Nyle l200m moisture probes

[forrestM]

just fired up my Nyle l200 for the first time! Seems to be working, the fan comes on and the temperature seems like it is slowly rising. I thought I would see the heating coils glowing hot, but it looks pretty dark to me. Is that normal? Also, I'm drying 13/16 inch poplar and have the 1/2 inch probes stuck in them to about halfway into the wood. My Wagner painless meter is pegged at 32, but the Nyle controller is showing an average of 17 percent. Is that because it is cold and dry in the kiln? Only 45 degrees so far. Or is it a depth issue? If I tried screwing them further in, then I feel like they'd be too deep. 

Thanks!

[WDH]

The coils will not glow.  The heat is very gentle.  Your moisture content variation between the Wagner and the probes indicates to me that something is not right. 

[K-Guy]

The probes will not read correctly till the kiln is hotter as they adjust according to temperature. The woods internal temperature is not the same as the dry bulb yet so there will be variation.

[Southside]

Glowing heat coils and dry sawdust would make for an eventful afternoon.  

What K-Guy said is spot on, I see it all the time.  Also, the wood class you select will impact the MC reading for the probes, it's not as selective as your Wagner.  As your wood dries and gets closer to the target MC the probes and your Wagner will begin to agree a lot more.  

I have to think the probes not being screwed in all the way will impact what they read.

[forrestM]

Thanks guys! I put my bathrobe on and went in the kiln to drive one set of probes in deeper. That raised the mc by 1 point. After talking with Stan @k-guy and rechecking my wiring, I think it may be that I am too far from a grounding rod. As the crow flies I'm about 15 feet from a rod. He wire run from the controller to the panel is just under 50 feet so I thought I would be good. But it's another 6 feet or so from the panel box to the actual ground rod. I didn't account for that. So I think I will spring for a ground rod from the controller disconnect and hope that solves the problem. 

In other news I'm up to 120 dB and water is steadily coming out. I'd say in an 1/8th inch diameter stream. Water all over the floor, and I can see where I have a leak at the corner of my doors where moisture is escaping. So far so good!

[Southside]

What do you mean by "water all over the floor"?

[forrestM]

@southside I mean that the concrete floor was consistently damp and there are shallow puddles in the corners of the kiln. We are on day three drying now and the dB is 120 and wb 110. The floor is drying out.  Still some slight puddle in the corners. 

I added a ground rod at the disconnect and it did not change my probe readings. 

[Southside]

How green is that concrete? The floor in my kiln is aluminum, it stays bone dry. 

[K-Guy]

For green softwood and some fast drying hardwoods, this not unexpected. In the beginning of the cycle they will throw off so much water that the unit can't cope with it, as it catches up the room dries out.

[offrink]

My guess is where there are puddles are where there is an air/thermal leak. The moist air condenses and makes a puddle. We have 6" of closed cell foam board under our concrete. 

[forrestM]

Hey Everyone, 

Just wanted to update on the situation. I added a ground rod at the disconnect, and it didn't change anything, so I added a second ground rod six feet from the first, still no change on the probes. Research was telling me that due to our rocky soil we may have incredibly high resistance to ground, so I dug a trench for a third ground rod to lay in horizontally. I lined the bottom of the trench with bentonite clay, laid the ground rod in that, and then covered with more clay and some rich, rock free soil.  I haven't even finished back filling and the moisture probes are now reading within one or two points of my Wagner Pinless. 

 without an expensive electric meter I can't accurately measure the resistance to ground I have achieved. Based on all I've read about soil resistivity and use of bentonite as a ground enhancing material, things seem to be in good shape. 

The poplar I put in is dry now, and hopefully my next load - 6/4 air dried walnut will go well and the meters will give me a good indication of where things are during the process



 

 

 

[K-Guy]

That's good information Forrest. Thanks for sharing!!  ;D

[Southside]

That's good to know on the clay.  Have heard of laying a ground rod down horizontally before but not the clay trick.  I can see that helping with electric fences too.  

[YellowHammer]

Rock salt added to the soil around the ground rod will also correct conductivity issues.

Good job on the effort to get a good ground, and get the kiln working, that's important.  

I don't fully understand the ground rod situation...did you have to drive in a ground rod at the remote disconnect sub panel because it does not match the physical safety ground rod connected to your main service panel supplying the electricity? Typically, thats not to code (I'm not the code police, but there are reasons for it).  Grounding both a main service panel and sub panel through separate local ground rods can help the local situation, but now the main service breaker panel is grounded to its ground rod as well as the new one, and if they are not at the same potential ground plane, it will feed through your new rod depending on how you have it connected to the sub panel.  

The reason I bring this up is that if your soil is so highly non conductive, and it took so much effort on your part to get a proper ground on the sub panel, I wonder if your main entrance service panel was properly grounded when the electrician installed it, or he just assumed it was a good ground.  If it's not, then its now feeding all your main panel safety grounds through your new rod. Also, if, by chance, the main service panel rod isn't properly grounded, and since sub panel is, it could cause issues with any of your other equipment being improperly safety grounded, especially if the neutrals are also tied to ground.    

Typically, to code, only one safety ground rod station (two rods if necessary) should be used, and that's generally from the main service panel, or an active voltage source, such as a generator.

From another aspect, generally 2 grounds on one system can cause a ground loop, and also increases the chances of lightening damage, as well as GFI breakers to trip, if it's severe enough.  

Anyways, just curious.  I'm not a professional electrician, but I have had to wire many things to code and subsequently get inspected.

Here's some casual reading, it sums things up pretty nicely.

https://www.transtector.com/resources/blog/Grounding-Do-s-and-Dont-s

[WV Sawmiller]

YH beat me to the punch. In my USMC days our CommO's often dug trenches and laid copper ground cable when they could not get a rod in the ground and they often salted the ground for better conductivity. Good luck.