What if you aren't a boy scout ?............................

[JonRiley56]

At the rate I am going it should only be another twenty years or so till I get in the water. Never the less.............to fail to plan is to plan to fail........... It occurs to me that no matter how diligent and thorough I am in getting things sized correctly and plumbed right, aint nuthin gonna happen if I cant get a decent fire going.........

I am going to be running a water tube boiler so my firebox is deeper than it is wide. Can you guys give me some hints on how to build and maintain a decent fire ? I will be burning wood. (oak primarily)

thanks

jon

[Lopez Mike]

I don't think it's rocket science. I just wad up some newspaper, lay some small stuff on top of that and then a few sticks of slightly larger stuff on top of that and then throw in a thermite bomb.

Actually I have one of those self lighting plumber's propane plumber's torches to light it all off. As to keeping it going, perhaps the only things that I pay much attention to is not to throw in a whole pile at once and to try to not have any big holes in the fire for a bunch of cold air to flow through and cool off the boiler.

My draft closes off tightly so when I need to slow down or stop I close off the air supply. Usually enough unless I have been really working things hard. Every installation is different but you will get the hang of yours rapidly. At first it seem like everything is needing attention at once. The fire, the pressure, the water level, navigation, requests for cold beer and, "where is the head!"

[Mike Rometer]

The watch word for consistancy with any fire (closed or open), is "little and often". One log every few minutes, is far better than ten all at once, every half hour. Practice, like always, will make perfect. You'll soon learn your own boiler.

Most folk have problems lighting up every once in a while, then it's 'perceverence', and make sure everything is dry.

[DetroiTug]

Make sure the wood is seasoned. Then split it with an axe if needed until it's all about 3-4" in diameter.

For a wood fire to catch and burn properly, it must be built.

Before you go out, load the firebox. Start by taking some White Pine and whittle long slivers, a small pile of them about 3" x 3" when lined up and stacked. Place them in a stack pointing out the door, and near the draft opening. Above that make a roof out of a few white pine boards with a gap at the top. Then atop that start stacking the oak. Make sure everything lies in parallel with some air space generally about 1" in between.

With the boiler full of water, all that is required is stick a match to the end of the white pine shavings. It will need no other tending.

Once the fire is going start adding wood whenever you can. As Mike says, little and often. A firebox is sort of like a carburetor. If too much fuel is added, it's essentially flooded. It takes a while to clear.

I'm guessing with the size boiler you have (60 sq ft) and the 3 X 4 single, firing is going to be very easy.

-Ron

[JonRiley56]

Hi All,

Thanks for the replies, I will let you know how it goes when the time comes. I have a couple of related questions. My boiler came with a rotating damper for the stack, but it is not installed. Should I install it ? If so, how high up on the stack is appropriate. I asume having it as close to the base of the stack as possible is a good idea but am not sure.

My boiler does not have a door on the draft/cleanout opening that is opposite the main door. Do I need to add one, or possible an adjustable grate so I can control the amount of air getting to the fire ?

Thanks in advance

jon

[Lopez Mike]

Unless I'm not understanding your design, I think you would be wise to provide a good way to control the air intake. Feeding the fire is a long term way of controlling heat input. Controlling the air is the short term control and without a way to close it off tightly I think you will spend more time listening to your safety valve than you had planned. With a tight fitting fire door and draft, you can go from a roaring fire to a spot fire in a moment. If needed then you can even drop a cap over the stack to tamp things down.

By tight fitting, I mean really tight. On my ash door/draft if I open it up a 1/16 of an inch along its long edge (it's about 4" by 12") you can hear the fire go from silent to rumbling. With a working fire and 100 psi., I can close the throttle and the draft and it will take 10 minutes for the pressure to climb to 110 and then slowly drop for a half an hour. After an hour i will still have enough fire to start feeding it medium sized stuff and get ready to go. Very good control.

This is on a 33 square foot VFT with a water leg and a six inch by five foot stack. I have little experience with water tube boilers.

By the way, my ash door is right underneath the fire door so I have easy access to both from my operating position. How you might work the ash door from the other side of the boiler is a problem you will need to solve.

