I Burn Corn - Forum

Subject: Replacement smoke chamber gasket - by: mkling

mkling — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 03:46:46 +0100

What do you guys use for replacing the smoke chamber gasket? It seems like mine may be letting a small amount of air in since I can see streaking on the smoke chamber lid when I take it off and flip it over.

Subject: Guessing this is really bad news - by: jabbott

jabbott — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 07:43:00 +0100

So when I was cleaning the boiler today I pulled out one of the turbulators and it came up wet. I shot this video after I had it all put back together and I started a fire in it. Pretty much a steady drip. Now, with a full fire going, there is just a little rim of wetness right at the bottom of the boiler tube.

[video]http://www.iburncorn.com/images/stories/videos/MVI_5890.flv[/video]

I thought something was kind of strange because the turbulators were all kind of stuck today. There were like five of the that took considerable work to pull out. What I was doing was clipping a vicegrips onto the top and then either pulling with a great deal of force, or using a short crowbar. I don't think the wet one was one of the ones that was stuck.

I never got around to buying a tube scraper and better bristle brush. So, the only brush I have ever used on this boiler is the stock one that comes with it.

I am thinking this is pretty bad news, eh?

Subject: pilot setting - by: surferdude

surferdude — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 22:09:05 +0100

Has anyone played with the timer pilot settin on a Gbu130? I am burning straight corn and I have it set on the 8min cycle time.. I did try the 16 min cycle, but as most of you probably know the pilot will not stay lit in between cycles unless there is a call for heat from the thermostat. My unit mainly runs on pilot cycle most of the time anyway, I have my thermostat set @ 70, but the pilot is generally enough to heat my house easily. Is the 16min used for pellet burning?
This is my first experience with corn any help would be appreciated.. Thanks

Subject: Boiler over heat - by: jabbott

jabbott — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 06:30:06 +0100

Over the past couple of days I have been having an issue with the boiler and the way I have it hooked into the house.

Here is the deal. I have two zones, zone one, the old part of the house and zone two the new part of the house. The old part is all cast iron radiators, lots of square feet, big leaking windows. The new part is really just one room. It is over a 2-1/2 car garage, new windows, actual insulation in 6" walls. This room is office space for the wife and I. The kitchen is also off this room conected by a short, wide hallway. The kitchen only has a gas fireplace on a switch as its only heat source.

When the Traeger was installed I had them hook the dump zone to the office. Here was my logic, for the most part I am in this room at least 22 hours a day, and in the winter time I don't over heat. More heat = better. Before we moved in, there were not any radiators in this room. We added some aluminum fin baseboard radiators, maybe about 25 feet of them. The installers said this should be plenty of radiator for the size room it is.

Normally this all works pretty well when the weather is stable. Rapid warm ups during the day cause us some trouble, but what causes real trouble are holidays. On holidays, such as yesterday we wanted to use more of the house than just our office, but we didn't really want to pay for heating up the whole thing. So, what we did is closed the door on the landing to the upstairs. Lite a fire in the fireplace to warm up the living room and closed the pocket doors on the dining room so it could be warmed up by heat from the ovens in the kitchen. The dining room is where the thermostat (set at 58 degrees) is.

So, I think that sets the plot. The thermostat thinks it is plenty warm. I should have just gone down and shut off the Traeger, but I didn't. Late in the afternoon I woke up from my post turkey nap on the office sofa to hear water boiling in the pipes. I went down into the basement and the Traeger was sitting at about 250 degrees. She was making quite a bit of noise and I was a little nervous to be around it. To cure the immediate problem, I kicked the thermostat up for about a minute to kick in the pumps from the main part of the house. I am sure the water in the cast iron radiators wasn't above 40 degrees, and it dropped the boiler temperature down under two hundred.

So there are a few facets to this. Number one, the radiators in the office seem insufficient, or inefficient. There is also a gas fireplace in that room, and it is a good thing too because there is no way the room can be heated from the radiators. I think the installers were totally off the mark when they told me it could. Plus, it seems like these units can't seem to put out enough heat to even keep up with an over heat situation.

It seems like I am going to have to add another dump zone somewhere else in the house. I have a garage under the kitchen as well that is minimally heated space. Maybe I could add some radiators along the ceiling of that room.

Or, does this seem workable if I just added some more radiator surface area to the office space? I hate wasting heat when I don't mind being warm.