I would suggest that the refractory has been soaking up moisture for several years so its best to slowly bring it up to temperature to keep any moisture in the refractory from turning into vapor and cracking it.
Getting system that has been drained and sitting back.
- Thread starter Luckyredarlo
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I probably misworded that, the moisture will turn into vapor, it is just doing it slowly in a controlled manner. In the "old" days I would suggest starting out with an incandescent light bulb left on inside but finding a incandescent light bulb these days would be a major project 
brenndatomu
Minister of Fire
Nah, they still out there..."oven bulbs"...and you can find larger "specialty bulbs" too...ebay has some.
I saw how @hobbyheater cured his I will do the same process. Good advice, thanks.
@hobbyheater How many fires do you have on a cold day? Just curious…someone in my town had the same boiler as me and claims it’s inefficient and not worth running. He said on cold days he has to baby it and constantly fill it for 8 hours to get it up to temperature. (My tank is larger than his but so his my house) a average day in Maine in the winter is probabaly 30 degrees rarely colder than 10
hobbyheater
Minister of Fire
About one fire every third day. The Jetstream had a small loading tube and needed to be loaded every hour for a 10 degree rise in storage temperature, 150 to 195 degrees four loadings , 120 to 195 degrees seven loadings .
The boiler would burn green wood cleanly but the output was very poor, so burn dry wood (14 % moisture content)
In 1985 we had a cold snap for 10 days where the house was drawing 1.5 million BTUs a day and the boiler required about 14-15 loadings per batch burn.
I noticed in your pictures that your boiler is H stamped so it is steam capable. (doubt the rest of the system is though).
If you have any more questions, I will try to answer them.
Hobbyheater hinted at a very important fact, a wood boiler or any heaters fuel demand is directly related to heat demand. If someone is heating a "barn" its going to require a lot of wood, if they are heating an tiny home a lot less. The amount of wood for specific heating load is going to vary by the amount of heat that goes up the chimney either as unburnt gases, water vapor or heated flue gas. The Professor Hill design was set up to maximize combustion by running a very hot burn, then grabbing as much heat as possible through the heat exchanger. It could not do much about the lost heat in water vapor as he didnt have condensing heat exchanger on the stack so heat lost through vapor was a function of how dry the wood was entering the boiler.
Many of these wood boilers tended to be installed in "barns" (very large homes without great insulation) with small storage tanks. In many cases the installer firms went cheap and installed two vented 275 gallon heating oil tanks and that was not enough capacity for large boiler and just as importantly, a heating system designed for 180 F supply water (slant fin was pretty standard). In that case, the storage needed to kept quite hot and had to be reheated often as even though a 160 F tank still had a lot of useful heat, the radiators in the house were undersized for the lower supply temp and the house would get cold, If on the other hand the radiators were swapped over to a radiant type low temperature emitter sized for lower temps, the storage effectively becomes much larger as it can run down to possibly 90 F. This doesn't really change the amount of wood to heat the place, it just means that the duration between boiler runs decreases, but each run will be longer to heat up the storage tank. Note if the storage tank is not in the heated area, standby loss from the tank and piping radiating into the cold space will factor it and heat loss a function of temperature difference so a 180 F tank will loose more heat to the otuside than a 140 degree tank. The original Professor Hill designs were tested in his apartment house in Old Town that was mostly occupied by his grad students and they traded off cheap rent for extra work plus he could require them to collect and process data.
