CB 2400 went out yesterday....?

[DeerMeadowFarm]

Last night I went to fill my OWB. I looked at the temp inside the house and it was down around 130 so I knew the fire was out. It didn't click in that the temp was so low....I had assumed it was out because it had been 27 hours or so since I had filled it and I hadn't filled it all the way. What surprised me was when I opened it, it was very apparent that it hadn't burned at all after the initial burn; the firebox was full. Now it has been very warm here so I'm sure the house wasn't calling for heat but would the fire go out? This is my first year burning with this.... Thoughts?

[thecfarm]

My Heatmor will just about go out if not calling for heat. If the fans don't kick on to blow oxygen into the fire box it could go out.

[doctorb]

Under very low heat demands, I think that smaller problems become more apparent with these OWB's.  A list of issues, in no particular order would potentially include:

1.  Wood not seasoned.  When the idle times between cycles increases, the ability of moist wood to reignite becomes lessened.  I battle this with a.) use wood that has been split into smaller pieces, which burn easier and b.) save some really seasoned wood for times such as these.

2.  Coal bed.  It's still about the coal bed.  If your fuel is maple, for instance, it doesn't seem to form the nice light almost charcoal-like chunks that these stoves like.  If your fuel turns to ashes, then reignition is tough and maintaining a good ammount of heat for gassification is tougher.

3.  Pulse times.  Read this previous thread here on the FF about summer use of OWB's for hot water.  There are lots of tips there to direct you on how to deal with the diminnished heat demand of warmer temps.  By decreasing the time between pulses, and increasing the duration of each pulse, you are trying to help keep a smoldering idle fire going.  I have not done this, but others here have.  Here's the thread.

https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php/topic,41487.msg599308.html#msg599308


4.  Maintenance.  The problem can still be the usual culprits of air passage blockage (both air hole and solenoid pathway), coal bed too thick, or reaction chamber blockage.  The standard list of things that decrease the efficiency in these OWB's can make them go out altogether under lower heat requirements.

5.  Time.  I note that you said you hadn't filled it in 27 hours.  While that's OK during the colder months and with a large load of fuel, that's not OK during these crazy warm spells with lower heating demands.  You probably need to visit your stove more often, with more diligent maintenance, with better fuel, and more frequent, smaller loads of dry fuel under these conditions than in the middle of winter.

Let us know how it turns out.  Hope that helps.

[DeerMeadowFarm]

Lots of good info here! Thanks!

[gspren]

  So far I have only had that happen when burning maple, like Doc said you need to burn better wood in mild temperatures, just not as much.

[DeerMeadowFarm]

OK, I got finished with my training today, now I can do important things like talk about my boiler!  ;)

Doc brought up a lot of good things here so I thought I'd go over them one by one:

1.  Wood not seasoned.  When the idle times between cycles increases, the ability of moist wood to reignite becomes lessened.  I battle this with a.) use wood that has been split into smaller pieces, which burn easier and b.) save some really seasoned wood for times such as these.

Yah, so this is part of the problem I'm sure. I am burning ash but it hasn't seasoned too long.

2.  Coal bed.  It's still about the coal bed.  If your fuel is maple, for instance, it doesn't seem to form the nice light almost charcoal-like chunks that these stoves like.  If your fuel turns to ashes, then reignition is tough and maintaining a good ammount of heat for gassification is tougher.

Again, I'm using Ash so the coals are pretty good I think.

3.  Pulse times.  Read this previous thread here on the FF about summer use of OWB's for hot water.  There are lots of tips there to direct you on how to deal with the diminnished heat demand of warmer temps.  By decreasing the time between pulses, and increasing the duration of each pulse, you are trying to help keep a smoldering idle fire going.  I have not done this, but others here have.  Here's the thread.

https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php/topic,41487.msg599308.html#msg599308

I read the thread....sounds like a lot of work to burn during the summer, and I guess that may apply to these warm spells as well....?

4.  Maintenance.  The problem can still be the usual culprits of air passage blockage (both air hole and solenoid pathway), coal bed too thick, or reaction chamber blockage.  The standard list of things that decrease the efficiency in these OWB's can make them go out altogether under lower heat requirements.

I always scrape the air hole areas every time I fill it. Every other weekend I clean out the reaction chamber thouroughly....I've only been burning since January so I'm thinking it really can't be that dirty with the cleaning I've been doing....? Am I missing something?

