Waste Oil Boiler install

[acarter]

Here are some pics of my setup I just got finished installing. I have a few bugs to work out, but it's working well so far.

I have this setup in my detached garage with 1" pex lines run underground to my house to a "water to air" heat exchanger in my ductwork of my existing forced air furnace. I added a second thermostat in the house, wired directly to the furnace blower only and a strap on aquastat wired in series. So when the thermostat calls for heat, if the boiler isn't up to temp it won't turn the fan on and blow cold air around. I just keep my old thermostat (for the forced air furnace) at a lower temp as a backup.

As you can see I also have a small hydronic shop heater that I put in the garage, I have it hooked up to a thermostat, but only run it when I'm out there because the garage is uninsulated. I just let the hot water run through the loop 24/7 to keep it from freezing (the fan is controlled by the thermostat).

I found the Triad Boiler, and Clean Burn "CB4000" on craigslist. I was going to convert a normal boiler with the CK Burner kit, but luckily found this and saved a bunch of time. I have some bugs to work out on the burner itself, but it's working pretty well considering I haven't put any money into it yet.

I also have to figure out how to clean the boiler better, the previous owner hadn't cleaned it in a while and the fire tubes were almost clogged with soot buildup. I've got them all clear, but the bottom blast chamber still needs a lot of cleaning and the burner is running a lot more that it should be, when the blower is on in the house it can't quite keep up and looses ground on temperature. The burner is probably running 75% of the time, and at that rate I think I'm burning through about 20 gallons/ day to heat a 1200sf house.

As you can see, I have two tote tanks setup. One is for settling, and the other is the tank that it draws from. I have a cleanable screen filter, and a hydraulic filter that it runs through before going into the draw tank, plus the actual filter on the burner pump.

Austin

[doug]

Austin, nice looking set up. twenty gallons per day seems like a lot of fuel. are you running an expansion tank and is your boiler system a closed loop?

[acarter]

Austin, nice looking set up. twenty gallons per day seems like a lot of fuel. are you running an expansion tank and is your boiler system a closed loop?

Yes, I agree. That's why I think it still needs a lot of cleaning. There is probably at least an inch of buildup in the blast cabinet of the boiler that's probably acting as an insulator. I got the fire tubes clean, but was in too much of a hurry to get it hooked up and didn't get the rest cleaned... I was also heating the uninsulated garage for most of the day when I was monitoring the fuel burn, but it's at least going through 10 gallons a day with just the house.

I'm running a "gravity fed" or "open" system. Just  like an outdoor wood boiler. I was able to avoid having to plumb a fresh water line out into the detached garage and deal with that freezing. There is a 5 gallon bucket in the rafters of the garage that's my open expansion tank :-). The only disadvantage to this setup is that there will be oxygen in the water, so rust in the boiler will be more of a problem than a closed system.

Austin

[doug]

  i ran an open system on our corn boiler for four years and when it was removed I was surprised how much rust had built up in the plumbing in that short of time. our water here has a high iron content.
  i agree a good cleaning of the boiler will help with heat transfer

[olscout99]

That Cleanburn 4000 is a big unit, with the factory nozzle it's rated at 280,000 btu and 2.0 gallons per hour fuel consumption. Did you get the pump with it? The manual I saw calls for around 7 psi oil pressure, and 26 psi air, which is way above and beyond what most of us are running in our kit furnaces. I'm not a furnace or boiler expert and I don't even play one on TV, but do you need that much BTU for your setup? Depending on the size of the burn chamber and how much water you're heating, you might be able to drop down in nozzle size, oil psi and air psi and still do what you need to do. One clue might be cycle time, if the unit cycles on and just runs a short time and cycles off, then does it again shortly after, that may indicate that it's oversized for what you're heating. It's more efficient, or at least that's what I understand, for the unit to run longer cycles less often.

[acarter]

That Cleanburn 4000 is a big unit, with the factory nozzle it's rated at 280,000 btu and 2.0 gallons per hour fuel consumption. Did you get the pump with it? The manual I saw calls for around 7 psi oil pressure, and 26 psi air, which is way above and beyond what most of us are running in our kit furnaces. I'm not a furnace or boiler expert and I don't even play one on TV, but do you need that much BTU for your setup? Depending on the size of the burn chamber and how much water you're heating, you might be able to drop down in nozzle size, oil psi and air psi and still do what you need to do. One clue might be cycle time, if the unit cycles on and just runs a short time and cycles off, then does it again shortly after, that may indicate that it's oversized for what you're heating. It's more efficient, or at least that's what I understand, for the unit to run longer cycles less often.

Thanks for the info.

It did come with the "Clean Burn" pump...

It came with an assortment of nozzles, and I have no idea which one is factory. Right now I'm running around 5psi oil and 22psi air and that seems to be working pretty well. In the last 24 hours I've burned just shy of 10 gallons and it's about 15 degrees at night and 30 during the day, I was also heating the garage for a few hours. That's a major improvement from before I cleaned the blast chamber, but that's still a lot of oil, I would love to get the down to maybe 5 gallons/ day when I'm not heating the garage at all.

I'm going to go look what nozzle is currently being used and post back...

I currently have it set to kick on at 170 degrees and off at 180, I would say it takes it 10-15 minutes to get back up to temp if nothing is on, and longer if the blower in the house is running or the shop heater is on. The off time depends on how much the heaters are running but at most it's off for about 45 min.

