New Burnham Boiler Project

[Russ]

Here is my new project.  Doug was the inspiration to this project.  Have been heating the garage with my forced air pressure system, but I wanted a way to get some of the heat into the house.  It will be in the garage and will provide heat for the house and the garage.  More details to come.

[doug]

Russ,

Glad to be of help to you. Isn't that why we're here is to help and encourage each other. It wasn't to long you were answering my questions and helping me get started. Thanks.

Nice looking boiler. Looks like it's going to be easy to get inside and clean.

Are you staying with your pressure system?

What kind of heating do you have in your house now?

doug

[Russ]

Yes, with that swing open door it should be a snap to get in and clean.

No, I have a ckburners block sitting here on my desk.  Just waiting for the rest of the parts to show up.  Hoping that the siphon system will be more reliable and will start easier. 

The house is currently heated by an off peak electric plenum heater inside a propane forced air furnace.  I am just hoping to get some of the heat into the house to lower the heating bill a little.  I might experiment with plumbing it into the plenum at some point, but will just start out with a radiator and fan in the 4' crawl space for now.

Cant wait to get started!

[doug]

Russ,

Glad to see you come over to the siphoning side of oil burning. So far mines been reliable and low maintenance. The heat exchange in the plenum is a great way to go.

doug

[Russ]

Parts are starting to show up.  I'm going to keep a running total of all of my parts throughout this thread.  Just don't let my wife see it 

I went with all 1/8" air connections.  After thought tells me I probably should have did 1/4".  Hopefully with the low pressure it wont matter.


Burnham boiler found on craigslist: $250
Ckburners preheater block: $160
Arrow R161 air regulator (ebay including shipping): $13.80
Weksler/Ashcroft 0-15 pressure gauge (ebay including shipping): $11.00
Asco U8262C2 air solenoid valve 110V (ebay including shipping): $33.00
Beckett 5432 flange & gasket (drillspot.com fulfilled by Grainger shipped): $10.11
Ceramic fiber blanket (replace damaged flue clean out): $15.49

More parts coming next week.  Almost time to start getting to work...

[Russ]

Auberins SYL-2352 PID controller: $60.59
Opto Solid State Relays: $28.00

Will get the float valve tomorrow and that should do it.  Wow, lots of stuff to get.

[Russ]

Wow, its been a while since I had time to work on the project.  Its gonna be warm out before I get it done if I dont get going!

Here is the retention head from Kagi.
$43.77 shipped.

[Russ]

Its been a while since any updates.  Things have been crazy busy around here.  I finally got the boiler in place of the old pressure hot air system and got it fired.  It is just circulating into an old 30 gallon water heater at the moment.  Heated things up to 160F last night.  The burn chamber is so shallow in this boiler.  I can actually see oil hitting the back of the boiler when it is firing.  I might have to work on a better burn.  Waiting for the weekend to do some tuning on it.

[doug]

It's a good feeling when your creation comes "alive". Looking real good. How deep is your burn chamber? I was thinking with 121 mtb's the chamber would be fairly good size.

[pdham]

Hey Russ. the boiler project looks great. One thing to consider is that you don't want to allow the flame from the burner to hit the back wall of the combustion chamber, it will burn it out, and then overheat the end cast iron section causing it to fail. Another point to consider is that this is a cast iron sectional boiler. Opening the door only gives you access to the combustion chamber. To properly clean this boiler you must remove the side panel and the top panel and brush between the sections. Also the biggest enemy to this type boiler ( sectional cast iron ) is thermal shock, the return water entering the boiler should be above 130f, this is achieved by a continuous bypass of a small amount of the leaving boiler water back to the input of the boiler. This can be controlled automatically with a thermal mixing valve. I hope this is helpful.

[Russ]

Hello Pdham,

I appreciate you suggestions and sharing your knowledge.  When I got the boiler I took off the sides and seen how it can get clogged up.  It was full of junk when I got it and was quite a chore to get all cleaned up.  It will be interesting to see how dirty it will get with the waste oil.  So far so good, although I have probably only burned 30 gallons this year.

I dont have any kind of bypass valve at this point.  The return water dumps into the water heater storage tank, so once the system is warmed up, the water going back into the boiler is pretty warm. 

Again, I appreciate your suggestions and hope to see you out on the forum some more!

[Russ]

Not a whole lot has changed in the system except that I am now running the hot water into the crawl space of the house.  I bought a 16x18x3.5 heat exchanger off of ebay and built a box for it and connected up a blower fan to it.  For now it is blowing into the wide open crawl space of the house.  The crawl space is 4' and has a sand floor covered with plastic and is completely open except for a small enclosed area where the electric/gas furnace and hot water heater is.  It is a poured foundation with styrofoam, so it is pretty well insulated.  It normally runs between 60-65* down there.  The exchanger can warm it up to 75-80* pretty fast.  I figure a good portion of that heat should be making its way upstairs.  I sized the exchanger to fit in the plenum and maybe over the summer I will work on getting it installed in there.

The small exchanger you see on the left is a transmission cooler.  It helps to warm things up a little more in the garage if need be.  Other than that, things have been working very well.  I dont have it running continuously as I dont have a large enough supply of oil, but when it is running, things are nice and toasty.

[doug]

I see you went with a closed loop system. What are you using for oil supply?

[Russ]

Yea, that sounded like the only way to do it.  It sounded pretty important to keep the air out of the system to prevent rusting of the boiler.  Got the oxygen barrier pex and all  .

I have a supply from an owner of an over the road semi and the rest is from friends and farmers in the area.

I have a few 15 gallon barrels scattered throughout the area.  The supply seems to keep getting better as I connect with more people.

[doug]

How are you getting oil from the barrel to the burner? Are you using a constant level tank? Is the water heater tank just for bulk storage?