Outdoor Wood Furnace Info
Outdoor Furnaces - Manufacturers with NON EPA-Certified Models Only => Empyre => Topic started by: teburman on January 03, 2015, 08:57:08 AM
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Finally, after 23 months since shutting down my Aspen 175 I have it up and running again! It took a while to find a welder to do the job and once I found one it took him a while to get the job done. We ended up doing a complete overhaul of the fire box and replaced all of the heat exchanger tubes as well as all internal plumbing. I redid external plumbing to include a 3 way thermic valve to prevent low boiler temp. I also split the return line so the return water is distributed to both heat zones instead of just the one. :) :) :) I have pictures of the project and will post them as soon as I get a chance.
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Without pics it never happened. Show us the pics!!!!
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Sounds like quite a project. How old was the boiler?
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The pictures are here finally see album: Aspen 175 Repair/Rebuild.
The boiler is six years old now. It was four years old when I shut it down due to leaks - see thread:
Quick fix for leaky Aspen 175
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At first we thought he could remove the tank and bring it to his shop to rebuild it. After examining it via the exploratory holes he decided to disassemble it on site. He removed the outer skin of the tank in two halves. The outer skin of the tank was in excellent shape and we were able to reuse it. This saved a lot of time and material. The fire box was 16 gauge sheet metal (according to the welder) he replaced it with 3/16 thick boiler plate which is the same thickness as all other plate material originally used to build the boiler. He could not find boiler tubes the same thickness as the original but found some with same exterior dimensions and thicker wall. So the heat exchanger walls are thicker than original also.
I had the welder make two modifications.
1. replace the 1” piping connections on the back of the tank with 1 ¼ “ connections now all connections are 1 ¼ “ threaded pipe.
2. weld a deflector on the inside top of the door frame to keep the creosote from accumulating next to the gasket.
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do you know why it leaked? did it freeze?
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The boiler did not freeze. I believe I received one of the boilers that were constructed with substandard material – this info is from one of the engineers. Apparently they received some material that had impurities in it and discovered it too late. Those boilers had a couple of other characteristics which were also present in my unit. They did nothing for the unlucky recipients since Greenwood folded about a month after I got this information. Oh – well it is running fine now after the repairs.