berkshires
03-01-2018, 09:59 AM
I had an amusing thing happen to me last time I was boiling. So thought I'd share.
I have kind a funky evaporator I made myself. I won't get into all the details, but the salient point is that last weekend was the first time I operated it for a good long session with everything running in its current configuration.
So what I discovered after about six hours is that a combination of not very dry wood, and not enough air getting to the fire, led to so much coals building up that they blocked off the air coming through the grate and basically killed off the fire. The heavy boil turned to a simmer, the wood I put in was barely burning, and there was thick black smoke coming out the chimney. Oh no!
Eventually I solved this by simply removing a bunch of the coals and got back on track. But before I did that, I tried to just stir the coals to the side to let more air in through the grate. The layer of coals were just too deep for this to work. But stirring the coals around did let enough air in to really heat them up. And when I took the poker out to try to decide what the heck to do next I found I had melted the tips off!
Here's what it looked like after all was said and done:
17905
Crazy, huh?
I have kind a funky evaporator I made myself. I won't get into all the details, but the salient point is that last weekend was the first time I operated it for a good long session with everything running in its current configuration.
So what I discovered after about six hours is that a combination of not very dry wood, and not enough air getting to the fire, led to so much coals building up that they blocked off the air coming through the grate and basically killed off the fire. The heavy boil turned to a simmer, the wood I put in was barely burning, and there was thick black smoke coming out the chimney. Oh no!
Eventually I solved this by simply removing a bunch of the coals and got back on track. But before I did that, I tried to just stir the coals to the side to let more air in through the grate. The layer of coals were just too deep for this to work. But stirring the coals around did let enough air in to really heat them up. And when I took the poker out to try to decide what the heck to do next I found I had melted the tips off!
Here's what it looked like after all was said and done:
17905
Crazy, huh?