Homemade arch Question

[royalmaple]

Wondering what your feelings are on arches and building up the fire box area towards the back to force the heat up to the back pan and eventually out the stove pipe?

I am using an oil tank, and I was just wondering if the whole tank filled with wood was better than say a 24 inch firebox in the front and a fire brick ramp to the back of the arch would be better?

I appreciate the input. I'd rather make it right or better the first time.

[WF MASON]

WOW , thought you were a master welder 'until' I saw the picture of the burned up finger,,,,anyway
you can just put a wall across behind the firebox down 6'' or so , tack in a piece of scrap , like the door you cut out,it doesn't have to be on a slant, you might want to cut some 1/4'' angle and frame in the inside of the door frame to keep it flat from warping, arch looks good, door opening is really big , I do have some castiron fireplace doors (double doors)you could have, but you might need to norrow up your opening.Or just a plate steel door would work. Hope this helps.

[maple flats]

Since no evap company has firebox all of the way back it would not work. You would loose effieiency because the wood burning further back would not give up much heat before it went up the stack. Have your firebox and then force the flames and heat up close to the pan. My drop flue Leader only has about an inch of space below the bottom of the drop flues, make the heat go there to extract as much heat as possible before hitting the stack, greatest efficiency will then be achieved and a vapid rolling boil will result.

[Cardigan99]

Hey Royal, how'd that Oil Tank arch work out for you? I'm headed down that road and looking for some pointers.

Todd

[royalmaple]

Todd-

Arch fabrication went well. If you need some pointers shoot and I'll try to remember what I ran into. I never got to fully fire the rig, I got a new set up for this year when I was about to pull my hair out with friends that were suppose to be "helping" me.

I bought a ton of new bed frames at an auction and used the angle iron from them for low cost steel. They seemed to be fine.

I ran into more problems with the pans, than I did on the arch. I used full bricks and since I wanted a flue back pan, I measured down so I could weld in the angle iron, brick on top and still have about a 1 inch gap from the bottom of the flues. My fire box was about 2x2, and I left about 1/2 inch spaces in the grates which were nothing special, just more angle iron.

Then when fully bricked I had a space under the entire firebox so I could mount a blower on the back of the rig and force air up through the fire box.

I know that thing would do about 15gph with the flue pan I had, but I never got to really get things off the ground so I can't give you some examples. But I know with that thing full of pallets, it would hum.

I also welded some angle iron brackets to help support the brick. So think of the brick up against the side of the arch, on the top of the last brick, I flipped a piece of angle iron to make a frame around the heat side of the brick and tack welded it to the top piece of angle iron that was framing out the area for the pans.

If I had a better experience with the pan fabrication who knows I may still have it.

I used an old stove (ashley) door to weld onto the front for a door, or you could just reuse the metal you cut out and weld some simple hinges on it with a sliding hook to lock the door.

Plus don't wait till 1 week before sap may start running to start, like I did. You'll have a much better experience.

Also I cut the tank down at the point of the seam in the steal when they made the tank, just cut a straight line around the top. Works out to about a 24 inch wide rig at that point. Or at least I thought it was.
Wizz wheel works good but stock up on blades. I used my saws all and a few blades and worked fine.

[Cardigan99]

Matt, what'd you use for a distance from the bottom of the firebox to the bottom of the pan? I like the idea of the brick wall to keep the flame tight to the back of the pan. I was thinking a flue pan myself. What problems did you run into with the pan? I know a couple of guys that can weld them up to spec, and that seems to be the critical part from what I gather. Would the boil rate be better if the flue exited vertical?

Todd

[royalmaple]

Todd-

If you look at my pictures link, you'll see one that is of the front of the rig with the stove doors showing. The firebox is about level with the bottom of the door, so I'd say roughly 2 inches up to the bottom of the ash pit door, and maybe 4 inches is the space of the ash pit door, so about 6 inches up off the bottom. I think it left me about a 2 foot x 2 foot firebox area, roughly.

We started using I think 22 guage ss sheet stock, my buddy has a full production metal fabrication shop, and all the do is make hospital equipment etc, let me back up, It's his fathers company, he works for him. And come to find out it is possible to work in a family business for years and have next to zero ability. I was amazed. We were having problems with the heat and weld burning through. But a handy welding trick (you may already know) is to clamp on some copper to the back side of the weld area to draw out some of the heat and help reduce over heating and burning through. I had to tell him that.

Ended up getting 18-20 guage to weld up better, but not saying you can't do it with thinner guage stock.

if you are going to put in partitions don't get too worried about "sealing" them with weld. Get them tight and on there, but you don't need a hermetic seal.

Or if you have the capability and the tooling, us a break to bend your stock. We did, but didn't have the break set up so we could make the pan and partitions out of one piece. Like a ribbon effect, then weld on the sides of the pan.

Flues are tricky, and very tight to weld inside them. You may want to get a flat pan set up and working, then when you have that done, try making a flue pan.

I made my flues first, then cut slots in the pan and welded them to the pan. Make sure you bend a lip around the pan or something to add stiffness to the pan, once you cut the bottom of the pan it wants to tweak, add heat from welding and tweek tweek. 3/4 inch lip around the pan will help for sure.

More of my problems were dealing with a 1/2 baked buddy trying to weld, when I should have been on the torch and his lack of motivation, rather than pitfalls from trying to build an evaporator.

There are pleanty of people here that will certainly be able to help you on all levels, so don't hesitate to ask questions, even the silly ones. You'll get lots of input from others that tried the same thing more than likely.

I think I still have other pictures loaded of the rig on my website.

www.diecastwarehouse.com/e1.jpg

You can manually change the ending to see different pictures, example

www.diecastwarehouse.com/e2.jpg
www.diecastwarehouse.com/e3.jpg

I think they go up to e11.jpg

[Cardigan99]

Matt, thanks again. Yeah, I know welding ss is a challenge. I was a tin knocker for 12 years and I was never any good at it. I'll definately have the pans made up. Thanks for the info and the pics. I've certainly got a good idea of what I want to do now.

[royalmaple]

YOu got it, I am far from an expert but I'll share what I can from my own experiences.