K details all of this, along with air settings guidance, in the "Fine-Tuning Your EKO" sticky. I also think that the higher temp allowed by the new controller (RK-2001U) increases efficiency, makes gasification easier to achieve and maintain, and makes my system more responsive. I can't comment on the smell issue, since my boiler is in the barn, so smell/smoke is not an issue. My advice: when she's cranking good on a cold night, cut the fan speed to 50% and plan to sleep in an extra hour or two.
 
<Did you notice any changes in the heat output of the boiler

I would say there are no noticable changes in the heat output of the boiler at this moment in time however all of the boilers tweaked are hooked up with storage systems so they're a bit more forgiving than say a boiler hooked up in a series to a existing heat system. We've got a couple of those that the owners are going to tweak on their own so we'll find out shortly. If a boiler in a series can keep up with the demand without the fossil fuel back-up kicking in, than I would have to say no.

I along with many of our customers have tried the fan speed down to 50% & it didn't make any real difference in the smell coming from the upper chamber, at least with a unit installed indoors.

We sold 40 plus units last year & have done 27 Eko installations to date so we've gotten alot of "direct" feedback from our customers on this issue:) A couple of customers have tried Mark Brookes silicon fix & it didn't last very long. You can oil the snot out of the gasket but all you end up with is an oil burning smell. I have thought about this from every angle for the last several months & kept returning to air pressure in the upper chamber.

Bob
 
solarguy said:
Before I begin, a little background. Whenever I have set up any fossil fuel appliance for proper combustion there is the proper air to fuel ratio. Whenever a flame has been white in color it signals the presence of too much air.....

In regards to the Eko, many have complained about the burning/cresote smell that emits from the upper chamber door. I have heard this from many of our customers & it has been a hot topic on the wood boiler forums. I have been told that a new gasket should be forthcoming to correct the situation but a little voice in my brain kept saying the gasket is not the problem, we are overpressurezing the upper chamber & therefore creating the gasket leakage. If you are getting alot of upper door gasket leakage, close down the fan shutter to 25-30% of it's opening, open the secondary air inlet 1.5 to 2 full additional turns. The end result will be gasification with an orange & blue flame, not blazing white light. It will take more effort to start the boiler up & acheive gasification but it is worth it. You'll end up with little longer burn time, the boiler is less likely to idle, fly ash is less likely to collect & plug the boiler breeching, more importantly, there will not be that punget burning cresote smell emiting from the upper door gasket. Any smell that does emit from the upper door is small in comparision & quickly dilutes.

I experimented with my boiler first & the results were favorable. I then experimented with air settings on 4 boilers over the last 48 hours belonging to customers that have been down right brutal over this issue, their feedback back has been very postive. They all pretty much said the same thing, "the smell from the boiler is no longer objectionable".

Bob

I am just sitting here thinking about this problem and a thought had occurred to me. It may sound stupid. Do you find the associated smell to be more prevalent in installations where the house may have inadequate combustion air supply or maybe be too tight in construction? I am thinking they may have a greater air pressure differential between the upper chamber and the room thus allowing for leakage. I have dealt with single wall casing boilers and double wall cased. Both need a space that has a good air supply but the single wall ones really need it or you will smell anything that may be leaking. The double wall boilers use a higher pressure between the casing to keep combustion gases in. Anyway, I would think a door could be redesigned to allow for better "dogging down" to seal tighter. Kind of makes me think of a submarine hatch.

Mike
 
Interesting. With my no storage Solo40, would it benefit from a variable speed motor control on the fan? Would it improve the cycle time on the "warmer" days, so it would be on more?. Or would that mess up my draft and or some ratio between the ideal volume of air being fed to the secondary area.

Just curious.
 
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