Homemade Airtight Arch

[backyardsugarer]

Would it be possible for a guy with a lot of patience to make his Arch Airtight using high temp cement and a lot of gasket around his doors and pan? Anyone tried this and had any success. I am tired of small amount of ash escaping when I boil.

[RileySugarbush]

My home made arch isn't perfectly airtight, but pretty good. I sealed all joints with high temp silicone and then protected them from high temperatures with pretty good insulation. 1" mineral wool behind full firebrick in the firebox and 1" ceramic blanket on the inside of the front and door and along the flue. Fiberglass rope is riveted to the top of the rails to seal the pan bottoms and half a blanket thickness between the pans. My ash clean out is bolted closed so it seals up well. I don't get much ash anyway with the forced combustion air. I have a 190-200 CFM blower and don't get too much leakage. The only noticeable leak is the cheap door. I just added fiberglass rope there and it may stay/maybe not. I'll find out this weekend.

[tapper]

The main ingredient in an airtight arch is the door. Make a door that seals tight all around and have a positive or mechanical latch system on it. Any old arch can be sealed up otherwise with insulation and brick. Once you are airtight the shape of your grates make a difference in performance and you may also want to add injected air in different places too.

[John Burton]

A leader style air tight front can be built for under $450 in materials if your handy with a welder. what i did was take my cast front to a local steel fab shop and had them plasma cut a mild steel front the exact shape of the cast front plus cut the door opening ,and bend a door pan 1 inch larger than the opening. then i purchased flat stock and square tubuing (for the air chamber around the door) purchase some inconel pins and washers from leader or cdl plus insulating blanket and assembel the rest. oh the cam latch can be purchased from any trailer part supply company ie internet i believe last year when I built mine all yhe above cost $450 the rest was labor to put it together sorry for the vague description but I just got done boiling and am pretty beat. if your interested when Im not so tired I can fill you in on the details

[JasonS]

Does anyone have any pics of your homemade airtight front? I have tried many different methods of sealing my front and I just can't seem to get the smoke to stop coming out. The blower really annoys me. I love the forced draft but hate smelling the leaking smoke. Any Ideas that work?

Also new this year, I have a several leaks around the areas where the rails and arch front meet the sheet metal sides. This leak seems to go away as the bricks heat up and expand? Anyone ever have this problem? This is the 3rd or 4th year with this arch, it's a new style leader arch. I never had this problem in the past. I have it lined with split fire brick and arch board. Once I have been boiling for 1-2 hours it stops.

[Brent]

I just posted elsewhere thoughts on smoke blowback and stack height. Negative pressure in the sugar shack can cause a lot of problems in the wind.

Rather than fight the sealing of the arch, maybe a blower from a home furnace / central air system that blew air into the shack would create a significant positive pressure. Don't need to cut holes in the firebox. Don't need to seal the doors and futz with the gaskets. Just add a 1/4 or 1/3 Hp blower
to blow air into the shack. I'm thinking I'm going to try this when I finish all the start up issues with the new evaporator.

[Justin Turco]

I've been contemplating this with the addition of my homemade "woodsaver" (I love it but I am not so sure I'm saving any wood.) I was thinking maybe I would just lift the old doors off my arch and make an insert that sits over the old opening. It would have some tabs that reach around the back side of the old opening and hold it in place. You could probably just bolt this insert to the face of your old faithful evaporator, but I don't want to drill holes in mine. I'll bet if you kept your eye on the scrap metal pile at your local dump you'd find a burned out woodfurnace that you could get an airtight door off. Or just make it.

[JasonS]

I'm just getting ready for this year and would like to seal up the arch front before I get any sap. Does anybody have problems with the new style leader arch and smoke/ash leaking out with the blower? Any ideas on a fix? I really don't want to change the door, I like the design on it.

I wrote this last year:
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Does anyone have any pics of your homemade airtight front? I have tried many different methods of sealing my front and I just can't seem to get the smoke to stop coming out. The blower really annoys me. I love the forced draft but hate smelling the leaking smoke. Any Ideas that work?

Also new this year, I have a several leaks around the areas where the rails and arch front meet the sheet metal sides. This leak seems to go away as the bricks heat up and expand? Anyone ever have this problem? This is the 3rd or 4th year with this arch, it's a new style leader arch. I never had this problem in the past. I have it lined with split fire brick and arch board. Once I have been boiling for 1-2 hours it stops.

[swierczt]

Is there any ratio to the size of the firebox or fluepan area or smokestack or how the stars and moon allign for the cfm needed for an airtite arch? I've been playing around with one for years and still can't seem to get it right. I have home build barrel evap. and I get a great draft/burn/boil with the door open a bit, and the blowers blowing, but smoke and heat loss out the door. I've been upping the cfm with blowers, but still can't seem to get enough to bolt the doors shut. Any suggestions?

[Bucket Head]

It sounds like you have two issues there.

If you need to have the door open a little bit for a good burn, your not getting enough air into it with whatever it has for a draft control. It should get the proper amount of air without an open firing door.

As for the excess smoke coming out, your smoke stack is not large enough for the fire once its burning good. I can speak from experience on this. I had too small of a stack on my arch when I first got it. When I opened the door to fire it, I would get a facefull of smoke, fire , and ashes. It burned good because of ample draft air, it just could'nt exhaust itself good enough with the small pipe.

What size pipe is on it now?

Steve

[swierczt]

I'm using 8" pipe. It goes straight out the back at a slight upward angle, then a 90 deg. elbow and up 10' There is no damper in there...took that out long ago. I started with 6" pipe, but the smoke and draft was much worse. the 8" has helped, but not completely.

[Bucket Head]

Is your smoke stack outlet higher than the top of the fireing door? If it is lower, the smoke would have a tendency to want to go out the fireing door.

The "path of least resistance" kind of thing.

Somewhere on here, and just recent too, there are some good pictures of a very nice barrel rig. I can not remember the name of the guy, but it is a beauty! Very nicely done. Take a look at that one and see if your inlet and outlets are similar or not.

Steve

[swierczt]

This year for blowers, I'm using two small squirel cage types one in the bottom and one in the door as well as a 380 cfm leaf blower to blow with jets along the top of the fire, just below the pans, angled downward about 10* from horizontal. I'm trying to 802maple's suggestion to get 20% below the fire and 80% above the fire for the best burn. The leafblower is a new addition. Hopefully that will give her enough air to keep the door shut!

[swierczt]

...oh, and the firedoor is below the outlet...albeit not by much.