Blankets

Charles J. Hills

Becket Oil Burner

Charles J. Hills

Blankets

What are some of the reasons one would put an asbestos liner inside the fire box on a boiler ?

Unknown

Not sure

where a guy would even get an asbestos product nowdays, I think it`s banned everywhere. But some type of refractory material would be used to keep direct flame impingement from the burner, off the metal.

Dave

Ed_26

blanket

What type (fuel) of burner?

Bob Harper

asbestos banned

in the US since 1972. Probably seeing ceramic fiber blanket.

Charles J. Hills

I am sorry, Perhaps it is a ceramic or other material. The reason I ask is because of the seemingly long time before this boiler starts to heat up. I never timed it but it has to run for at least 20 minutes or so. I thought that perhaps too much heat was going up the chimney because of it. I see no real reason for it. If I were to remove it what damage could I realize.

Lurkin' Murkin'

There's alot more information you need to give us - about the boiler and what the exact problem is? From what you have given so far - I would guess you have a very old high mass boiler, that was retrofitted with the Beckett burner, and the chamber area contains a "wet pack". The wet pack is a thin pliable ceramic blanket that can be molded to the shape of the chamber, possibly to replace or repair broken or missing firebrick. It is only a temporary fix, and usually peels and falls apart within a few years. Perhaps someone applied this, and down-sized your burner firing rate - as to not have the flame impinge on the material. This, the mass of the boiler itself, and general poor system efficiency may account for the long warmup time (from cold start or each heating cycle?). If this is the case, all the material in the chamber should be removed, replaced with the proper size tub-type chamber or new firebrick, and the firing rate checked and possibly increased. There are other tricks to getting better efficiency from this system, or you might want to consider new equipment? Hope that's some help to your inquiry...

Charles J. Hills

Thanks for your insight. I posted hookup problems with this boiler earlier last month. This boiler is my Father In Law's . It' a Burnham V-33. He complained that he had to go down the basement and fill it up every day since the day he got it. So I went snooping around having a similar system (one pipe steam) and found that all of his vents had to be replaced. A few valve stems need to be repacked. That slowed the consumption way down but it was still loosing way too much in one day. That is when I started looking at the run time of the boiler. Did I say 20 minutes ? I wish. It ran for over an hour and built a head of steam of over 4 pounds before the thermostat shut it down! Tonight I dismantled the (pressuretrol?) and cleand up the piping to it and lowered the pressure to shut off at a pound. I watched it to make sure it shut off at a pound and it did. I will stop over in the morning as I always do to check in on it before I go off to work and try to stay long enough to time the on off cycle as it is now. I am confident it is much better. I just didn't know why the wet pack. But receiving an owners manual for this I saw that is is shipped with a Sunray "FC" Bantam series oil burner. Today it's a Beckett so maybe that's the reason for the wet pack. I will leave it for now and see about getting the right one after this season. THANKS A MILLION !