My New Toy, Losch Stoker Boiler

I removed some of the fittings on the boiler today. Since it looks like the front of the boiler will be up against the wall, I removed the aquastat well from the front and moved it to the side. I also put the tridiactor gauge in the top hole on the side. That way it will read the water at the top of the boiler. The aquatstat has more of a "Heads Up" if it is lower in the boiler.

The aquastat used to be there. The gauge used to be here. Now the aquastat and the gauge are here. I loaded it up with 44 PSI of water. I used cold water this time. It is very humid here so it will be a little difficult to tell if there is a leak or not. The cold steel of the boiler is sweating like a pig!

-Don

National Board Inspection Code requires that water temps be up to at least 70 F. Water at that temp helps to combat sweating and you can spot the leaks quicker. Also if the metal sweats guess what follows? Rust.

Thank you for that info Larry. It's always good to know the right way to do this kind of thing. This morning after I took the pressure reading, I drained some of the cold water out and put some nice hot Yellow Flame DHW coil water in. It is also in the sun right now. All that should dry it up quickly. It is sitting at 20 PSI now and is warm to the touch, A little over 100 degrees.

The overnight pressure test came out as a PASS. No sign of leaking, pressure on the big gauge still 44 PSI. The little gauge still reads about 50 PSI. Once again, we are back to the point where we have a pressure worthy vessel. I hope I don't screw it up again!

For the boiler, next will be a good flush out with hot water. Then it will get wire wheeled down, cleaned and painted. The wheeling and painting will not happen today, hopefuly next weekend.

-Don

In our last episode of the Losch to Yellow Flame conversion, we got the boiler back from the welder and pressure tested it. The plan then was to wire wheel, clean and paint everything then put it back together.

Then I ran into a little snag, Stoker Maddness. I found a Gentleman Janitor coal stoker boiler in need of some help. and I had to have it! So the Losch was put on the back burner.

Last weekend I went up to coal country and picked up a bunch of spare parts for the Gentleman Janitor. Today I realized I actualy have enough parts to put one whole Gentleman Janitor stoker together including the side plate! Turns out it's not a bad fit in the Losch. In this mock up, the ash ring is about 3" below the bottom of where the boiler sits. I think I might loose a little heat out of the base this way but, if I put it up into the boiler it will clinker up because the ashes will not have enough room to fall off the ash ring. I still need to figure out how to make a rectangular air pipe to connect the blower to the pot. This seems to be the weak point of the GJ stoker. It was made of sheet metal so they all rust to death, non survive. I'm thinking a piece of rectangular steel tubing would be a good start. For now, It's drier duct. Yes we will test fire this outstide. The main reason I was thinking about this today is, I shut down the Yellow Flame yesterday. Now I am on expensive electric hot water. YUK!!!

-Don

Def: Stoker madness,,@@@ having too much time on hands combined with exotic reasoning caused by summer doldrums and having no reason to burn coal by the tons. Sec.ndef: making multiple trips to stoker heaven bringing back the iron and working until exhausted in garage on any and all possible combos, usually resulting in temporary insanity lasting until mid fall.

Scottscoaled wrote:Def: Stoker madness,,@@@ having too much time on hands combined with exotic reasoning caused by summer doldrums and having no reason to burn coal by the tons. Sec.ndef: making multiple trips to stoker heaven bringing back the iron and working until exhausted in garage on any and all possible combos, usually resulting in temporary insanity lasting until mid fall.

Indeed!

My only hope is that the under fed stoker is the final phase of Stage 5 Stoker Maddness!

-Don

Don,
You will love how smooth your under-feed, pot stoker burns. The drama is gone as soon as you find the sweet spot for feed and air. I like how deep the GJ pot is. My EFM holds a fire for a long time so yours should be really nice.

That said, ..... I don't think you will find a cure.

Dave

It should be interesting. The GJ pot is so deep that I may not even need to run a timer. The later GJ installation wiring diagram does not include a timeer, early ones do. I guess after they had a lot of stokers out there running, they realized the timer was not nessicary. For me, it will depend on the coal. It would be nice not to be pushing all that coal on a timer cycle.

EFM S-20 pot is 7 3/8" deep. The Gentleman Janitor pot is 10" deep. Thats 2 5/8" deeper coal bed.

-Don

I made a crude adapter plate to get the GJ stoker plate bolted to the Losch base.
And I did get to put some paint on it. -Don

Looking good SD

Best Regards
CS

If I was to do a Losch to Gentleman Janitor conversion it would look something like this.
The pot isn't in quite the right place. It should be centered better and back towards the hopper 6 to 8 inches. This has the small worm in it with the larger feed pipe. The Pea coal seems to feed through pretty well. I'll fire it up later to see how it burns. If I were to do this, I would still need to cut the bottom of the base out, put it up on about 14 inches of block, make an ash diverter and put an ash door in the block.

-Don

Well that didn't turn out too well. It took me about an hour and a half to get the fire going. Once it got going it burned great for a while. Then the fire started to shrink again. I increaced the feed rate, that pushed more coal but the coal was not lighting. It just came up in the middle and didn't light. I will try this pea coal again sometime, maybe I over shot and increaced the feed to much?
This pea coal burns real HOT. My heat sheild was touching the coal feed bucket and melted some of it. I jammed a feed worm in between to get it off the bucket. -Don

I put up a video of the Losch base with the GJ stoker burning Pea coal on youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxozW_YJm8o&feature=youtu.be

-Don

Now that's some fire!!!

The heat output difference between Pea and Rice was VERY noticeable. The part where I put the camera down at the base for a while burned my hand. I'm supersized it didn't melt the camera!

-Don