This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

1

Home Made / Re: Material Thickness

« on: October 30, 2012, 10:24:55 PM »

I built my wood boiler in 1994 and still use it today. My fire box is 7ga carbon steel.  I stick welded all the seams both outside and inside. The bottom and 3 sides are fire brick lined.  I'm surprised it has lasted this long. The first 3 years I had anti freeze in it but since then it has been all water and no boiler treatment.  My water jacket is a 275 gal ob- round oil tank. The kind every one used for their house heating oil.  I stood it on end cut a square hole, slid in the 36" long fire box and 2 horz flues, added secondary burn, forced heated draft, and it works better than all the units that were on the market back in 94.  I had a leak the third year because the screw in plugs in the oil tank were made out of lead, and lead and anti freeze dont like each other. Since then I have rotted out the chimney and replaced it with stainless steel.  The sheet metal roof under the chimney cap has holes rotted through it.  Creosote and rain water will take the stripes off a zebra if ya know what i mean.  Personally I wouldn't go any thicker than a 1/4". There is a trade off between strength and heat transfer efficiency. One of these years I'll build a new wood boiler and retire this one. So I happened on this site snooping around looking for some good ideas for my next boiler.

Weasel