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Author Topic: My burned down Sequoyah Paradise  (Read 7368 times)

bjp

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My burned down Sequoyah Paradise
« on: February 11, 2021, 02:49:27 PM »

Just popped in to this forum instead of only reading the CB forum and noticed a few others shared stories and photos of their burned-out boilers, and wanted to share mine.

Back in 2019, president's day weekend, my Sequoyah Paradise E3400 caught on fire. I happened to wake up a few minutes after midnight and noticed an unusual red/orange flickering reflection in the window, turned around to look where it was coming from and saw flames shooting out the back out of the boiler, where the framing has (had) some vent slats. I went after it with a fire extinguisher, which was a complete failure. I dragged a hose out of the basement to hook up to a bib outside to try to spray it down, but my water softener was regenerating at the time so I had about 10psi of water pressure which made the 75' hose useless.  Needless to say we called out the volunteer fire department, based 1/4 mile away, and they put it down with foam and water and hacked the thing halfway down with axes.

This was already at the house when I bought the place, and the prior owner did not take very good care of it. They are (were, as they are now out of business) designed with fatal flaws in that there is no ability to get to the heat exchangers to clean and only a very minimal ash cleanout at the bottom. Not to mention the 10 or so (each!) Love Controllers and draft fans I went through in trying and failing to use the thing over 4 years before it burned down. If any of you have one of these, or know someone who does, please have it replaced.  Oh and if you buy a place where the idiot who installed it decided to use drain tile instead of thermopex, you're going to have to deal with that sooner or later and it will not be fun when you're wicking ground water draining through your basement walls to 5 gallon buckets you have to empty every 20 minutes 24/7.... and it's even worse after the FD dumps a few thousand gallons on top.

As far as what happened, I think there was either a short at the draft fan, or so much creosote simply built up in the insulation (just fiberglass stuffing wrapping the entire firebox) that it managed to get hot enough and catch fire. The good news was no damage other than the boiler itself, and homeowners insurance eventually did take care of me, after a long time spent trying to get them to do so. The FD did not have any good explanation and could not determine a cause.
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