Desperately need help with a indoor wood furnace

[practicaldesign]

This thing has temp sensors and relays and so on? Are they actually working correctly?

When you say it gets real hot or nothing, that makes me believe it is an adjustment gremlin. Also, any good visual on the chimney? Loose bricks, leaks in the attic, etc?

Hi, and thanks.

1: The chimney is fine, no leaks

I removed the enterprise furnace and supports and installed my barrel stove/furnace in the furnace box and it's working fine, same pipes and dampeners.

As manyhobbies mentioned a decayed baffle in the heat exchanger would explain most of the problems, and i agree (thanks manyhobbies).

There is no evidence that there was any vanes or baffles in the heat exchanger , not even traces of a weld but that does not mean there wasn't one. From what i seen yesterday the two bottom heat exchanger tubes did probably have something that created a exhaust rotation inside the tubes. Once i started a bit of kindling and took off one of the heat exchanger clean out caps to see what it was doing. It still drew the smoke into the chimney but the smoke hovered in a very narrow stream in the dead center of the tubes which kind of defeats the purpose. The only place that got hot here the clean out caps there the smoke hit before going up the Y joint into the exit exhaust.

Secondly the Enterprise furnace is just you basic cast iron furnace with a heat exchanger between the firebox and exhaust to the chimney, not much different than the Yukon-eagle super jack except the super jack has thin square shape tubes as the heat exchanger. The Enterprise has no sensors or controls except for the fan control and the thermostat upstairs that controls the motor that lifts the draft on the furnaces front door.

Since there is no schematic or replacement heat exchanger for this furnace i will have to import some of my rocket stove designs in order to fix it or have them buy another furnace. Seems a shame to throw out a perfectly good furnace for one simple missing part.

For now the problem is solved until this summer.

Thanks again for the suggestions.

 

[brenndatomu]

I'm no HVAC tech so 1.75cm means nothing to me. The only measurement that I'm familiar with is inches water column, negative "WC in the case of measuring chimney draft. I'm sure there is a equasion that would correlate "WC vs velocity in a given size pipe.

When you have a roaring fire going what is the wood side BDR doing? On a 20* day mine would be wide open with a high fire going. That is with a 30' tall 8" insulated stainless liner. The BDR almost never closes completely unless the furnace is cold. It is set to maintain -.03" WC

You mentioned that you think there originally was something that would have been in the heat exchanger tubes to cause rotation of the exhaust. Some modern gassifier type wood boilers use "turbulators" in the heat exchanger tubes to keep the exhaust gasses in contact with the heat exchangers surfaces, but I'd be surprised if a old furnace like this had them.

So what's the plan? Oil 'til summer? OUCH! :msp_scared:

 

[beavertooth]

I have that old 8130 furnace and it was the baffles or turbulator that were all warped and the air flow was wildly unstable. You just couldn't get at it without completely disassembling the furnace. He did install the barrel stove he mentioned until the summer when i believe they got a Roby brand wood furnace and btw the barrel stove worked perfectly and its now in the shed as a backup for any locals if they experience problems it's already served a few homes since then.
There was no point in repairing the 8130 heat exchanger even if it was in good condition although i kept the top H-E pipe as the chimney connect. As for the rest i made a new heat exchanger that is serviceable. Yes the warped exhaust created serious over pressures which caused many different problems. I looked at the 8130 working and you could see two levels if air flow at different speeds in the same H-E pipe which explains the swirls and surges. Since the enterprise faucet factory burnt down i have only found parts for it on kijiji (dot ca) but i don't believe the 8130 firebox and heat exchanger were ever meant to be repairable and no one i talked at at E-F could tell me about replacing the heat exchanger.

Any how he says thanks for the help and if any one else with an an E-F 8130 has this problem i don't think it's worth trying to recover. Particularly when i see good furnaces like the Roby ULTF or Grizzly on sale for 2000$ CAD. I already had the pipe for the new heat exchanger build for the 8130 but cost wise to buy and built it would probably more than the cost of a new furnace.

As for the rest i didn't ask and it's none of my business and don't bother me about it.

+1, I was just thinking the same thing, baffle left out or even just burnt up.

Get a $10 magnetic flue thermometer, flue temps will tell you a lot. My Yukon doesn't make tons of heat until the flue is over 250* external (4-450* internal) When it is on high fire, the flue pipe at 350* (external) and the blower running, it will hold a steady 150* in the supply plenum until the thermostat is satisfied.

Better make sure this isn't a chimney problem before you buy a new furnace, or you'll have a poorly performing shiny new furnace and a shiny new credit card bill too, if the problem is with the chimney that is. Sounds like a great candidate for a stainless liner to me.

Is this co. even in business anymore? I see they mention a fire on their website.