eko-80 running on ONE fan

[taxidermist]

No leaks or shift and I get a tight seal at the secondary tubes. I smoke tested everything with a smoke bottle. I did find 2 leaks at the door hinge side where the welds are so I sealed them up but that was before I even closed the secondary ports. So now is this to add air to the secondary burn chamber or to cool the refractory at the nozzles? Who knows???


Rob

 

[barnartist]

Cave and Co.,
I must be behind, what are you guys referring to about the new nozzils and maybe a modification? I thought you were simply reffering to the nozzils the gasses come out of- I just want to be sure I'm not missing something here...

I agree with some that post too, that no matter what I do, I cannot change my flame by adjusting the secondary screws. I can chage it the most by the fan openings, and also I run the fan openings at 1/2" almost all of the time, this seems to give me a nice "respectable" flame.

I need to make the primary's adjustable with the latest modifiaction, I'm sure this will help me tweek more on the fly, but I am very happy with my burns right now, although the weather has been very mild.

I've tried blocking off a nozzil on a couple of occations, but had mixed results, probably because everything would need to be re-adjusted for that setting, but I think blocking a nozzil is more for those without enough storage. I like to burn for about 4-5 hours to recharge my tanks, and live off the tanks for 12-18 hours. My goal now is to try and reduce smoke ( I usually have about a 15' very white smoke trail, but maybe this is more vapor).

Also for what it's worth, I can run at a stack temp of 250 now and get tons of heat into the tanks. Since a good cleaning of my tube exchangers a week ago, my stack temp droped about 150 deg, which tells me I get more heat transferred to the water. Unless my atack temp gauge is wrong, but I triple checked with a laser gauge and a meat thermometer (I bought for my chicken cookin' I plan to do tomorrow in the EKO)

Sorry so long...

 

[taxidermist]

Cave and Co.,
I must be behind, what are you guys referring to about the new nozzils and maybe a modification? I thought you were simply reffering to the nozzils the gasses come out of- I just want to be sure I'm not missing something here...

I agree with some that post too, that no matter what I do, I cannot change my flame by adjusting the secondary screws. I can chage it the most by the fan openings, and also I run the fan openings at 1/2" almost all of the time, this seems to give me a nice "respectable" flame.

I need to make the primary's adjustable with the latest modifiaction, I'm sure this will help me tweek more on the fly, but I am very happy with my burns right now, although the weather has been very mild.

I've tried blocking off a nozzil on a couple of occations, but had mixed results, probably because everything would need to be re-adjusted for that setting, but I think blocking a nozzil is more for those without enough storage. I like to burn for about 4-5 hours to recharge my tanks, and live off the tanks for 12-18 hours. My goal now is to try and reduce smoke ( I usually have about a 15' very white smoke trail, but maybe this is more vapor).

Also for what it's worth, I can run at a stack temp of 250 now and get tons of heat into the tanks. Since a good cleaning of my tube exchangers a week ago, my stack temp droped about 150 deg, which tells me I get more heat transferred to the water. Unless my atack temp gauge is wrong, but I triple checked with a laser gauge and a meat thermometer (I bought for my chicken cookin' I plan to do tomorrow in the EKO)

Sorry so long...

I blocked mine off because I sized my boiler to heat house and my barn. My barn is not insulated yet so I figured I would make it a 40 to just heat the house. I have 1000gal storage like you and I also can burn 6 to 8 hrs and run off storage for 12-18 hrs.

 

[Duetech]

No leaks or shift and I get a tight seal at the secondary tubes. I smoke tested everything with a smoke bottle. I did find 2 leaks at the door hinge side where the welds are so I sealed them up but that was before I even closed the secondary ports. So now is this to add air to the secondary burn chamber or to cool the refractory at the nozzles? Who knows???
Rob

