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1

Home Made / Re: having smoke trouble

« on: November 19, 2010, 08:37:25 PM »

Well more results are in and it seems that the smoke is redudced but my blower runs for longer cycles. This does not shock me since I stole 1/2 of te combustion air to  burn in the pipe. My next step is going to be to increase the size of the fan, but I am in no hurry since all is running fine at the moment.

2

Home Made / Re: Having problems With my boiler going under pressure

« on: November 14, 2010, 11:16:54 AM »

Sounds like we are having similar problems with diffrent results. My stove also huffs and puffs mine does this for about 5 min 15-20 min after I stoke. She  also creates excessive smoke. see the post Smoke troublefor the fix I am trying I will keep evoryone informed how it goes.

3

Home Made / Re: having smoke trouble

« on: November 14, 2010, 11:07:32 AM »

I did some modifications last night into to early hours of this morning and some results are in, I lowered the flue pipe to about 2" off the bottom of the stove so the smoke now must pass through the hot coals  laying in the bottom. I also split my combustion air and 1/2 goes to the fire and 1/2 blows up into that up piece. The smoke from opening the door is now pretty intense, but as soon as I close the door I have a nice red turbo flame in my horizontal and vertical sections of stack, the horizontal is passed through water and the vertical is up and out. The smoke was reduced but from a very cold fire to begin with and diffrent weather pattern I cannot pronounce this cured yet...but hope is high and looking good. I will post with more info when the results are in. Thanks to all that had input.

4

Home Made / Re: having smoke trouble

« on: November 12, 2010, 03:28:49 PM »

I am running a forced draft, the stack is appx 15' tall but only extends a few inches into the firebox. I am thinking of putting an extension inside the firebox to put the bottom of the flue into the coal bed. My thought is running the gasses through the coals will hopefully burn them up on the way up and out. The firebox is about 3' round and 6 feet deep. My fan is more powerful than in years past (they used to be outside unprotected so it ate them up once a year) but i am burning slabwood this year not log chunks..so i have much more surface area to burn at one time. I may need to run a fresh air pipe to the flue to give it enough air to light in the flur as opposed to smoking the neighbors out. 

5

Home Made / Re: having smoke trouble

« on: November 10, 2010, 08:40:19 PM »

I have read a bunch more posts, what do you guys think about running my flue down into my coal bed to try and burn off the gas on the way out?

6

Home Made / having smoke trouble

« on: November 10, 2010, 07:47:49 PM »

I built my owb about 8 years ago from an 800 gal bulk dairy tank and a 400 gal air tank torpedoed into one end. This year I switched from green nasty whatever hard or soft wood was available to 1 1/2 year old dry slab wood. I have had problems smoked out the neighborhood BAD. I am using a 6" stack with a single pass through the water that only extends a couple of inches into the firebox then on the offending end goes up appx 15 feet. The smoke is especially bad just after I stoke up but I would love to reduce even "up to temp" output. I did also add a temp controller this year but it is cycled on during the periods of bad smoke. The gas off the stack is flammable (wood gas) about 15 min after a stoke but after about an hour it has settled down enough to not burn.  I am looking for solutions to this smoke issue without a total rebuild, since the commies have come up with regulations that I am grandfathered from. I probably could call any next generation burner a "repair" as long as I used some of the same components. A couple more tidbits for what they are, the fire box is completely surrounded with water, I do not use a grate or ashpan but rake out a couple shovle fulls and pile wood onto the ashbed in the bottom. Any help would be great. 

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Shaver Furnace / Re: Whats the best thermostat to get.

« on: October 26, 2010, 03:48:26 PM »

I am using a simple Ranco temp controller with single no/nc contacts. It was easy to set up and fairly cheap I think $70.00 at a big industrial supply house. You can set a range up to 30 deg if recall correctly. I run my device at 180 with a 10 deg range so it opens my damper and starts my fan when water temp gets to 170. The well was about 35 bucks at the same supply house I am tighter than 2 coats of paint so I soldered a piece of 3/8 copper tubing to my incoming pipe and slid the probe in it then covered the whole thing with insulation worked nicely. Good luck.

8

Home Made / Re: new build

« on: October 22, 2010, 03:51:20 PM »

My device is a 800 gal bulk dairy tank (pre insulated) with a 400 gal air tank "torpedoed" into the end.  I have appx 480 gal water capacity surrounding the fire box almost completely.  the end with the door is the only side not jacketed. I had to support underneath and I have "anti-flotation" arms between  the firebox and  the inside of the dairy tank to keep stress off of the lower welds around the front side.  Mine seems to work well I haven't had any problems yet. I also have a hatch in the top of the tank that I can look into the tank an see the whole inside of the tank, I like that option it lets me see all the odd variables that pop into my head at 4am.  The guys here have many excellent ideas follow their lead and you will be fine. Good luck.