5.  Time.  I note that you said you hadn't filled it in 27 hours.  While that's OK during the colder months and with a large load of fuel, that's not OK during these crazy warm spells with lower heating demands.  You probably need to visit your stove more often, with more diligent maintenance, with better fuel, and more frequent, smaller loads of dry fuel under these conditions than in the middle of winter.

So again, this brings me back to my thought about it being too much work to burn during warm spells. So, for you folks that do not burn during the summer, at what temperature do you say "time to quit"? And does that apply to a stretch of warm weather as well?

Thanks!

[doctorb]

Not yet. I love the extra hot hot water!  Smaller loads of good fuel will probably cure the problem. If not, change your pulse times.

[beenthere]

DeerMF

So, for you folks that do not burn during the summer, at what temperature do you say "time to quit"? And does that apply to a stretch of warm weather as well?

I have a simple 2 step rule.
a. When the temp is up on my boiler, I don't add more wood.
b.  If the temp stays up because the house doesn't call for more heat, then the damper stays closed and the fire goes out.

[doctorb]

My criteria are a little different.  The OWB heats my basements with the 180 degree piping and heat enchangers etc.  If you walk down into the baeement during heating season, its toasty.  Too hot for me for the usual living space of the house.  When the heat in my basement is warming my kitchen (which is directly above it and has the closed door entrance to the basement stairs closeby), and there's no further call for hot water baseboard heat, the OWB is shut down.  So I can run mine until May 1 or beyond dependent upon the weather. 

[DeerMeadowFarm]

So yesterday I had a "normal burn"; all but 1 layer of logs were consumed and the layer left was burned enough that the bottoms were such that you could scrape chunks off with the hoe but not burned through enough that you could chop up the wood with the hoe if you follow where I've drifted to...

Beenthere - concerning rule a; my dilemna is that I work all day and I am away from the house for around 12 hours (+/-) so my goal is to load it each night between 6:00 and 7:30. Yesterday, at that time, my water temp was 184 and my CB temp was 230-something. I added wood per my normal routine and it went into low burn for 5 or so minutes until the water temp hit 188 then stopped. Probably not the best time to add wood, but if I hadn't, it probably would have burned out during the night and today (cooler and overcast) it will probably call for heat during the day. Not sure what the best solution would be....on the weekends, sure I can adjust much easier....

Doc - The same situation applies to the smaller loads that you suggested. Unless I get up earlier than I currently do (and who wants to do that; 5:00 am is early enough for me!) I am kind of stuck on when I can load or not....  :(

[doctorb]

I hate to say it, but during the heating months, I get up a few minutes before 5AM each morning (except weekends)and visit the stove for loading for the daytime hours.  I then revisit in the evening when I return home, often 14 - 16 hours later.  I need a slightly larger fuel load during the day, as the temps in the house are higher and the hot water usasge is greater, as well as the time the stove has to work on its own is longer.  I never load it full, as this twice a day routine has served me well.  I have read about the once a day routines of others on this thread.  Since I always visited twice a day, I have not changed my habits.  I do not find it burdensome, but I am not fond of getting up 10 minutes early on cold winter mornings to feed the monster. 

[DeerMeadowFarm]

I hear ya doc.... I haven't been lucky enough (?) to have a real cold winter to test my boiler out, but we did get a couple of cold spells. Even at that, I filled my boiler around 3/4 full and that would last 24 hours. We have a southern exposure and a lot of glass so our heat load is actually less in the day since we benefit from the sun, but all that glass works against us at night; that's when the boiler is working the most.

[thecfarm]

There is always next winter. As the old saying goes,Be careful what you wish for.  ;D

[DeerMeadowFarm]

I was only joking!!!

Although, my daughter was disapointed that we couldn't build our sliding track this year!

[thecfarm]

Probaly knowing me,I would be more disappointed than her.

[DeerMeadowFarm]

So my boiler has burned out the past two days in a row. All the things I mentioned before ash wood (not as seasoned as I'd like but it came from a standing dead tree and ash is low moisture content anyway, right?), cleaned/scraped out at each filling (air holes are not blocked), ash removed every other week (and even at that it's not excessive). So I decided to take some pictures! The first picture shows what the burned out wood looks like. I had the boiler filled 3/4 full the night before and she was making temp nice and quick.


 

This picture shows the cleanliness (or lack of?) the boiler once the wood was removed (you can see an unburned sliver of wood I used to kindle the fire the night before?) :



 

This post shows the wood I removed from the boiler in order to relight it. The stuff on top was the bottom of the pile when it was in the boiler (you can see another unburnt sliver of kindling).