The hidden difficulty with shutting down one nozzle is the extra supply of secondary air from the excluded nozzle as this might be skewing an otherwise more efficient burn. The thing of it is, is that though there might be longer burns and over all effective output, the smoke is evidence of wasted fuel. Is the ash coloration white in the secondary chamber? Is it possible to completely shut down the secondary air supply from the excluded nozzle? A stack temp reading for a 60 with only one nozzle and no extra secondary air versus the stack temps with the extra air might tell us a lot. It would be nice to have a before and after temp of the gasses in the secondary chamber when doing a nozzle/full nozzle exclusion burn and it would also be nice to have an actual gasses and percentile, chamber and stack, count for both runs. Also, all things considered, we may be experiencing the limitations of our nozzle configurations, as they are, as well. I know with my unit I see smoke when I have too much secondary air even though there is a blue flame and sometimes when fiddling with the blower output, going too high, I can watch boiler temps drop dramatically. This means the intake air is not heated enough prior to entering the secondary chamber. That alone can complicate ideal ignition circumstances especially when my unit is in an unheated structure. You may have the same over indulgence of secondary air but without the tell-tale boiler temperature drop.
I have thought of running a short length pipe in and out of my stack to pre/super-heat air prior to going into my boiler and moderate the gas temperature variations but so far it"s just a thought.

 

[stee6043]

Geeze, if you guys wanted an EKO 40 you should have just bought one Ha. Only kidding, of course. I find it interesting to read your posts on disconnecting a fan and blocking a nozzle. The tinkering never ends...glad I only have one fan and one nozzle to worry about...

 

[Eric Johnson]

It's hard enough to design a true modulating boiler that burns fuel of consistent quality like gas or oil. It's even harder to do with an inconsistent fuel like chunk firewood, but that doesn't stop the DIY gasifier crowd from trying.

 

[Eric Johnson]

As mentioned in another thread by Eric, when you unhook one fan connect it with a switch so you can turn it on if you chose to. I'm going to go do that. Thanks Eric.
leaddog

Wiring is like plumbing in that more valves (switches) you have, the more fun you can have playing with them.

I'll have to try the one-blower thing.

It occurs to me that in addition to the switch, you could wire the second blower through a surface-mount aquastat or some other temperature-sensitive switch so that it automatically shuts down at the setpoint. The point of that, I guess, would be to allow you to get a quick--though less efficient--fire started at lift-off. and then settle into a longer, less-vigorous burn once it gets going. Seems like it would be an easy thing to program into the controller, but alas, they didn't. Or maybe they did and it didn't survive the manual translation.

It kind of begs the question why they designed the new controller to allow the user to set the blower speed, without allowing independent control of the blowers. I think that's probably because the same controller is used on single-fan boilers like the 40 and the 25, as well as other Euro boilers like the Attack DP and the Biomass.

I'd also love to see a controller with two temp sensors--one on the top of the boiler and the other one at the return. You could have lots of fun with that.

I still have the original controller and am thinking that I could hook its probe up to the return and use the controller to run my low-temp return protection pump (007) off of one of the fan connections. I forget how low it goes, but if the lowest temp setting is 140 or below, it would work pretty well.

 

[taxidermist]

No leaks or shift and I get a tight seal at the secondary tubes. I smoke tested everything with a smoke bottle. I did find 2 leaks at the door hinge side where the welds are so I sealed them up but that was before I even closed the secondary ports. So now is this to add air to the secondary burn chamber or to cool the refractory at the nozzles? Who knows???
Rob

The hidden difficulty with shutting down one nozzle is the extra supply of secondary air from the excluded nozzle as this might be skewing an otherwise more efficient burn. The thing of it is, is that though there might be longer burns and over all effective output, the smoke is evidence of wasted fuel. Is the ash coloration white in the secondary chamber? Is it possible to completely shut down the secondary air supply from the excluded nozzle? A stack temp reading for a 60 with only one nozzle and no extra secondary air versus the stack temps with the extra air might tell us a lot. It would be nice to have a before and after temp of the gasses in the secondary chamber when doing a nozzle/full nozzle exclusion burn and it would also be nice to have an actual gasses and percentile, chamber and stack, count for both runs. Also, all things considered, we may be experiencing the limitations of our nozzle configurations, as they are, as well. I know with my unit I see smoke when I have too much secondary air even though there is a blue flame and sometimes when fiddling with the blower output, going too high, I can watch boiler temps drop dramatically. This means the intake air is not heated enough prior to entering the secondary chamber. That alone can complicate ideal ignition circumstances especially when my unit is in an unheated structure. You may have the same over indulgence of secondary air but without the tell-tale boiler temperature drop.
I have thought of running a short length pipe in and out of my stack to pre/super-heat air prior to going into my boiler and moderate the gas temperature variations but so far it"s just a thought.

My ash is whitegray in my secondary chamber I too am using unheated air as my 60 is in a pole barn. I will work on the stack temp readings this week with and with out it being blocked off.