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Central boiler 1400 air channels

Started by overclocking, September 10, 2017, 12:41:52 PM

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DeerMeadowFarm

I finally got my warped plates cut out on Saturday. In all it took 3 hours and 15 cut-off wheels. Pictures to follow I need to but some material now to make my plates.

overclocking

Quote from: PC-Urban-Sawyer on October 01, 2017, 11:34:39 PM
OC, ten one inch diameter holes will give you just 7.9 square inches of hole area. The area of a one inch diameter hole is .79 square inches, not 1 square inch...

Herb
dadgum you, Charlie!
Thanks Herb your right.. A=Pi(r)^2 , not sure where my common sense was on that one. You would never know I aced calc. and discrete mathematics.

Quote from: E Yoder on October 02, 2017, 08:58:04 AM
I would make sure the bolt holes are slightly bigger than the bolts so the plate can expand to the rear as it heats up, (otherwise it can bulge and crack). And that there is a gap at the rear to accept that expansion. I think you are saying there is.

Good idea, I will do that. I am going to use 3/8th bolts to fasten it. If I had to guess, there's about a 1/4 gap maybe a bit more on each end. I was going to make the panel slide out, but after some thought I don't think it would ever seal, and chances are it would be faster buzzing off the bolts with my impact as opposed to chipping away chunks of creosote to be able to slide it up.

Quote from: DeerMeadowFarm on October 02, 2017, 10:00:38 AM
I finally got my warped plates cut out on Saturday. In all it took 3 hours and 15 cut-off wheels. Pictures to follow I need to but some material now to make my plates.

Out of curiosity what brand wheels did you use? I cut all this stainless with one dewalt 1/16th cut off wheel and it was the same one I used to do some of my panel removal. Can't wait to see the pics too.

DeerMeadowFarm

I used 1/16th wheels but they were cheap ones. I still need to chip out all the baked in creosote. I'll take pictures in a couple of days; been busy lately.

How are you bolting the plates in?

overclocking

Quote from: DeerMeadowFarm on October 03, 2017, 07:57:43 AM
I used 1/16th wheels but they were cheap ones. I still need to chip out all the baked in creosote. I'll take pictures in a couple of days; been busy lately.

How are you bolting the plates in?

i think what I might do is weld 2 inch strip plates in the middle recessed in the channel with a welded nut on the back. And for the ends I left some of the channel intact and will weld a nut on the back of that as well.

DeerMeadowFarm

I plan to attach my plates differently. I'm concerned that using threaded fastening will just cause me grief after it gets heated so much.
My idea is to add a tab to the back end of the plate that will slip under the lip I left at the back end of the box. At the front end, I plan to use something like a gate latch to slide under the lip I left at the front of the box. The latch bolt will stick out through the plate. This will allow me to attach or remove the plate by whacking the sliding bolt with a hammer. I think it'll be clearer when I buy the plate and take pictures. How thick did you go with your plate?

Photos of the channels exposed are below. The right side was not nearly as packed with creosote as the left. I still need to chisel out the creosote. On the left side it is harder than cement and I think that is what really ate my cut-off wheels up.


 



 

Roger2561

I've been following this thread with interest due to the need of having to remove the air channels on my 1400 too.  I'm still waiting on my welder/fabricator to get here to do it.  I can handle cutting out the channels, it's only I don't possess the welding skills to do any welding.  My thoughts of panel is to use stainless, I haven't decided on thickness yet.  I would make them similar to overclocking's but over size them a bit to allow a slot be cut in the panel that would then fit over tabs that would be welded to the firebox wall.  The tabs would have holes drilled in them to allow pegs to be inserted and tapped in place to make a tight seal.  When it came time to clean the channels, I would simply tap them out using a hammer.  In theory it sounds okay but in practice, who knows.  Roger
Roger

DeerMeadowFarm

I finished one side this weekend. I welded a 1-1/2" angle on the back of the plate to act as a stiffener and a guide for my sliding locking bolts.


 

Here it is installed. The locking bolts slide into the portion of the air channel I didn't cut. The idea was to use something that I could remove easily for cleaning. I was afraid to bolt something in because I figured as soon as it heated up they'd never come out again. With this design I can whack the slides with a hammer, and theoretically they should slide and I can take the plates out. We'll see I guess...



 

overclocking

Good to see you made some progress, I'm  still waiting to get my plates back from the shop to get the holes drilled. i am going to pick them up tonight.

I agree with the bolts being a pain, I most likely will end up doing something like that next year if it works good for you.

Looking good so far, does it seem to seal up well?

DeerMeadowFarm

Seals much better than my warped original plates!

overclocking

So here's the finished concept. My best friend took one for the team after I butchered drilling the bolt holes and he finished the install for me. Turned out really good.

Ran into a problem however on the test run, the plates already warped a little, I was shocked to see stainless do that, but I have a good and easy idea on how to remedy it and add adjustable airflow at the same time. 

