new building for l200

[jcbrotz]

So I'm trying to save steps and load the kiln with the machines and not the back. what size buiding would be best for a new build Nyle L200.

[YellowHammer]

Assuming you are not track loading the kiln, then, if you are doing 16 footers, or double packs of 8 footers, the doors must be wide enough for them, plus end trim, plus driver error.  It's impossible to put a 16 foot pack of wood in a 16 foot door, although I know of kilns with 16 foot doors....

I like the height of the door to be at least the height of the tallest pack if being double stacked including the height of the top weights, and the forklift cage.  On one of mine, the door is not tall enough, and even when landing a half pack on top, I have to double clutch it and that's a pain.

If you are going to drive in with a forklift or machine, make the threshold so you can drive across it without damage.  

 

[doc henderson]

also make sure the approach is coplanar with the floor of the kiln.  too hard to offload and load on forks if off at an angle.  I leveled my container but had slope on the ground.  makes things harder.  

[K-Guy]

It depends on your needs, many will make their kilns 22' wide to allow for  20' pack only you know what you need. The kiln plans we have in the manual are pretty flexible but the kiln fans only supply enough air for going 1 standard pack(4') deep. You also need 12-18" from the stack to the doors or wall opposite the kiln unit. Use a measure of one fan for every 5' of chamber with for your best airflow. If you need more information Call me at Nyle 800-777-6953 ext. 212. Also I've done videos to help on our YouTube channel(Link Below) in my playlist KilnTech.

[jcbrotz]

Thanks guys, K-Guy I'll give you a call after the holidays. I typically work with 10ft lumber so a 22ft kiln would be ideal. I don't own enough level ground to load my reefer trailer with tracks all by hand and I'm getting old   

[customsawyer]

Brace your doors really well. They will want to start sagging after years of use. This will let them start to leak and increase operating cost. 

[YellowHammer]

For insurance reasons it's best to be abut a 100 feet away from your house, or any other structure that you care about if it burns down.  My insurance ran a tape measure to make sure I had proper separation.  I always cringe when I see someone has built a kiln right next to their house.   

[blackhawk]

For insurance reasons it's best to be abut a 100 feet away from your house, or any other structure that you care about if it burns down.  My insurance ran a tape measure to make sure I had proper separation.  I always cringe when I see someone has built a kiln right next to their house. 

Yellowhammer - Just curious to why the insurance company would consider a low temperature kiln like a Nyle to be such a large fire hazard?  I believe the max temp is 160F on the Nyle L53 and L200.  (I never run mine above 150F.)  The ignition temperature of wood is over 400F.  Even with continuous exposure to heat for months, wood has to generally be over 250F during that extended time to auto ignite.  If the kiln is electrically wired to code, maintained, and kept clean, what makes it more susceptible to fire?  An in home sauna can get up to 175F, so even 160F is not an extreme temperature.   

[YellowHammer]

There are a lot of scenarios for which a dry box full of wood and electrical equipment can burn down when a component malfunctions.  Kiln atmosphere is very acidic, and it's only a matter of time before pretty much everything electrical, aluminum or steel will corrode and contribute to poor electrical connections and hot spots.  Some stuff you can visually inspect which you should definitely do, but lots of stuff you can't too easily.  I've tried.  As an example of how corrosive the environment is, I had a 1/4" thick aluminum drip channel eventually corrode to paper thin and leak, after a number of years.       

From my personal experience with my two kilns:

1.  A shaft failure on a fan caused the impeller to fall into the energized heat strips, causing a direct short, with lots of sparking, lots of damage, lots of smoke.  Upon post failure inspection, I found plastic parts actually melted into the heat strips and trapped, during the time it took the fusable safety link to finally pop.  That was bad.     

2.  A recent compressor failure (rotor lock) a couple months ago got the electric motor so hot, it melted and dripped the rubber grommets on the copper refrigeration lines as they passed through the bulkheads.  That was HOT, and it turned the sheet metal black and brown.  Not to mention what it did to the feed wires and the nearby components.

3.  One of the baffle fan motors wore out, shorted the windings and got the PVC conduit so hot it melted the code rated electrical PVC into slag, as well as the plastic coverings of the wire nuts.  FYI, unless I am mistaken, the fan motors do not have thermal overload breakers so they can operate at the higher temperatures in the kiln.  If you wire all the fans into one breaker, that is a mistake!  All fans should have their own breaker.  A corroded connection rarely causes a dead short, usually only a slight increase in amperage so the connection can draw enough extra amperage to slowly get red hot without tripping an oversized breaker.     

4.  Over the years, I have had lots of other small failures that could have potentially gotten worse, but the main breakers tripped.

5.  Not to mention potential damage to electrical components due to rodents, which will get into your kiln if it is not run 24/7.   The manufacturers do eventing they can to make kilns safe, but I would not build one next to my dog's house, much less my house or workshop.     

Either way, from an insurance standpoint, fire is the most common insurance claim for sawmills and lumber kilns.  That's why my insurance requires my Fire Marshall to do a yearly inspection, as well as a certified electrician to do an infrared camera inspection of all the components and breakers of my whole operation.  As far as they are concerned, kilns will burn, and the easiest way to prevent further damage to adjacent structures is adequate spacing.

I finally broke down and bought an IR electrical inspection camera and use it more than I expected. 