Several of my friends with water tube boilers have to leave the operating position to feed the fire. I wouldn't be comfortable with that. What with trying to stay out of the way of the larger fry out there I am busy enough.

[JonRiley56]

Thanks Mike !

Yeah the way my boiler is set up, the fire door and ash door are on opposite sides..........not the way I would have preferred it but I bought rather than built it. I figure I will stay by the ash door and controls while my wife heaves wood in through the fire door......That way I wont get any soot on my ascot........

So for the draft/cleanout door I should be looking at an actual door to close it off as opposed to a grill of some sort that slides to open varying amounts ?

Also, if I put the rotating damper in the stack will the help knock the fire down if things get too raucous ? I will try to post a picture of the stack damper later tonight so you can see what I am talking about. I have attached a picture of the boiler that shows the Ash/draft opening.

jon

[Lopez Mike]

My ash door has a heavy duty piano hinge on the top edge and has a fair amount of friction so it tends to stay where ever I leave it. And it is made of 1/8" steel. I find that most of the time it is open about an inch or two for full air supply. But it is nice to hear the fire pretty much stop when I slam it closed. I have a wedge shaped hunk of wood to keep it at one setting if there is a lot of boat motion that might make it close.

I don't know about trying to control the fire with a stack damper. I would worry about having smoke come out around the fire door and out through it when you were adding fuel with the damper closed or close to it. Most of the time I want all the draft I can get except when at the dock or stopping unexpectedly. I have a hunk of old plywood that I can flop on top of the stack if I need to slow the fire down more than I can by closing the draft. Haven't used it yet though.

[farmerden]

Hmm! I was asked to leave the boy scouts at an early age!-Really-Scout's honor! So I have a pump style oil can filled with used oil nearby.After lighting the kindling, a few squirts of this can makes me look like a scout master! Surely I should qualify for some sort of merit badge. With a tall enough smokestack all these boilers draw like crazy.So more than anything you will need the ability to control the draft and /or be able to shut the air off.These little boilers aren't traction engine or locomotive style boilers which need to drag that hot air down long fire tubes necessitating stack blowers.As for the chimney damper,at the lower end of the chimney is fine,make it easy to reach. Usually there isn't much room between the engine and the boiler so some people load from the front. The theory behind the air intake being under the fire is that the cold air doesn't rush up the boiler and cool it down,coming from below the air supports combustion and then the superheated air warms the boiler-makes sense to me! As for using wet wood-go ahead and use it! Practical knowledge is remembered far longer than theory! Then you'll use DRY wood and never ask why! Another practise that some use is to crack open a vent in the boiler to allow all the air to be expelled-close it when steam is exiting. This removes the oxygen outof the boiler. I'm not sure on that one -wouldn't the air be driven out when you crack the throttle the first time? I do it anyway as part of my start up procedure -may not be the right way-but it's my way! Den

[RogerV]

There is another method of building a fire, and it's called "top firing." I have no idea how well if it would work in a boiler, though. In this method, you put the medium-sized pieces of wood in first, then put the kindling on top of them, and finally the newspaper on top of everything else.

I once owned a cabin in the mountains, and I usually used this method to light the wood stove, except that I put the newspaper on top of the larger pieces, and the kindling on top of the newspaper. It sounds totally backwards, but I was surprised at how well it worked. As burning fragments from the kindling and paper fell into the larger pieces, they usually caught quite well. I usually held the ash pan door open a couple of inches to speed things up a little.

This method avoids the situation that anyone who has ever used a fireplace or wood stove has experienced at least once, and that is when the big stuff is on top, and for whatever reason doesn't "catch," and its weight sometimes puts what small fire you do have out. That leaves you with a bunch of hot, smoking wood but no fire, and that's another situation where you often have to resort to top firing.

My stove had a damper, but it was internal in the stove, and you definitely had to open it when adding wood or opening the stove doors for any other reason. You learned fast when you got a face full of smoke coming out of the stove door!

Good luck with it, and I should also say that you're lucky to have a stoker as part of your crew!