It's heading into the low 70's for 4-5 consecutive days ...

I shut the old alaska down today, 75 in the house with the stove barely chugging along.if it gets cold again she's easy enough to fire back up, hope I don't have to.Great winter!

When I shut down the heat to the shop, that left the AA boiler with no load at all. I was gone for 8 hours or so today, decided to look in on the boiler.. the water temperature was still at 160*, but the fire did not respond very quick when I fired up the stoker..
So I plugged in the keepfire timer. With the temperature at 65*today and forcast to be 70* tomorrow and stay in the 60's all week, well I needed to put the boiler into 'summer mode'..

Greg.

LsFarm wrote:When I shut down the heat to the shop, that left the AA boiler with no load at all. I was gone for 8 hours or so today, decided to look in on the boiler.. the water temperature was still at 160*, but the fire did not respond very quick when I fired up the stoker..
So I plugged in the keepfire timer. With the temperature at 65*today and forcast to be 70* tomorrow and stay in the 60's all week, well I needed to put the boiler into 'summer mode'..

Greg.

I almost lost the fire in the Coal Gun this morning (the boiler was down to 140 degrees and it fired for better than 45 minutes straight before it fully recovered) and I seriously need one of these keepfire timers. I mentioned it to Darren at AHS and he said it shouldn't take too much effort to come up with one. I believe he is seriously considering it, and perhaps soon AHS will offer one.

Why wait for AHS? Buy a repeat cycle timer and install it this weekend.

Rob R. wrote:Why wait for AHS? Buy a repeat cycle timer and install it this weekend.

I have to admit that my knowledge of matters involving electrical stuff is rather wanting. Would such a timer perhaps be found at a Graingers?

Isayre, my hold-fire timer is not working and I'm contemplating purchasing and installing one as well. Just not sure if I'll need it.

Grainger should have an Intermatic model C8865.

Well I shut down the koker yesterday morning and by looking at the extended forecast she may not be turned back on for another week at least, wow! Using a little Harbor Freight 1500 watt Electric heater for now to keep the wife warm while watching TV!

Rob R. wrote:Grainger should have an Intermatic model C8865.

OK, that looks like it will work. Would the basic wiring tie in concept be essentially as per my PDF drawing attachment, where I'm showing the hot line to the fan motor going through the various of the current Aquastat controls (A) and also passing through the C8865 Timer (T), or do I need to consider some other tie in method? See PDF.

Is there a second high limit aquastat on your boiler?

Rob R. wrote:Is there a second high limit aquastat on your boiler?

Yes, and I vastly oversimplified Things. Two aquastats are both wired into the control panel which also houses the thermal grate control module. From this central control panel then emanates a set of wires that run to the fan motor. It actually looks a lot more like this PDF (without the timer added, as that is where I need some help). Wire bearing flex conduit is in gray. A minor flaw in my PDF has the L4006A aquastat marked as an L6006A by mistake.

I would tie the timer in between the L4006A and the L4081B. The idea is that the timer would be able to power the fan motor regardless of the L4006A status, but the L4081B high limit would prevent the timer from starting the fan if the boiler temperature was too high.

I'm anxious to see if my settings will work for the warmer weather. Right now I'm running 2 minutes every hour. That's 48 minutes per 24 hour cycle. At a 4 teeth feed rate thats 12 lbs per hour, that works out to be,,,,, 9.6 lbs per day. That's way below what I was able to run the 520 at.

Scottscoaled wrote:I'm anxious to see if my settings will work for the warmer weather. Right now I'm running 2 minutes every hour. That's 48 minutes per 24 hour cycle. At a 4 teeth feed rate thats 12 lbs per hour, that works out to be,,,,, 9.6 lbs per day. That's way below what I was able to run the 520 at.

Too bad you never got to run that fancy 520 through the new & improved chimney. Did you put an hour meter on the stoker yet?