[acarter]

Ok, so I just checked my nozzle inventory...

The nozzle that was installed when I got the burner was a 9-2. I After a few days of frustration, wondering what the heck I was doing wrong, I installed the 9-31 and it's been working almost perfectly since then. I also have a handful of 9-5's which after a little research seems to be the stock nozzle.

So it seems that I'm running a slightly smaller than stock nozzle, which makes sense because my blast chamber is defiantly smaller than the original Clean Burn furnace.

Now that I think about it I'm guessing because the previous owner burned Vegetable oil he needed a smaller nozzle and that's why the 9-2 was in there, does that make sense?

Are nozzles something that wear out pretty often? I'm not sure how old the current nozzle is, but is it something I should have a good spare of?

Also, what is everybody setting their preheater temp to? The Clean burn manual says 150, but it seems to work better at 170.... I've read the over 180 and there is a high risk of carbon buildup in the heater.

Thanks,
Austin

[olscout99]

I'm a newbie at this stuff too, so I can't comment too much on nozzle size. I think it's probably a good idea to have at least one spare hanging around, just in case, because you aren't likely to find one locally in a pinch. As for the heater, I currently have mine set at 195 target temperature with waste motor oil, which most people say is high, but it starts and fires great. I also don't have a preheater before the nozzle, or a heated constant level tank, so the oil going into the heater block is whatever temp the room air is in the shop, which is usually cold. My PID alarm function comes on at 175, and at 175 it fires fine, but since the advice is to set the alarm temp 20 degrees under the target temp, I don't want to go much lower on the target temp for fear of the oil getting too cold to burn reliably. I know I have read of people who have the best luck at 225 on WMO, I think it might be a function of your particular setup as to what works best. I may try to back mine down a little, but since it's running so well I'm leery of changing too much right now.

[ShopSpecialties]

Ok, so I just checked my nozzle inventory...

The nozzle that was installed when I got the burner was a 9-2. I After a few days of frustration, wondering what the heck I was doing wrong, I installed the 9-31 and it's been working almost perfectly since then. I also have a handful of 9-5's which after a little research seems to be the stock nozzle.

So it seems that I'm running a slightly smaller than stock nozzle, which makes sense because my blast chamber is defiantly smaller than the original Clean Burn furnace.

Now that I think about it I'm guessing because the previous owner burned Vegetable oil he needed a smaller nozzle and that's why the 9-2 was in there, does that make sense?

Are nozzles something that wear out pretty often? I'm not sure how old the current nozzle is, but is it something I should have a good spare of?

Also, what is everybody setting their preheater temp to? The Clean burn manual says 150, but it seems to work better at 170.... I've read the over 180 and there is a high risk of carbon buildup in the heater.

Thanks,
Austin

I would go with the 9-5 nozzle. They do wear out over time but it takes 1,000's of gallons of oil running through them before they start to wear. You can take them apart to clean them if they get plugged. I do not run anything over 150* of preheat temp and you will bake the oil quickly especially with that burner having the oil element on the oil. The CB 4000 burner was short lived and the worst of all the Clean Burn designs.

[acarter]

Well, I thought I would give an update. It's been over 2 months now since I've had a real problem with the unit. Ever since I put the larger nozzle in it's been working pretty well. It seems that a good cleaning is required of the firebox about once a month. That takes me about 15-20 minutes from start to finish, so I can handle that. It burns very clean, no smell outside and nothing but heat waves coming out of the stack.

Every once and a while it will trip itself off, for whatever reason, but this is less than once a week and a press of the reset button and quick adjustment of the oil pressure and we're back in service for a while. During the cold snap in January I was burning around 8-10 gallons/ day with boiler temp set at 180. Now that the highs are in the 40's and lows just below freezing I've turned the boiler temp down to 140 and we're burning 3-5 gallons/ day. The furnace blower in the house runs a little longer (because the water temp is lower) but it still heats the house up fairly quick. I'm pretty happy that the gauge on my heating oil tank in the house hasn't moved for months!

[Oilburner]

I wonder if adding an intermittent spray of water into the fire box would help keep things clean?
It certainly works on engines that's for sure and I don't see a lot of difference here.  The water would change to steam and should help Loosen and move the deposits.

That said, any carbon like buildup is incomplete combustion. Maybe turning up the air control or if it's possible, induce a bit more swirl into the flame front. If oil is burning completely it will turn to ash like wood leaves behind and mainly be expelled. You might end up with some powder in the fire box but that would be easy to clean with a vac.

[doug]

  I don't get any carbon build up in my set up. It does create ash build up. I just vacuum it out.

[ShopSpecialties]

The carbon build up is in the preheat block not the firebox. Spraying water into a firebox is a terrible idea.

[acarter]

The cleaning I'm doing once a month is what I would call ash buildup, not carbon. Mostly just a few inches in the bottom of the firebox (which is relatively small) and I just take my hand with a glove and scrape off the stuff on the walls of the firebox, comes right off. Vacuums up easily. I'm sure I could go longer but considering how easy it is I'm happy to do it once a month.

Either way, there is no smoke and it's working perfectly so I'm not messing with a good thing. It burns great anywhere between 4-6psi oil and about 27 air pressure and that's the way it's staying.

Austin

[u1100l]

The carbon build up is in the preheat block not the firebox. Spraying water into a firebox is a terrible idea.

100%,!! yes for carbon buildup and silly for water injection