Converted York oil burner

[DocDiesel]

Hi all, I've lurked around here long enough. I heat a 30'x50' shop. I live in central Nebraska and run a heating and air conditioning shop. I couldn't pass up a great deal on a York oil furnace about 3 years ago and decided to convert it to waste oil or biodiesel for use in my shop.
I used the CK Burner kit and it has worked super. I clean it once a year and get a little brown ash, but it isn't much and this furnace never smokes. All works great unless I forget to check the water drain and get a slug of water through the gun.
My problem is, I started noticing a little wisp of smoke and a little oil smell coming from the furnace. I inspected and found I had burned a substantial hole in the combustion chamber and burned the paint on the furnace box.
I disassembled and think the best route to take is to cut the ugly burn hole on the back of the combustion chamber out to an oval hole, install a deflector plate to cause the flame to head upwards and patch the oval hole with a formed piece of 1/4 steel with bolts anchored to the combustion chamber out through the plate cover and nutted. I think a combination of trying to get too much out of the furnace with a short combustion chamber and a dirty filter. My bad.
Any thoughts on my repairs? Doc.

 

[DocDiesel]

Wow, 97 views and not one suggestion... What is it my breath??
In case you are interested, a good friend, welder and oil furnace man had some great ideas and solutions for this short burn pot that burned out.
I took lots of pictures and thought maybe someone else had experienced what I had, but I guess not... Could it be that it's a York?? Doc...

 

[shephd]

Sorry Doc.
I read it because of the subject, but I got nothing to help you. Other are probably a little like in that we aren't hvac guys, and you are, and it is more than a basic problem. My last oil burning furnace was 25+ years old and the repair guy couldn't because it had holes in it.
I assume you know all about that, and you figure you can keep an eye on it.

Welcome to to the board and good luck with this. Stick around.
Shep

 

[DocDiesel]

Thanks Shep, I don't feel quite so bad, the heating and cooling forum seemed like the place to put it, just not too many of us guys there I guess, thanks, Doc.

 

[DenisG]

In my former house, I fixed an old wood stove that I had with 1/4" 304 stainless steel plate. There was a baffle in front of the outlet that had eroded away and it interfered with the damper. It worked out ok for me.
I assume that you have a forced hot air exchanger. As long as the exchanger has not eroded and you are containing the combustion gases where they should be, it seems that you should be fine.

 

[jeepinerdeep]

Any way you could integrate a target pad or insulation like a Reznor 140 has on their door? Its some kind of refractory board. I put a fresh one in my waste oil furnace when I fixed the heat exchanger.

http://www.westbrosinc.com/parts/reznor_combustion.html

I assume its sole purpose is to prevent future burn outs, like I think you are describing.

Waste oil is nasty nasty stuff: corrosive ash, crappy flame shape......."but its free"

 

[DocDiesel]

A baffle is exactly what I did. I consider it a duck foot. Originally the combustion chamber was made of a like fiberglass and mortar maybe? It is soft and quite crumbly. It was formed like a bowl that reflected off the back and upward to the heat exchanger.
I cut an oval where the burnout was and formed a 1/4" plate to cover the hole and secured with 6 3/8" bolts. I used 1/4" stove door rope to seal it.
I welded a 3/8" stainless plate about 4" wide and 8" long to the formed cover at a 45 degree angle to deflect the heat from the gun to vertical at the heat chamber. It works well.
At combustion box temp of 1150 degrees I get a little red at the top of the patch cover on the exchanger. My chimney was 360 degrees and I was getting a 40 degree temp rise at 1200 cubic fpm air. Just about right.
I got a little nervous about the red spot so I dropped my air pressure from 12 psi to 6 psi and my hot box temp dropped to 1000 degrees and my output air to a 30 degree rise. My chimney temp dropped to 275, not as hot as I desire, but the chimney still burns clean.
The duckfoot seems to deflect and disperse the heat well. I would like to run a little hotter, but I don't want to burn another hole in the box. If I do, I will role form the whole back of the burner box with 1/4" steel and never worry about it. Doc.

 

[salina]

The only other option I have is to install it in the crawl space?!

 

[anthony666]

double d .. got any pics of this set up ??

 

[DocDiesel]

Yep, I got pictures...
I haven't figured how to send them, Doc.

 

[anthony666]

Yep, I got pictures...
I haven't figured how to send them, Doc.

lol .. get a photobucket.com account

 

[DocDiesel]

Maybe I have it figured out...

Here is what the furnace looks like... Pretty ugly isn't it?

This is the front of the burner box and the exchanger..

This is the back that sustained damage..

Quite a blowout... If nothing I serve as a bad example of what not to do with a waste oil furnace.

This is the cleaned up hole and insert of stove door rope to make sure the seal was good. My rolling of 1/4" steel not perfect.

This is the duck foot deflector plate attached to the cover plate

Installation of cover plate and duckfoot.