  

 

Roger2561

Deermeadowfarm & overclocking - Both look great.  Unfortunately for me my welder/fabricator keeps pulling my chain and has every excuse for not showing up.  It's getting to the point of trying something myself or take a chance, leave it as it is and fire up the 1400.  Thankfully we've had some very nice weather here in NH this October.  Next week I have the week off from work and I will be firing her up for the winter with or without the new channels.  Anyway, they look great.  Please keep us posted on how the operate/hold up through the winter.  Thanks.   Roger 
Roger

DeerMeadowFarm

Roger, I wouldn't worry too much about it. My dealer told me that the units work the same with wide open air chambers so in worst case you could just cut your old plates out and run it as is. I'm not going to worry if the new plates I put in warp or not. I just want to be able to clean the creosote out.

overclocking

Quote from: DeerMeadowFarm on October 24, 2017, 07:25:45 AM
Roger, I wouldn't worry too much about it. My dealer told me that the units work the same with wide open air chambers so in worst case you could just cut your old plates out and run it as is. I'm not going to worry if the new plates I put in warp or not. I just want to be able to clean the creosote out.

So here is my update after a few weeks.

My plates warped a little so I removed them. I am pretty surprised 10Ga stainless warped, but anyhow I stole Deermeadows idea to reinforce them with the angle Iron. I will put a pic up tomorrow. The bolts came right out with no fuss which was nice. So far its working, but it's either not gassing anymore or I broke the temp gauge when cleaning it. I'm going to have to investigate that too. I have ran it without the plates installed with open channels and with the plates installed and am not breaking the 600 degree mark on the reaction chamber. I am wondering if I created too much air flow for the primary air.

Deermeadow, have you tested yours out yet? how are they working if so and have you looked at the reaction chamber temps?

Roger2561

Well, my welder/fabricator never showed or returned my phone calls and it was getting to the point where I had to fire up the 1400.  It's been running for over a week now and it's running great (knocking on wood) so, I'm waiting until next year to do something about the channels; either I find someone else to do the work for me or I do it myself.  The great thing about this is I have all winter to read your updates and then decide how I should approach this problem.   ;D

overclocking; as for why yours is not gassing, I nothing to offer.  Perhaps it has nothing or everything to do with the channels having panels over them and the holes strategically placed to make it happen.  Roger
Roger

DeerMeadowFarm

Quote from: overclocking on November 04, 2017, 10:58:36 PM
Deermeadow, have you tested yours out yet? how are they working if so and have you looked at the reaction chamber temps?

I just fired mine up yesterday. It started out slow. My water temp was way down and it seemed like it should have kicked into high burn but it wasn't. I kept futzing around with it but it seemed to act weird. Then, somewhat frustrated I left it alone to work on another project and when I got back to take a look it was at high burn and temps were 1,000 plus.

Got up this morning and the water temp was good. Before I left for work I opened it up. Lot of wood still in it but it kind of bridged so I knocked it all down, stirred the coals up and threw a couple of chunks in for good measure. No warping yet that I noticed but it's pretty dark when I leave in the morning so maybe I didn't see it? I'll have a light with me when I check it after work today.

overclocking

Well it's been a few more weeks and all is well. I'm pulling 24 hour burns since the channel install. The gasification channel still seems low, but it's idling at 190 almost all the time and when it needs heat it seems to stay right around the set point. I would say the channels are working pretty good so far. I removed them last weekend and they came right out and went back in just fine once I located the bolts under the build up. Overall I seem to have made a great improvement to the original design. 

 

DeerMeadowFarm

Been a few weeks for me now. Plates are great, no warping to date. My boiler (sound of me knocking on wood over here) seems to be working better than ever. My heat is good, I'm getting good burn and I seem to be using a lot less wood so far. Time will tell....

overclocking

Just another update. Turns out the angle iron I put on the plates as a means of stopping it from warping serves more than one purpose. It keeps the wood away from blocking the channels, makes the "sap" run away from the holes and acts like a rail for me to run the coal rake up and down to kick the coals away from the bottom channels.

I let the coal bed get way too high last week and all the bottom holes got filled with ash and coals. I was dreading pulling the plates off because it was so cold out. So I opened the back panel and removed the upper solenoid and clamped my leaf blower in it and revved it up. When I walked back around front after the dust settle I was completely astonished to see the channels were 100% cleaned out and back to full flow! Turned out to be a ten minute channel cleaning.

So at this point I am going to have to call this back yard fab job a huge success. Its been running the best it has ran since I installed it and the removable plate certainly are exceeding my expectations.

DeerMeadowFarm

Excellent! So you put your angles on the firebox side? I put mine inside the channel. I had one end pull away slightly, not warped but I must have hit my slide bolt at some point. Creosote is getting in there slightly but it hasn't caused an issue to this point. I haven't wanted to shut it down to put it back on correctly due to this cold weather. I'm very happy so far with my repair!

Roger2561

overclocking, DeerMeadowFarm - Thanks for posting the updates following this cold snap we experienced.  I've been waiting to hear from you guys to see how they are doing for you.  This gives me ideas to try next summer when I fix mine.  Roger
Roger

overclocking

Old thread here but I just wanted to give an update.

I slacked for a long time on cleaning the air channels and finally after over a year pulled the plates out due to restricted flow. I cleaned out the channels and haven't reinstalled them yet. The bolts came right out no problem after over a year and I could have put the plates back in but haven't yet because I have to clean the back corners out.

Also, the entire center section in the bottom reaction chamber is failing. The metal is gone where the crescent shaped hole is in the bottom. So I need to replace that as well. Once the heating season ends I'm going to make new plates with thicker stainless because it did eventually warp.  Or I might just buy a new boiler, I'm not sure yet. This one has about 6 seasons on it now and heats my house pretty good, and although its been good its also been a lot of extra work compared to the newer models.

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