First Fire

[Mushroom Man]

It was my first fire and I wanted to start small. I did. I put in 3 or 4 wads of newspaper, a piece of cardboard and 3 pieces of hardwood. One piece was a 5 or 6" split, 20 inches long, the other two were smaller. I used a propane torch to start it. The temperature built up was slowly but steadily reaching 80 C.

No heat was coming into the pipes. I was puzzled. I phoned Don L who surmised that the boiler pump was pulling air, not water. Good call Don. I purged the air and the heat started to move through the pipes.

Five hours later the controller still read 72 C and my wife and daughter were complaining about the temperature. Too hot! I haven't heard that in 10 years. It is 7 hours into the burn and we're still at 62 C. I cannot believe it!

Don asked if I experienced gasification. No I did not. I suspect it was because there wasn't hardly any wood in there. Gasification would be nice but that's a "Day 2" project.

Sadly, I have some small leaks. The good news is that the EKO works. I know I can fix the leaks, although it is a pain.

I have a huge number of questions about operation, but for tonight I'm just happy to have reached a major milestone in this project.

Special thanks to Don L who made this project comprehensible.

 

[Gooserider]

Congratuations... Photos?

Gooserider

 

[Rick Stanley]

Tim,

Congrats on getting your boiler running!! I know the feeling

Now, about those leaks. Don't feel bad. I don't know how much experience you'd had soldering pipes before your boiler project, but I had soldered dozens of 1/2" water pipes in my vast career of being a cheapskate do-it yourselfer. Even had a vague idea about getting ALL the water out of the pipe first and how to repair leaky solder joints and re-use fittings. It's simple right? Clean and paste all the surfaces, push it together, apply heat in one spot until the solder melts in another spot, push a little solder in there. Done. Rarely had leaks. Especially with all shiney new fittings on a new dry install with no pipes to drain first or anything. Piece of cake.

Well. I found out that my soldering technique stinks when it comes to 1-1/4" copper. I'm gonna say that easily 50% of my joints leaked. Then it was absolute murder repairing them all. Some were soldered and re-soldered over and over again before they stopped leaking. Finally got them all, we're up and running and all is well, but I did some hair-pulling for a while.

Good Luck!!

 

[Mushroom Man]

Well, the first night glow has passed and it's back to reality. I've got a lot more to do. I got a low pressure fill valve to adapt the fill water pressure to the boiler pressure. This was an oversight in not planning that in.

I also bought some "Boiler Seal" this morning to try and rid myself of the small pesky leaks in the black pipe install. I'm a bit concerned about making matters worse by trying to fix them manually. My planned methodology is to heat the water (gently), shut down, lower the level of water and pressure, then add the "Boiler Seal", and top up.

Regrettably, I do not have a permanent water line to my boiler. I have a hose going to a ball valve in the primary loop. Big oversight because the hose is outside and soon outside will be inhospitable. Guess I'll have to run a water line to the low pressure fill valve as a Day 2 project.

It's been two steps forward and 1 step back throughout this project. But when its all done, I'll feel vindicated

 

[Gooserider]

I know the advice to take apart the black iron and seal it up properly is probably not real welcome, but I would STRONGLY advise against the "boiler seal"... The only time the stuff is really appropriate is if you have a non-repairable leak, as in a cracked boiler casting (I had a place I used to live where there was more boiler seal in the old "beehive" boiler than water, but for $300 / mo in metro Boston you can put up with a lot...)

See my other posts on the "dope-rope-dope" method of pipe sealing, and don't be afraid to really crank on those fittings, you have to get at least 3 turns past "hand tight"...

Gooserider