Ancient Williamson Furnace, Need to Cement?

I have a very old-early 1900's-Williamson furnace, one of the enormous cast iron ones. It used to be coated in a cement but over the years it has cracked and fallen off. Now it gets very hot so I guess I need to re-coat it..could someone tell me what type of cement to use to withstand the high temps and the best way to apply it?

I am probably going to be on here quite often with more questions! This furnace is the bane of my life

I believe it is called Refractory cement.

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=refractory+c ... nt+furnace

Neal

Without seeing it, my guess would be that the cement should only go in the seams between the cast iron sections.

Mike

Does it look like this?

Neal

Pretty close..and it used to have that same coating on it..then it was wrapped in insulation. The insulation caught fire a couple of winters ago, I think because the cement coating was disintegrating and letting the heat through. Fortunately the furnace is in a separate building from the house, so we weren't in danger from the fire, but the fumes got pretty bad before I could get it out.

kmcd wrote:I have a very old-early 1900's-Williamson furnace, one of the enormous cast iron ones. It used to be coated in a cement but over the years it has cracked and fallen off. Now it gets very hot so I guess I need to re-coat it..could someone tell me what type of cement to use to withstand the high temps and the best way to apply it?

I am probably going to be on here quite often with more questions! This furnace is the bane of my life

Could you get us a few pictures on here?

If it is a boiler you are referring to, the old boilers were usually covered with chicken wire with asbestos cement over it, often with a coat of whitewash to finish.

You can just wrap it with fiberglass.

No, it's not a boiler, it is a forced air furnace. The cement that was on it before didn't have any chicken wire in it. I think it was coated sometime in the '80's, when my dad and his friend built the separate furnace building and installed that furnace to replace an even older one that we had in our house. I am not sure if it had asbestos in it, or whether that was still available when they did that project.

I will try to get some photos on here soon, had to get the camera charged! Hopefully I will get a chance to do it tomorrow..

If it is a hot air furnace it should not need cement over the cast iron and should work much better without it. If the cement was used to cover big cracks or holes in the cast iron you probaby should retire the unit. Otherwise you should get ready for it to throw more heat.

Mike

This looks like an OLD vertical cast iron sectional boiler. The firebox is in the lower portion and the cast iron sections that contain the water are stacked on top. They are usually held together with what looks like unthreaded tapered pipe nipples as a metal to metal fit.

Is that what you have?

Rev. Larry
New Beginning church
Ashland Pa.

No, it is not a boiler. There is no water involved! It is only similar to the pic that ntp71 posted, not exactly like it. There are no cracks or holes either, from what I understand from my mom the cement was on there for insulation, i.e. it stopped the hot surface of the metal being exposed.

How is the heat from the furnace captured and moved into the house? Normally those things would have an outer "skin" of sheet metal, which is capped to feed ductwork.

My guess is it would give much better performance if you were able to put it back in the house in place of the original one. Do you know why it was put outside?

Mike

How about a pic of that MONSTER?