Draft hood question

Steve Ebels_3

I came across an ancient Flo-Co furnace (Floral City furnace company) that started life probably in the 1940's as a wood/coal fired unit. The grates were still laying there, as was the old ABC oil burner that was the second generation heat source. Along side the oil burner were 3 old thermopile gas valves and a 24V model. It's now set up like a 30 year old 24V standing pilot furnace would be.



The current fuel is natural gas piped right from well head in the adjacent farm field.  I got the problem resolved that initiated the service request (rusted off pilot bracket which made for an interesting ignition sequence) and doing a walk around on the old beast, noticed that there is no draft hood. None on the back of the furnace, no open tee in the flue pipe and no barometric, which explained the gale force wind howling through the burner opening. There is a lot of white powdery substance of a very sulfurous nature in the furnace.

So.....I'm wondering if this old gal should indeed have a draft hood of some kind on it or whether the dead men left it that way to help keep the flue gas going up and out.

What say ye?

Tim McElwain

It should have

a double swing barometric installed after a good cleaning is done. It sounds like you are getting some condensate inside the unit. If I heard you right the gas is unrefined coming from a nearby field, is that correct? If that is corrrect then the gas is unrefined and probably has a lot of condensables in the gas which will make for very poor combustion.



What kind of conversion burner is now being used?



Too bad they got rid of the powerpile!

Unknown

Tough call Steve,,,,

while I agree with everything Tim says, this has been in-use since the 40`s.



Is the NG free to them?



Regardless,,, I would do a combustion-test on the boiler,, then advise CO detectors @ strategic locations.



If non is present, leave the boiler alone(unless something changes), if the level is acceptable, what the hey!