Print

[akwoodburner]

Hey guys, I’ve been running my Empyre elite XT200 now for about a week.  Everything is going pretty well except I am having problems with bridging and my fire going out.  How do you guys load your box to avoid this?  We are pretty limited here to our selection of wood so I am burning spruce.  I have had a few nights where it didn’t bridge and burned 13 hours or so but more times than not I wake up and it has bridged on me.  Any tips would be awesome! Thanks!

[Roger2561]

Hey guys, I’ve been running my Empyre elite XT200 now for about a week.  Everything is going pretty well except I am having problems with bridging and my fire going out.  How do you guys load your box to avoid this?  We are pretty limited here to our selection of wood so I am burning spruce.  I have had a few nights where it didn’t bridge and burned 13 hours or so but more times than not I wake up and it has bridged on me.  Any tips would be awesome! Thanks!

I only can offer what I my experiences have shown me.  My guess is your stove is a gasser not a conventional stove, right?  I have a Central Boiler gasser and most gassers operate under the same the principle.  A couple of things come to mind;

1) Maybe the wood is a bit too damp and the coal bed is concentrated in the middle of the firebox (This happened to me the year I operated mine)  In order to have a nice even fire the coals need to be spread out and approx. 2 to 3 inches deep and the wood needs to be well seasoned. 

2) Perhaps the logs are to long in length where only the center is burning not the entire thing.  You may have to shorten the length of your logs. 

3)  Maybe you're putting to much fire wood in the fire box.  I put just enough in mine to last 12 hours, especially during these warm days. 

4) Make sure the logs aren't bunched together too tight.  Allow for air to get between them.  This will help maintain the coal bed.

I hope this helps.  Keep us posted on how things are going.   Roger 

[kayakerski]

Mine seems to do well when I:

1. Level out the coals.

2. Clear out the holes in the bottom grate (that goes to the reaction chamber on my CB E-1400.

3. Place a good size log on each side of the grate opening and then carefully stack 2-3 more on top being careful to leave some space for air to get around the logs and through the grate.

4. Load additional logs on top, however they fall.

It seems to me that good coal prep and making a good foundation goes a long ways in keeping the fire from bridging. I only burn fairly dry hardwood though.

Also, what has the temp been where you are? Maybe the fire is going out because there isn't much call for heat? I know I had alot of issues with my fire going out last year. This year I changed a few settings and my fire has stayed lit for a few weeks now, even in 60f weather.

Gregg

[slimjim]

Each stove is different, we have lots of ceramics in the base of our boilers and want as little space in between the chunks as possible, the more surface area exposed to the extreme heat the more the wood will flash, I have many times at shows filled my boiler with 1/2 load of wood and then unplugged it, gone to bed and come back 10 or 12 hours later, plugged it back in and it refires on it's own.

[Scott7m]

In my experience the xt series can be finicky on a restart.  Things I did was change factory settings of 170 up to 180 and change differential to 5

In regards to bridging, ahh..  You'll get better

[Homerglide]

Does your Empyre have a variable speed induction blower?

I have a gasser by a european manufacturer which uses variable speed. The electronic controller allows the user to adjust fan speed from 100% down to 50% in increments of 10%. When starting a fire it works well at 100%, but if left there for the duration, there will be bridging. For this unit after a good fire is established, it works well at 60% power and has zero bridging issues. In addition, the blower includes an adjustable damper for further fine tuning.

Possibly your unit could have better results by adjusting the air intake.

[Scott7m]

Does your Empyre have a variable speed induction blower?

I have a gasser by a european manufacturer which uses variable speed. The electronic controller allows the user to adjust fan speed from 100% down to 50% in increments of 10%. When starting a fire it works well at 100%, but if left there for the duration, there will be bridging. For this unit after a good fire is established, it works well at 60% power and has zero bridging issues. In addition, the blower includes an adjustable damper for further fine tuning.

Possibly your unit could have better results by adjusting the air intake.

Curious as to how the fan damper can make up for knots and cut offs on the sides of logs causing it to hang and not fall smoothly into the bottom of firebox!??

To me it was about proper stacking and learning to stack it and being picky about where crooked pieces or knots to

[Homerglide]

Curious as to how the fan damper can make up for knots and cut offs on the sides of logs causing it to hang and not fall smoothly into the bottom of firebox!??

To me it was about proper stacking and learning to stack it and being picky about where crooked pieces or knots to
[/quote]

The OP did not state weather their spruce is being loaded with knots and odd sizes. I simply offered another consideration to eliminating their bridging problem.

Conventional OWB's and wood gasification boilers are two different animals of the same species. Compare that statement with gasoline and diesel engines.

If an operator has a wood gasifier but uses fuel that is suitable to a conventional OWB, the results will be far from optimum.

[Scott7m]

I'm not trying to argue...

   But also don't understand your def of bridiging, and I know about gassers as I've ran them before.  We tested one here last year making numerous numerous changes and nothing like that ever affected the woods ability to fall into the holes at the bottom of burn chamber.  Everytime I ever had a bridge it was due to how I had stacked the wood

[Homerglide]

I see we both have experienced bridging in the primary chamber. "Bridging" where the wood does not fall into the voided area above the nozzle. In my case it happened with too much combustion air or too much velocity of the combustion air.

Originally, I assumed I was not loading it properly or the wood moisture content was out of bounds. So, I sought advice from experienced gasifier users. Thankfully I recieved several ideas and the one that led to the fan speed issue.

AKAWOODBURNER has received many good tips and should get some good results after pinpointing his particular issue(s).

[Scott7m]

I see we both have experienced bridging in the primary chamber. "Bridging" where the wood does not fall into the voided area above the nozzle. In my case it happened with too much combustion air or too much velocity of the combustion air.

Originally, I assumed I was not loading it properly or the wood moisture content was out of bounds. So, I sought advice from experienced gasifier users. Thankfully I recieved several ideas and the one that led to the fan speed issue.

AKAWOODBURNER has received many good tips and should get some good results after pinpointing his particular issue(s).

Yea I made a lot of changes to how and where my air entered the burn box but never seen it make much of a difference on mine anyway, but perhaps it would on others.

[akwoodburner]

Thanks for all the reply’s everyone!  I will definitely try your suggestions.  I have messed around with the way I load it quite a bit and haven’t perfected it yet. I knew this gasser would be finicky but I didn’t really expect it to be this bad.  It seems I have to babysit it more than I was expecting to.  I’m hoping that some of my problem is just a lack of demand on the boiler.  We are having unseasonably warm temps here for Alaska in November (35-40 degress still).  I am on the coast (Valdez) and we never get real cold but probably average 10-20 in the winter with tons of snow.  Scottm7 how did you adjust the differential on your boiler?  I’m thinking that might help me out too. 

[Scott7m]

You have to get the passcode from empyre to be able to change the factory settings, crazy yes, but when they didnt put a oasscode in ppl were trying to run there stoves wayyyy to cold

[jrider]

I have the P&M Optimizer 250 and have never had an issue with wood bridging.  Don't know if it's because of their set up with a strong fan or I have just been lucky.  I pay no attention to how I load it other than just mixing big pieces with smaller pieces.

[Scott7m]

I have the P&M Optimizer 250 and have never had an issue with wood bridging.  Don't know if it's because of their set up with a strong fan or I have just been lucky.  I pay no attention to how I load it other than just mixing big pieces with smaller pieces.

Yep your firebox size helps a lot compared to the xt models, the 100 I ran was a tiny 5 cubic feet I believe