Yellow Flame to Tri-Burner Conversion. What Do You Think?

He had stated that it was furnace cement that he used...should last a very long time.

Might be good over 2000*C and is acid proof.

Larry,

That stuff is Imperial HI-Temp Stove & Furnace Cement in gray. Yeah, now that you mention it, it does look like JB Weld!
In French too!
One thing about Yellow Flame Stokers is, the covers and ancilliary parts are NOT fitted or attached very well. It looks to me like the istallers cure-all was furnace cement in the old days to seal these things up. With the exception of the newest stoker I have, everything else has several old coatings of furnace cement. It doesn't come off too easy either.

All of the used grates I have, all had the first 3 or 4 rows packed with furnace cement. They were used like that so, I think this stuff will stay in there until throw the grate away.

Oh, and, Thank you all for coming with me on this experiment. For a while there, things weren't looking very good for this project, but, with all your help, we got through it with something that works! And, in the process I made some much needed improvments to my boiler system that I didn't even know I needed!

This was a great learning experiance!

-Don

Well it's time to stuff the old Tri-Burner back into the Yellow Flame and head through spring and try to use a liittle less coal. I will try to fire it up tomorrow.
I still have to make the hopper fit and swap over to aquastat and stove pipe.

-Don

Swapped the stove pipe and aquastat over to the Yellow Flame. I wanted to use the big 230 pound hopper from the Yellow Flame on the Tri-Burner stoker. I ended up just HiTemp siliconing 3 plates to the bottm of the hopper. One on each side to reduce the width from the yellow Flame 9" down to the Tri-Burner 6". Then a 3" one in back of the hopper to cover the 6" front to back opening in the Tri-Burner, the Yellow Flame is 3" or so front to back.
I made some J brackets to hold the top of the hopper sice the Tri-Burner is a little shorter. Swapped over the aquastat and stove pipe. Ready to fire! Oh, and I swapped over the hour meter to. Swapped over the auger to. And I put this much coal in it. CRAPP!!! I never did a feed tate test on the Tri-Burner!

I guess that will be another project.

-Don

I've got to admit the Yellow Flame is a much nicer looking boiler.

Yes, the Yellow Flame is the Blue Ribbon winner when it comes to looks. I still can't believe I got all those stripes strait!

I have grown to like the rugged looks of the Losch without the insulation on it. It's just plain ugly with the insulation! The garage gets way to warm without the insulation though.

-Don

StokerDon wrote:I have grown to like the rugged looks of the Losch without the insulation on it. It's just plain ugly with the insulation! The garage gets way to warm without the insulation though.

-Don

At first glance I thought I was looking at the return of the Woolly Mammoth.

I guess I have to get better at metal fabrication so I can make some nice look'in covers for all that wool. That insulation may be ugly but it works very well!

-Don

Not necessarily. Some say that beauty is as beauty does, and others say that form follows function.

Well one sign of coal savings that I have is that the auger is now feeding a good bit more coal than the Tri-Burner can eat! I have the smallest drive pulley and the largest driven pulley I own on there and today I had to shut the auger off to avoid an overfill.
Just got a tiny little fire go'in in there. This is full burn. Tiny, but enough to heat DHW and the occassional heat call from the house though.

The stoker ran for 17.1 hours over the passed 2 days. 8.55 hours a day. I have no idea how much coal that is yet! A good bit more coal in there then there was on Saturday. And now we are back to raking coal over the auger every other day. It seems to dig it's way out to easy! I emptied the ashpan on Sunday. It should go till Thursday.

-Don

Sorry, didn't make it til Thursday!
It had about 25 pounds of ash from the last 3 days. The hopper is staying pretty full. The auger just keeps dig'in its way out! Draft at idle today is about .015. Temps in the upper 50's. -Don

It COLD again! Yesterday afternoon was windy, temps in the upper 30's. This morning it was 30 degrees here on the north side of the hill. The Little Tri-Burner is running hard. It is keeping up with DHW and heat calls.
The stoker ran for 47.2 hours over the last 4 days. 11.8 hours a day, that's a lot for Spring! Removed 21 pounds of ash for the last 2 days. The hopper is getting a bit full again. It's gonna be a cold one tonight too!

-Don

I did a couple feed rate tests today with some suprizing results.
After 1 hour, I weighed 1 pound of coal. I thought this might be an error, so I did a 1.5 hour run and weighed 2 pounds of coal. That means on this setting, we are feeding about 1.25 pound per hour??? is that possible???

The bucket weighs 2 pounds. If this is true, that means from Monday to Friday it only burned 14.75 pound per day? And 10.6 pound per day last Saturday and Sunday? Something must be wrong, it has to burn more coal than that!

-Don

StokerDon wrote:If this is true, that means from Monday to Friday it only burned 14.75 pound per day? And 10.6 pound per day last Saturday and Sunday? Something must be wrong, it has to burn more coal than that!

-Don

I think you are finally hitting the sweet spot for efficiency. Congratulations!

Is that what this is? Never been here before, I feel funny.

-Don