| Installation of our Corn Burner |
|
|
|
| Wednesday, 07 July 2004 | |
|
Photos of our corn burner installation. This page might end up being little more than a collection of pictures. What is there to say? I did not do the installation myself. I hired a local plumbing and heating company to do it. I did take pictures, provide comment and ask questions though. I will try to get the information in here. The company name was Bartingale Mechanical out of Eau Claire, Wisconsin. They were my third call in the yellow pages. The first two, if they could have dropped the phone and gone running away screaming I think they would have. They were not at all interested in trying something out of the norm. I talked to a guy named Mike Schummer at Bartingale and he seemed so calm -- compared to the reaction I got talking to the first two guys, that I was pretty sure that he didn't understand what I was talking about. He did in fact. He called Traeger up in Canada and got some installation advice from them. What he came back with is a plan and a proposal for $4877 for installation. That included the chimney liner, 62 feet of insulated 6" stainless. All in all the installation experience was a good one. On to the pictures. Here is a shot of the two pumps. The larger (lighter colored) pump is the one for the main part of the house. It hooks into the 1-1/2" copper pipe that times into the old cast iron radiator pipe. One of the things I plan on getting around to one of these days is to wire in a small light bulb in with each one of these pumps. They run so quiet that I really can't tell which one of them is running. Even feeling them I have a hard time figuring out which one of them is vibrating more. A light on each pump would tell me which zone is calling for heat. This is a shot of the stainless steel chimney liner as it pokes out of the old brick chimney. This shot was taken before they cut it off and put in the angle pipe that brings the pipe over to the furnace. I had hoped for a cleanout to be installed down below but for some reason the installers didn't want to do it that way. They felt it was better, perhaps less cold seeping in when the fire was out, if they capped the bottom end of the chimney liner. So, what I have to do at the end of each season is open the chimney pipe and use a shop vac to suck out any fly ash. Here are two shots of the roof work that had to be done installing the chimney liner. I really wanted to go up in the lift but it was below zero with a wind the day they came to install it and since I was just going up for the view anyway, figured I would rather stay on the ground. I bet I could have got some great shots from up there though. Our house sits on the bluff overlooking the Chippewa River, but we have heavy tree cover so we can only *just* see the river. Sitting here in the comfort of my office (with my radiator putting out corn fed heat) I am regretting that I didn't go up. I don't remember having any second thoughts the day they were here though... :-)  Here is a shot of the relays on the wall. Not one of my best pictures. Basically, there are two relays on the top, one for each pump. There is an electrical junction box in the middle. Hanging off the side is a transformer, I expect that powers the relays. Off to the bottom left corner there is a little box with a red L.E.D. that tells me if one of the thermostats is calling for heat. On the bottom is a regular wall switch that controls the power for the whole system. These next three shots are of the baffles, this first one from the bottom. Looking up from the fire chamber area, so looking at the bottom of the boiler area. This next shot is of the top of the boiler, looking down into the smoke box at the top of the baffles area. I am typing this in late March after I have run the unit for a couple of months. Now, After I have cleaned this smoke chamber out a couple of times, I find it hard to believe that it was ever so clean. Here is one last shot, this one with one of the baffles pulled out. Again, it is hard to imagine that it was ever so clean. I think that these baffles are going to have to be replaced every couple of seasons. Now that I have run it for a bit they really seem quite soft and very bendy. Like the metal has lost it's temper from the heat. I don't think they will hold up well. And, here are some last shots of the radiators being put into the office.    These are 3/4" alluminum fin radiators. They came in off-white which I applied brown spray paint to and now they fit in with the woodwork real nice. I was really surprised how long they took to install. There was only one guy doing the work up in the office while the other guy was doing most of the basement work. The guy who was working in the office was named Jon Atkison, and I gotta say he did a really great job. It was fussy work but now it looks great!  And one final thing, not really related to installation but more of something to watch for in the future. When the boiler first arrived on the truck and I inspected it I found that the two firepots had been just thrown inside the fire chamber. One of the pots had done some considerable damage to the insulation on the side of the chamber. I don't know that this is going to cause problems other than the first time we lit a fire in the unit there was some paint damage to the outside of the boiler in this area. I think it is caused by the thinness of the insulation. |
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|