Finishing my steam hood

[maple flats]

I got most of my hood made compliments of a friend's tinshop equipment. It looks fairly good, still need to add drain tube for condensate outlet and do some seam sealing. I will make the steam 6" pipe monday at his shop and it will be ready. It even set flat when I got it assembled. Oh, i also need to cut the site windows in and figure a door set-up. I'll get it ok. When I get a bigger evap next year i will make a hood out of stainless but this one is alum. If I come up with ideas for the next one they can be incorperated then.

[brookledge]

Your doors in the hood can either be swing type with a hinge or slide on a rail. Some people put explosion proof lights in side also.
Good luck
Keith

[maple flats]

How do you handle the condensate for the door? does it channel to the side or do you just forget about it? Does the door cause a drip off the outside of the hood onto the edge of the arch?

[brookledge]

Doors would be used to monitor whats going on inside only. When you have a pre-heater you need to catch the condensate underneath the pre-heater so as to not boil the same water again. When youbuild your condensate pan the best thing to do is plumb it out the side of the hood and run it into a pail so you have a constant supply of hot water.
Hope this helps
Keith

[maple flats]

I have that but my thinking is that some condensate is on the door too and should be kept from running outside the hood onto the arch. How does it get channeled into the right place or is the door not a big enough breach to cause a problem?

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

You get very little from the doors. :D

[brookledge]

Once the hood is heated by the steam and is hot the steam will not condensate back into water. The only thing that will is the cold sap comming in via the pre-heater. When you watch it it is amazing to see how much water will drip off the copper tubing. I wish there was more that I could do with the hot water other than clean my filter press.
Keith

[maple flats]

OK Brandon, if there is very little from the doors i am going to cut then in tonight. Today I made the 6" alum pipe and made an A collar (6" takeoff to start the 6" pipe up out from the hood) with a damper in it. For the pipe I used aluminum roof flashing. I had some from last year that made the first 5 feet and bought enough to make 7 feet more. Wow was there a difference, the year old stuff was nice to work with but the new was too brittle and made it hard to run thru thr pipe lock machine and it was hard to roll, didn't want to hold the new shape. The new must be from a different grade of flashing, never had any that worked up that way before. I had to crank off on the pressure or the flashing would crack, but it finally worked sort of OK (I was glad the 78 yr old man, a real master of his trade,) who used to work in this tin shop was there to coach his grand son who is taking over the business, to offer advise on how to tackle the hardness problem.