BTW, I did get a chance to work on the "big brother" of the Professor Hill boiler when it was being tested at for a large greenhouse at UMaine research site in Greenbush Maine. Our engineering class were basically free labor during a testing run where we measured how much wood in pounds the boiler burned over a period of hours. Its been awhile but I think it was 40 pounds of wood every 20 minutes. In this case, the storage tank was a couple of thousand gallons and was literally in an unheated barn, I dont think this progressed beyond the R&D scale as it required a lot of labor. When heating demand goes up to commercial scale it is hard to beat the chip based boilers with automated fuel feed. The tradeoff is the chips are relatively wet so the BTU content is low with lots of hot water vapor going up the stack and combustion temps can be lower leading to more unburnt gases going up the stack. Froling Energy in southern NH has a partial solution called Precision Dried Chips which cuts way down on water going up the stack and the boilers burn hotter. Fuel handling and supply also gets a lot easier. http://www.frolingenergy.com/
Many of these wood boilers tended to be installed in "barns" (very large homes without great insulation) with small storage tanks. In many cases the installer firms went cheap and installed two vented 275 gallon heating oil tanks and that was not enough capacity for large boiler and just as importantly, a heating system designed for 180 F supply water (slant fin was pretty standard). In that case, the storage needed to kept quite hot and had to be reheated often as even though a 160 F tank still had a lot of useful heat, the radiators in the house were undersized for the lower supply temp and the house would get cold, If on the other hand the radiators were swapped over to a radiant type low temperature emitter sized for lower temps, the storage effectively becomes much larger as it can run down to possibly 90 F. This doesn't really change the amount of wood to heat the place, it just means that the duration between boiler runs decreases, but each run will be longer to heat up the storage tank. Note if the storage tank is not in the heated area, standby loss from the tank and piping radiating into the cold space will factor it and heat loss a function of temperature difference so a 180 F tank will loose more heat to the otuside than a 140 degree tank. The original Professor Hill designs were tested in his apartment house in Old Town that was mostly occupied by his grad students and they traded off cheap rent for extra work plus he could require them to collect and process data.
BTW, I did get a chance to work on the "big brother" of the Professor Hill boiler when it was being tested at for a large greenhouse at UMaine research site in Greenbush Maine. Our engineering class were basically free labor during a testing run where we measured how much wood in pounds the boiler burned over a period of hours. Its been awhile but I think it was 40 pounds of wood every 20 minutes. In this case, the storage tank was a couple of thousand gallons and was literally in an unheated barn, I dont think this progressed beyond the R&D scale as it required a lot of labor. When heating demand goes up to commercial scale it is hard to beat the chip based boilers with automated fuel feed. The tradeoff is the chips are relatively wet so the BTU content is low with lots of hot water vapor going up the stack and combustion temps can be lower leading to more unburnt gases going up the stack. Froling Energy in southern NH has a partial solution called Precision Dried Chips which cuts way down on water going up the stack and the boilers burn hotter. Fuel handling and supply also gets a lot easier. http://www.frolingenergy.com/
3fordasho
Minister of Fire
Your storage tank looks like it might be a 1000 gallon propane tank. These make good storage tanks but you will want to insulate it much better unless you want all your heat going into that room/basement? I have 2 x 500g propane tanks for storage. The tanks are spray foamed and then enclosed in a 2x4 enclosure that is also wrapped and insulated. Even so the heat loss will keep my 24'x48' boiler building well above freezing all winter long.
cumminstinkerer
Burning Hunk
@3fordasho my 1500 gal in 5 foot by 20 foot enclose full of blown in will steep my garage slightly above freezing most the time, no insulation in garage, thats not happening,but I had no room to put tank in the house, its a BOB, but i really dont mind the heat in the garage it keeps pool pump/filter from freezing and helps make it livable until I fire the used oil burner up if I am doing something out there. it does wast some heat though but what do you do on a limited budget and with given space in an old house?
3fordasho
Minister of Fire
It's all good if some of that waste heat is going to good use. In my case I would heat that building by some other method if the boiler was not there. Much nicer to load and service the boiler out of the wind and in 45-50F vs -10F.
cumminstinkerer
Burning Hunk
@3fordasho I agree, my boiler is outside the garage, in the open right now, had to many projects this year, it is getting an enclosure built around it to at least block wind and snow, have to get the sawmill up and running though to be able to cut posts and perlawns, have some used metal from a shed just to much crap going, lol.
