I have a customer who traded up from an econoburn EBW 100 to a Heatmaster G-100. He is super happy with the G-100.
I bought the EBW 100 from him for a bit more than he'd get for scrap (plus I hauled it away) and I'd like to do some rehab on it and burn it against my 1000 gallons of storage. The upper firebox (primary chamber) is pretty creosoted up, but I'm making slow progress with soakings of aqueous ammonia and some scraping. I know the firebox has been repaired a few times, but is pinholed in a couple spots. I can weld those up OK, but in the back top corners, it appears that the steel has been eroded away under the creosote that I've chipped out.
I'm wondering what to do about this. The boiler is out, and I can turn it any which way to work on it.
I see 4 options:
I'll see if I can get some good photos of the erosion.
In the future: return protection and storage!!
I bought the EBW 100 from him for a bit more than he'd get for scrap (plus I hauled it away) and I'd like to do some rehab on it and burn it against my 1000 gallons of storage. The upper firebox (primary chamber) is pretty creosoted up, but I'm making slow progress with soakings of aqueous ammonia and some scraping. I know the firebox has been repaired a few times, but is pinholed in a couple spots. I can weld those up OK, but in the back top corners, it appears that the steel has been eroded away under the creosote that I've chipped out.
I'm wondering what to do about this. The boiler is out, and I can turn it any which way to work on it.
I see 4 options:
- cut out and replace the corners with new steel. I assume at this point the chamber is square, so matching up would be OK. however, against the back of the firebox there is no water, it's the upper flue connection area. difficult welding to get the water jacket sealed back up again.
- lay weld passes over the area to build up the material. A real pain, as it's about a full arms length in there, and visibility is bad.
- braze a layer of Brass over the whole corner area to build up material. the temperature up there shouldn't ever get hot enough to melt it again, it's corrosion resistant (more so than steel anyway) and I can do that with equipment I own.
- I have seen videos of spray welding, which looks like a good option, but I haven't even begun to find out if someone in the area can do that.
I'll see if I can get some good photos of the erosion.
In the future: return protection and storage!!