 

This last picture shows the stack. This is the type of smoke I was getting during all of the low burn. When I relit last night, the water temp was 125. During low burn the chamber temp reached 550, then went down (?) to 535 where it stayed for a long time before slowly climbing. When it went into high burn, the chamber temp went up to 909 with the water temp now at 135. Lust like the low burn cycle, the chamber temp dropped down to 834 where it stayed for quite a while before climbing back again. I went in the house when the chamber temp reached 1000+. An hour later my water temp in the house was 180. Thoughts, comments?



 

[beenthere]

I can only comment that the fire lacked air to burn. For what reason there was no air, needs to be determined.
I can put any one of those pieces of ash firewood on just glowing embers and they will burn no problem. As long as there is air.

[doctorb]

I agree with beenthere.  The reason you are seeing all that smoke (and that's a huge amount fo smoke for a gasifying stove) is that the smoke is not being burned becasue of lack of heat and air.  This can happen because of....
1.  Blocked air passages.  Unlikely given your diligence here.
2.  Solenoid dysfunction - blocked passage or not opening correctly
3.  Fan malfunction - no air forced into chambers
4.  Damper door not closed tightly
5.  Controller malfunction with inaccurate solenoid opening

I would suggest the following.....

1.  Light a relatively small fire with good kindling/wood and the door and damper open.  Get it burning really well.
2.  Depress the switch to kick on the fans through the low-burn, high burn cycle.
3.  Watch the coal bed.  You should see glowing coals outside of every side air hole after 5 or more minutes.  You should hear the roar of the gasification occuring, and it should get louder as the heat of the coal bed increases.
4.  If this seems to be working well, shut the door and the damper and watch the stack.  If after 5 minutes the stack looks like the one in your piucture, then something is preventing the air from reaching your fire.  See list above.  Often this open door heat method gets hot enough to drain any blocking creosote out, and the stove performs pretty well.

Realize that, from a cold start, total gasification requires a good thick hot as heck coal bed, which you can't attain in only 5-10 minutes of burning.  Use lots of kindling, not logs, to form the coal bed as quickly as possible.

Let us know.

[DeerMeadowFarm]

Doc - When you say to depress the switch to kick the fans through the low and high burn cycle.....what switch are you talking about?

[doctorb]

I don't know about the 2400, but my 2300 has a little spring loaded metal tab that protrudes out of the face of the stove.  when the door is shut the tab gets depressed, giving the stove the "OK" to turn on the fans.  If the door is open, this little tab pops out about a half an inch.  Find that little switch and depress it with the door open.  You can check the fans then.

[DeerMeadowFarm]

OK I'll check. There is a fan that comes on when the door is open.....would that be in addition to this one?

[doctorb]

i don't know the 2400.  My 2300 has no fans running with the door open.

[boilerman101]

On my 2400, if the door is open, the fan runs and both secondary solenoids open. Good way to check them.  If door closed and reaction chamber is below 550, only top primary solenoid is open. Be sure to run the poker rod up and down both left and right side of air charge tube down to the firebox refractory before reloading. Some of that wood may be pretty good size for light heat loads. I tighten air pulse down to 12 minutes for 50 seconds. I can run mine at 70-80 degree outdoor temps with smaller, drier wood...I only put enough wood in to burn for 24 hours.

[DeerMeadowFarm]

OK, dumb question....I'm at work and don't have my manual, but where are the solenoids and how do I check them?  ???

[martyinmi]

I can't tell you the best way to operate a CB gasser, so I won't even try. I've owned an Empyre gasser, and now a Portage and Main, and I will comment on what works well for both brands when the weather is warmer. To keep them lit, we (three of us in this area bought P&M's) lower our differential down to 3* or 4*. This allows them to cycle more frequently, which keeps the refractory hotter and allows them to ignite every time they call for heat. We've had ours go out with the factory settings (differential @ 10*), but never with a 3 or 4 degree differential. We also try to keep the fly ash off the refractory top (nozzle area), as it tends to act as an insulator and not allow the refractory material to heat up. We just push and pull it through the nozzle in a "X" motion every time we add wood. My nozzle will still be over 500 degrees even after idling for an hour and a half.
   In one of your pictures it looks as if yours bridged on you. If you put heavier rounds or splits in the middle and smaller pieces on the outside you might be able to eliminate that issue- that's if it is an issue.

   Good Luck