Stack thermometer for stoker

Dave 1234 · Post by **Dave 1234** » Wed. Jan. 08, 2020 8:48 am

After a few wood boiler friends of mine told how much fuel they REALLY burned a year I started to wonder, where is all that heat energy going?

So a bit ago I found an Ashcroft 500 deg. long probe thermometer with pipe threads.
Made a 4 screw flange from a reducer and mounted the thermometer neatly into the smoke stack.

Here is what it sorted out, on my boiler. ......(I am set at 170 deg. hi temp).
A 10 min run will push the stack temp to 375 deg, BUT , if the inside of the boiler is dirty from fly ash, the thermometer will hit 430 deg.

This boiler sits idle a lot, its big, and there is no timer for a hold-fire.
So I was really interested in the resting temperatures too. Now this is using a ''M'' type baro, but when first installed the thermometer was reading 125-150 deg at full rest (no stoking in last hour).
After a few days of messing with the baro only, it now rests at 85-120 deg.

Hope someone finds this of interest. I started down this rabbit hole because of my friends loosing so many BTU's out the stack. As it turns out so was this boiler too.

Dave

PS. Sorry no pics,

Post by **StokerDon** » Wed. Jan. 08, 2020 8:05 pm

Dave, glad to hear you have chased out one of your stand by losses. The wood boiler bunch don't seem to care about how many BTU's they throw up the stack, or how many they throw into the ground. After all, wood is free, right!

By the way, no pics, it didn't happen.

-Don

titleist1 · Post by **titleist1** » Wed. Jan. 08, 2020 9:32 pm

I like it!

Sounds like you have a simple way to tell when its getting time to brush the flyash off the inside of the boiler.

Hmmm....now if you could just somehow connect an email alert when the temp hits 400.....

Post by **coaledsweat** » Thu. Jan. 09, 2020 8:14 am

I use an Ashcroft gauge but just poked a hole in the elbow where it turns to the thimble. Just slide it in and when you want to get a manometer reading just yank it out and get one.

Dave 1234 · Post by **Dave 1234** » Fri. Jan. 10, 2020 8:33 am

StokerDon wrote: ↑
Wed. Jan. 08, 2020 8:05 pm
Dave, glad to hear you have chased out one of your stand by losses. The wood boiler bunch don't seem to care about how many BTU's they throw up the stack, or how many they throw into the ground. After all, wood is free, right!

By the way, no pics, it didn't happen.

-Don

Don, I have to applaud the ODWB gang. They have a ''stick-to it additude''.

Sorry no pics ever in my posts, in a miss-guided youth I learned lots about industries, but next to nothing about tech stuff.

Dave