Cover plate installed and tightened down.

Back of furnace where combustion chamber and heat exchanger is installed

Heat exchanger installed.

Front of furnace without gun installed... See the duckfoot in the back.
There is an error in the picture, can anyone tell me what it was? It was getting kinda late when I did this... I corrected the problem.

It's running great now. The shop cats are much happier with the heat on.
I also have a 250,000 btu turbo heater to really warm things up in a hurry, but I don't leave it on when I am not in the shop. I don't burn waste oil in it. It burns #1 or my biodiesel. I burn biodiesel in my Mercedes, Dodge truck, Ford F250, Kubota tractor, John Deere well unit and two slow diesels that I use for generating power when we have a bad storm. I should post a few pictures of the slow diesels. They were quite a project. Doc.

It took longer to post this than the repair to the waste oil furnace....

 

[anthony666]

that's quite the wound .. what do you think caused it ??

let's see the slow diesels

 

[DocDiesel]

This is the little one. I haven't belted it up to a genny yet.

This is the big one.. Any guesses how slow it will go??

 

[anthony666]

lister = 1000 rpm i think, yea ?? you run them on straight bio ??

 

[DocDiesel]

To be truthful they are "Listeroilds", Indian built knockoffs of the Lister. The big one is an 8 horse and the small one is a 6 horse. The big one is well adjusted and will idle down to less than 160 rpm. They love biodiesel, some burn waste oil in them, disgusting..
I tore both down to nuts and bolts when I got them, the Indians are notorious for leaving a lot of casting sand in the crankcase and mine were no exception. Actually the 6 horse was pretty clean, but the 8 horse was bad.
They weigh about 800 pounds. I don't move them around much. Doc.

 

[anthony666]

i have a couple of vw diesel engines i was thinking about hooking up to a genset and burning veggy oil in, dunno how long they'd live .. probably just long enough to get hooked back up to the grid

 

[DocDiesel]

I kinda look at it as something to do. A VW motor would pull a pretty good genset. I prefer bio diesel just because it causes less coking of the injectors. Keeping it liquid in the winter is another issue... Doc.

 

[anthony666]

Keeping it liquid in the winter is another issue...

liquid cooled engine .. shouldn't be a huge issue, use a thermostatic valve to divert some hot coolant .. et voila

 

[DocDiesel]

I had an old Minni power unit for my irrigation well that was failing so I found an old JD combine that had about 10,000 hours on it so I bought it... Little did I know the whole combine went with it.. I've never lowered a diesel engine from a combine 10 feet in the air, but we did it. I am a halffast farmer as well. Two weeks later we had it running the well, even with all the Murphy devices hooked up.. Doc.

 

[anthony666]

i've split my share of tractors and then some, but i've never took an engine out of a combine .. what did you do with the rest of it ?? a fella could make a lot of good stuff from a wrecked harvester, i'd like to put the fluid steering system in my rock crawler for example

 

[DocDiesel]

I saved all the hydraulics and some of the gears and pulleys and scrapped it for $400. I paid just one big one for it.. Seemed plenty fair. Doc.

 

[troyhedges]

with seeing your post about the burned hole, I would like to ask a question in regards to taking an old bath type oil burner from lanair(circa1972) and converting it to a forced burner like you have, the burner is a L 110 model. it has a cast drum with the bath in the bottom and a pump that would drop oil into the bath, the electronics have failed over the years and I manually turn the pump and blower for the flame on with switches
(hard to maintain a constant fuel level) I will get a pic and try and post it. it is all housed in a cabinet with a swirl cage blower to blow the air out.

what I am lookin at doing is taking the bath out and setting it up for the forced blower unit, but with seeing your burn hole I am not sure if the flame will burn a hole in mine due to the drum is 26 inches in diameter and is 3 ft tall with a locking lid on the top. maybe a burner with a duck plate or flame divertor to keep flame from directly hitting the drum walls?

any help would be great, thanks Troy

 

[DocDiesel]

Sounds like uncharted territory. Pictures would be a great help. If you have a minimum of 12" from the nozzle on a Beckett burner to the back of the combustion chamber I would think you would be alright. I only had about 8" and ran it too hot with a dirty air filter. My baddd... I would think that if you had 16" of blast room to the far end of the chamber, you would have no problem.
I have an old Ma Earth Stove and have thought of attaching a Beckett modified on the side of the unit, it might work. I think maybe a baffle or two to slow down the heat, all virgin territory, but it just might work.
Since I repaired my waste furnace, I feel comfortable with it's burn chamber.
The max heat temp in the combustion chamber is about 1060 degrees F. I get no red glow anywhere in the combustion chamber. I get a 42 degree F rise across the heat exchanger at 1200 cfm fan rate. My chimney is 320 degrees F, acceptable and I get no smoke... It's working great
A great source of information is a CK Burners, He is easy to find. Best of luck, Doc.