EKO 60 install questions

[Medman]

Don't worry about the creosote in the upper box or wood box for now. Once you start burning it will take care of itself, Especially since you are using storage, so no idling.

 

[stee6043]

I wouldn't worry about cleaning the upper chamber. Creosote filled upper chambers are the norm. With properly seasoned wood you should see it sticking to the walls/ceiling but it won't do much more than that.

The magic happens from the nozzle and beyond. If your turbs were fully packed the guy before you was not running this thing properly. Wet wood, tons of idling, or both.

 

[airlina]

Ok, so I have things moved around to permanent spots now, and the expansion tank is hung in the rafters. I have the pipe here, and the rest of the fittings and odds and ends coming, except for the things that I don't know I forgot yet. Ended up going with a 1-1/2 FPE mixing valve.

So, my next thing that I need help on is the flue pipe. What do I need to run? I'm going through a corrugated tin roof on a polebarn. Will be a straight shot up. I know zero about this. Looks like a lot of guys run single wall until ceiling height? Should I run 8" out, or downsize? What do people usually do for sealing the roof?

This is my first go at this, so forgive me if the questions are a little basic maybe. My search didn't turn up a little whole lot.

You are not alone in your endeavors to get your boiler hooked up before winter, I am a bit ahead of you and just put my 8 inch flue through a metal (ribbed ) roof on my boiler shed. Some basics of what type of flue pipe to use. Single wall black pipe needs 18" to any combustibles , double wall black pipe can be reduced to 6 " and stainless class A flue pipe needs 2 inches. The pricing of these pipes go from low to high in the same order. I went out the back of my Econoburn to a doublewall black cleanout T then up thru the metal roof with class A due to nearby combustible surfaces (drywall is considered a combustible). I cut the hole in the metal roof as close as possible to the elipse required for a pitched roof. To seal around the exiting flue , I bought a orange silicone boot from pipebootexpress online. These boots have a formable metal perimeter to go ove the irregularities in a metal roof. All my stuff is 8 inches per Econoburn manual and was purchased online at Rockford chimney supply, after pricing this stuff locally wasn't even close in price.

 

[markburtenshaw]

Boilers pretty much cleaned up, an hopeing to have the majority of the piping done this weekend. The boiler was not as clean as I was led to believe. The turbulater tubes were packed, and I had several stuck turbulators.

How much of the creosote do I nerd to clean out of this upper box before it goes out the flue? Do I need to worry about cleaning it out of the wood box?

Ended up going with a Fluid power engineering mixing valve. That thing is huge.

Hey cityboy172,
congrats on the EKO.

I finished my Econoburn installation in March and I have a very similar setup as you. Unlike some of the other responses to putting your tanks in series rather than parallel, I would have to disagree, parallel is great for the spring and fall when demands aren't that great or if/when you have to service one of the tanks? I also have (2) 1000 gallon tanks (run in parallel), as long as you pay special attention that each supply and return is piped the same length and you have ball valves installed to segregate then your in good shape in my opinion. When I first started heating things my tanks heated about 4 to 5 degrees apart, a simple tiny close of the supply ball valve on the hotter tank and now you have simple flow control and your good to go. I'm also going to share my personal experience with the FPE mixing valve.....I didn't like it at all....sorry maybe you will have better luck than me. I bought one set to 150 deg F which means the wax internals do not open unless 150 is the temperature behind it, which means when your trying to heat your cold tanks the valve won't mix....unless you don't let your tanks go below 150?? or whatever the set-point is. I ended up piping in a bypass around the FPE valve with its own ball valve, then cracked it a little to allow cold water from the storage tanks. This was a huge pain for me as I had to modify my pump to work on a type of 'direct injection' so I would monitor my boiler return to stay as close to 150 as possible.....my fix this summer was to install a 4-way mixing valve with a modulating motor and controller. Now I simply set my desired return temperature to my boiler and walk away. It works perfectly, the pump stays pumping all the time and the tanks are always getting some amount of hot water. The only time my boiler idles is as my tanks start to reach the mid 170's.

When I first fired up in the spring I could get 5 days of heat out of the tanks when charged to 170, now that they are both sprayed with 2" of spray foam, all my pipes are insulated as well as my boiler shed now. I'm expecting to get a least a week out of the fully charged tanks.

Have you started it up yet?

 

[cityboy172]

No, not started up yet. I lost about 2 1/2 weeks of nights and weekends due to some unexpected training that came up. Hoping by the November 15.

 

[cityboy172]

I'm so close I can taste it. Might pull an all nighter. Just filled storage. Little bit of pex and I'll have it.

 

[700renegade]

mentally prepare yourself to be disappointed.
I know some years back when I first fired my EKO I had major headaches out of the chute. As thorough as I thought I was, every weak link or bad decision reared its head in short order.

I had to come here to get talked back off the ledge.

 

[cityboy172]

Not too frustrated yet. Defiantly some "issues" to work out though.