Oh, as a last thought, if a business related operation is connected to a private dwelling, neither will cover the loss.  For example, I had my insurance agent literal freak out when he saw I was storing business related lumber in my house's garage.  He said if the wood somehow catches fire and spreads to the house, it isn't covered.  So that is one of the main reasons we subsequently spent the money on our lumber warehouse, for which we can't run electrical or gas heat unless it is done using explosive and flammable area rated heating systems.  Found that out pretty quick...So no heat or air conditioning in the warehouse.     

[barbender]

Dang it Robert, sometimes your wealth of experiences just takes the fun out of things for us that just don't know any better😊

[Andries]

Ignorance is Bliss, BB? 
That's been my mo for decades!
😜
I appreciate the details that YH offers up in his posts, but then realize that I'd been whistling in the dark for a long time.

[customsawyer]

Did you whistle in tune?
Robert does that mean you could heat with a Wood stove?

[YellowHammer]

No, the only way I can heat my lumber warehouse with a fixed (non portable) system is with an explosive or fire rated system, which basically means all heating elements, whether electrical, propane, or even wood has to be done remotely and the heat brought through an air or fluid heat exchanger, like a Modine system.

That from both my insurance as well as my local county inspection department.  These systems are available, just stupid expensive, much like the local oil change place who has a remote furnace to combust the use motor oil, then have the heat fed through steam lines to the ceiling blowers.

I also looked for an OWB system which seemed to be a no brainer, then found out how absolutely stupid expensive they were, including the lines, two Modines (big building), and I still had to feed it wood!  All systems started out at $10K, not including installation, and that didn't even address air conditioning in the summer.  Instant non starter.   

It didn't take long to figure out that I can buy a LOT of diesel for that, and simply use UL listed diesel portable heaters, turn one on in the morning, and off at the end of the sale day, two days a week, and it will run the full day on 5 gallons of fuel.  Last weekend when it was 27F outside, just one of them kept the building inside at about 55F, with one of the big bay doors open for customers to load wood, and get good air exchange.

Oh, I forgot to mention the local company who installed a kiln using bathroom sheetrock for the ceilings and walls, simply because they thought if it was good enough for bathrooms it should be good enough for a kiln.  Nope and I told them so before hand.  Anyway, about a year later, the roof collapsed, almost killing one of their employees who was inside stacking wood.  Of course, after that with potential liability and insurance claims, they "don't do kiln drying anymore."  Duh....So use proper materials in the kiln construction.  
 

[jcbrotz]

I very much appreciate all the warnings and learning's, But drywall in a kiln uhm that's not very intelligent , just need to get my layout done and get the details on the builds from K-guy. buys with a kitchen until the new year then hopefully we can start.

[YellowHammer]

They did a LOT of things wrong, and since they were a "big" local hardwood and millwork company, they were sure they knew best.  I assume they talked to the people who they bought the kiln from during the construction and were told "Nope" but did it anyway. In my case, I just laughed at them when they said what they were going to do, as they were gearing up to be my direct competition, which sure didn't last long.  Just one more company who bought wood from me, then thought they could do better, spent a lot of money, and failed.  They also bought an LT70 because I had one, and it turned out about the same way, maybe 20 hours on it, last time I talked to them a few years ago.  So I saw the project from the eyes of an interested and slightly hostile observer, while I was terminating my business relationship with them, but I remember telling them that much of what they were doing was stupid, and when they said it was a good idea, I just laughed an said "have fun." 

In their mind, bathroom (green) sheetrock is moisture resistant, and had a one hour fire rating so was a good thing.

They put the kiln inside their production warehouse on their concrete floor, so they could load and unload with their half dozen forklifts, and yet built the doors too tight to allow them to enter with full 16 foot loads of wood.  Considering they were a baseboard and millwork company, and use 16 foot boards 90% of the time, well, yeah, the old saying is "a half inch bolt won't go in a half inch hole."  So they had to get people to hand load 16 foot boards into and out of the kiln.  That sounds stupid, but once again, I've seen that more than once. 

They built the kiln ceiling way too low, so more than once when they tried to use the forklift inside the kiln, and tried to double stack, they hit the roof and damaged it.  They kept trying to get two 5 foot tall packs of wood in a 10 foot tall building. 

They didn't put in good door seals, so moist air would sneak out and make everything around the kiln damp, causing an area of enhanced rust on the woodworking tools.  So they had to move the tools away.  Not to mention the water that would sometimes run out from under the door, across the concrete floor. 

They had no one who had ever dried a board in their life, and the manger told me they were going to to get his brother in law to do it, who had zero experience and I believe, zero interest in learning.  Basically, they believed the kiln salesman who told them it was a "set it and forget it" system.  I used to walk by their twisted and crooked dried wood, and laughing.  Yes, I do that sometimes.     

So after all that, and after half jokingly telling me "there are plenty of customers for both our businesses" and buying a kiln and sawmill to copy us they had the gall to ask to hire me as a consultant, to "show them what to do."  I asked if I had "Stupid" stamped on my forehead.

Of course, once the roof caved in the employee threatened to sue, then the insurance company got involved who apparently didn't even know they had built a kiln inside their warehouse using the wrong materials, etc, had a little freak out, things got real, real quick, and shut their lumber drying experiment down.

Again, that is not unusual, and why there are so many people who buy kilns and stop using them after killing a few loads.  An old Yellowhammerism, "Make a bad cut with a sawmill and ruin two boards, have a bad day with a lumber kiln and ruin the entire load."

Anyway, we are here to help, as long as you are not setting up shop in my town.