Best Of

Back in the 70s and 80s I had Carlin factory tech out to two different jobs we had problems with that both had interesting fixes.

The first one was an old lady with a 400N2R (the old lady was noise sensitive hence the slow speed burner) which was a slow speed Flame Retention burner that had been newly installed 3 years prior and ran fine with no issues.

After 3 years it was building carbon on the chamber floor. This burner had been gone through by me trying to fix the problem and everything was set up properly. It was installed with a 70 degree nozzle and we tried a 60 degree to narrow the fire with no improvement and still made carbon on the floor.

Carlin came out and tried a few things then we put an 80-degree nozzle in it and that was the fix. When I asked him why he shrugged his shoulders and said "I don't know, different oil maybe but the 80 degree nozzle fits the flame pattern of this burner in this boiler better"

So, I learned an important lesson. Mfg. specs are a starting point and don't work on every job.

If you bury your nose in the book and insist on the factory specs on all jobs you will fail once in a while.

The second job was a new boiler for the National Guard Base. A Weil McLain factory package with a Carlin 200CRD (I think). This one had poor combustion even when set to factory specs.

I don't remember what the fix on this one was, but I think it was a nozzle change as well.

There was a heathkit automotive emissions analyzer that looked like it was designed in the 70's.

When my gas service was leaking the tech pulled out this meter that looked like it was from the 60's or 70's to probe the soil, he had to change the batteries, it used like half a dozen d cells.

^^^Exactly that ^^^

Interesting story: During the second oil crisis (First 1974 Second 1978) I was a full time oil burner service technician at the F P Young Co. in Philadelphia during the Carter administration. Following the Nixon administration the Department of Energy was formed in 1977 in order to study ways to conserve energy. Frank Young was very interested in all that was going on in the government regulations that were being imposed on fuel oil dealers and got involved with different committees in order to be the voice of the fuel oil retailer.

As part of the way F P Young Co. did business with their customers we had a program where we would evaluate the old coal conversion boilers and furnaces to determine if there was any way that our customers could reduce their fuel usage. I know this sounds counterproductive, but having a customer that burns less oil made for a happy customer and also kept those customers from converting to Natural Gas. "Less fuel oil sold is better than no fuel oil sold".

Since we were already in the business of selling more efficient oil burners to reduce our customers fuel oil consumption, the F P Young Co. had something that the government was interested in offering to ALL the fuel dealers. Modernize the old boilers and furnaces and retain customers, and that will reduce the US dependence on foreign oil. As part of that program the F P Young Co hosted a government committee that was composed of some top engineers in the business, to witness an actual “Modernization” of a coal converted boiler with a 1940s oil burner. All the engineers were contributing to the specifications for the actual job (that usually took 4 hours) in order to get detailed notes on the specifications to make the old converted coal boiler to operate in the 80% Combustion Efficiency range. It was approaching the 8 hour mark,  The manufacturer's specifications in the I/O manual on how to adjust the burner were not producing the expected results.   The F P Young technician who was actually doing all the work under the guidance of the committee of engineers was interested in going home as it was at the end of his work day.

Bob was his name and I recall this story; where he was just about at the end of his patience for this “installation by committee” and told all the PhD and Masters degree heads to step aside and learn something.  This Vietnam veteran who had a high school diploma and was just a blue collar working stiff needed to show all the brainiacs “how it is done in the real world.” and took over the Carlin burner adjustments. His experience of doing over 200 different modernizations in his time with the company allowed him to use the best nozzle, oil pressure, and burner air adjustments that made the burner operate quiet, zero smoke and about 81% combustion efficiency.   And one of those adjustments was to move the nozzle assembly 2 notched foreword of the factory specified setting for the firing rate being used.

That was back when we were all using wet bottle kits for checking Carbon-dioxide percentage and a stack thermometer for the temperature and a slide rule calculator to look up the combustion efficiency.  I do recall that there was one “Lynn Analyzer” that plugged into a 110 V. outlet to electronically tell you the stack temperature and the oxygen content in real time as the adjustments were made.  The first electronic combustion analyzer all the way back in the 1970s WOW!