Universal Brick Steam Oven

JStar

Today, I got to work on an oil-fired brick oven from the 1920's. The only name on it was UNIVERSAL. Anybody have an instruction manual? Yeah right!



There was a set of two BECKETT RWB burners, with separate chambers, firing on 1.20 GPH. Intermittent problems, with too many hands on them. I took out 80 degree nozzles in favor of 60's. The chambers are 12"x12"x8ft deep. Adjusted the Z Dimension from where it was previously outside of the cone.



Here's the part that got me scratching my head. It's running on no air. Air shutter and damper are as low as they can go. My guess is that this thing is sucking so much draft that the burners don't need that big of an opening to get enough air.



They are working now. Anything I should keep in mind if they go down again? Was going to post this in the Oil section, but it was a STEAM oven, so here it is...

EBEBRATT-Ed

burners

never worked on one. I would think poor combustion and mixing at the burner head could be a problem with all that draft and not much air down the blast tube.



Also I would think poor ignition, maybe that's why the Z dimension was messed with. Again not much air down the tube. Can the draft be reduced?

just guessing.......not much help

icesailor

Back To Basics:

You said it best. Too many hands.

Go to the Beckett Web Site or someone here is going to send you a PDF manual for a Beckett burner. If it's a 3450 motor, it's probably a AF or AFG. You have to figure out what model it is.

Start by going with a Delavan 80 degree Hollow or Solid nozzle. Once, for a bowl movement and a laugh (Ships and Giggles), I took a burner out and fired it off on a bench to see what would happen. It ran. Smoky on the tips but it ran.

If you carefully look to see what the heads and firing plates are, you can probably reverse engineer what WAS there. I doubt that anyone ever worked on it that had sense enough to try to experiment with nozzle and settings. Other than move the electrodes outside the fabled "Z" Dimension.

I've never called Tech Support for Beckett but I'm sure that they have one. Using a oil burner in a pizza oven sounds unique. Tech support might be all over it with interest. They might be able to give you all the information you need. But I doubt that a 60 degree nozzle is going to help you. Unless you are a combustion engineer with a lot of hands on experience, you could be taking a long scary walk in the woods at night without a flashlight or a moon.

JStar

Burner

So, you don't think that a more shallow spray angle would help in this long tunnel of a combustion chamber?



As for the air, if you open the air adjustment more than 10% from fully closed, the burner shuts down, and never restarts properly.

JStar

Oven

Update: 2 weeks later and the oven still works. Still trying to stop by and sneak a picture of it.