Semi cold start

[Mark Rosenbaum]

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We lost power for 3 days from the hurricane. It just returned. I have a 3/4 full 400lb crucible in a Stadelmelter. It is 950 degrees.
My usual turn up in an empty pot is 36 hours to 980 degrees
Soak for 5 hours
1100 in 5 hours
Soak for 5hours
1500 in 8 hours
2000 in 12 hours.
Do you think that I should double the times and soaks?
TIA

[Pete VanderLaan]

If the thermocouple is reading 950, it's way hotter in the pot Mark. I don't think you need to double anything. Turn it back on. Set to cycle at 1150F for about six hours.

[Mark Rosenbaum]

Thanks Pete... I have a little bit of time because it is the weekend, so I'd rather be safe than sorry. I'll baby it up to 1500 to make sure that I am slow during quartz inversion and all that other important stuff. Monday we will go from 1500 to 2050 in the regular time. Fingers crossed.... now to get power and internet on at home...

[Pete VanderLaan]

Based on what you said, you are still in the inversion process but what's important to note is that glass will not give up heat easily and I'd wager the inside wall temp of the pot where there is glass is well above 1150 right now. The part to be concerned about is the part above glass line. Even so, the wall is thick unlike the thermocouple Once you have gotten past 1150 at the thermocouple, I think you are pretty safe. You could consider sticking your exact torch in the cleanout to get some convection going. These pots are tougher that people want to believe.

I do note that there's another tropical depression forming south of PR and is projected to head towards Guatemala and then track the Mexican coast. Hopefully it won't get out over open ocean again and come you way.

For the people who don't believe in climate change, we sure have a lot of record temperatures, record fire seasons, record storm seasons, Derechos, polar expresses. Nothing to see here folks. That virus won't hurt you either.

[Pringle Teetor]

Good luck Mark!

[Rosanna Gusler]

That new one looks like it will bounce around the Caribbean and maybe come up this way. Man I feel for the gulf coasters this year.

[Franklin Sankar]

Your electricity supply looks real reliable. I have to stay down until the hurricanes are gone.

Franklin

[Shawn Everette]

Does anyone with a gas furnace run a UPS, and what's been your experience with it? We've had a couple brown outs that have sent the furnace down, and our alarm company had been botching the calls when it happens. Our grid is relatively reliable, so it probably wouldn't ever need to run much more than a minute.

[Pete VanderLaan]

I have the thermocouple with BASO valve in the burner block. A short outage like one hour or less and that thermocouple continues to read the burner block so when the power comes back, the burner reignites.

The argument being that if it's too cold to reignite, The valve closes . it needs a manual restart. It's stupid simple and it really works.

[Shawn Everette]

If this was a home studio I certainly would consider that method. Unfortunately the new eclipse boxes don't have an auto restart like the old green ones, and even a 1 second loss means the whole thing goes down.

[Pete VanderLaan]

well, simply put, I would chuck a system like that. One second interruptions are extremely common in most power supplies. I'd call Eclipse and ask them if there's a work around for that. I find it hard to believe it's actual code.

[Eben Horton]

Originally Posted by Shawn Everette

If this was a home studio I certainly would consider that method. Unfortunately the new eclipse boxes don't have an auto restart like the old green ones, and even a 1 second loss means the whole thing goes down.

Where is the dr evil GIF of him holding up his fingers to make quotation marks while saying “SAFETY”. Lol

[Sean Jones]

Pete, putting the thermocouple in the burner block isn’t an idea I’ve come across before. How do you determine the minimum re-ignition temperature for a given thermocouple position?

[Pete VanderLaan]

It's a combination of the thermocouple and a gas pilot. Initially, you light the pilot while holding in the switch until the thermocouple is sufficiently hot to allow gas to pass.

In my configuration, the pilot and thermocouple are below the burner and back where the pipe thread part starts. It creates quite the draft and pulls the flame towards the burner tip where it ignites it.

Then , when the power failure comes, a normal configuration would shut the system down until relit manually. With this, the burner and the block would have sufficient radiant heat to fool the thermocouple into staying on. The gas would shut off but the valve would remain open. If the power comes back on within about one hour, the gas reignites off of the latent heat in the furnace. If it has gotten too cold, it won't reignite. I have had this approach for years and it works like a jewel. It takes two BASO Valves and a needle valve. It assumes you can put the thermocouple near the burner tip. Replacing the thermocouple does occur fairly frequently for about five bucks each time. Some are better quality then others.

[Shawn Everette]

When they switched from the old green box to p1000's supposedly that was part of the programming, according to wet dog. I'd go back to the old veriflame, but I don't believe they're in production anymore, and the new stuff is what came with the furnace. Haven't reached out to eclipse direct.

[Pete VanderLaan]

an option you might consider is punching a hole in the side of the furnace and putting in a small venturi. You could turn it on a the end of the day. It certainly does seem to be the case that it doesn't take much of a burner to keep a furnace from falling to a critical level.

At one point I theorized about a failsafe system with two burners . The venturi would be on a normally closed solenoid instead of normally open, so if the power did indeed fail, the venturi would kick right on. I suspect it could create some issues with the flue, I've never tried it.

I'd still try calling the burner supplier though. It seems like that's just not well thought through.

Always worth remembering, I'm the guy who dropped the insurance on my fire department and went to self insuring through State risk management. They wanted me to pay for errors and omissions insurance meaning they covered the things I failed to do at a scene. It was hard enough to do what we knew had to happen. We were subsequently sued twice and both times, the attorney dropped the case on finding out we were self insured.

[Shawn Everette]

I doubt they're going to want me to pop a hole in our furnace that's less than a year old. They also handle all of insurance, and I doubt with our assets they'll want to take that gamble. If this were my private shop I'd certainly be willing to entertain some quirks.

We have a spare used UPS, I just wanted to check if anyone else had used one before I go rewiring the furnace. It seems like something that was over engineered to the point of detriment, but I guess that's what you get when you buy instead of build. In most endeavors I try to stick to the KISS method.

[Pete VanderLaan]

My opinion has long been that once the actuarialists got a hold of the programs that teaching anything to anyone who actually wanted their own studio was pretty much dead.;

I mean, Where do you go to Shop Tech School?

[John Riepma]

Who's your alarm company Shawn? I ask because I've been using a unit from a company called PumpAlarm for the last few years and it's very sensitive and reliable - instantaneous. I also get texts from the power company but those are pretty worthless because they just show power out in the general area.

Here's the link to PumpAlarm: https://www.pumpalarm.com/

[Eric Trulson]

Originally Posted by Shawn Everette

Does anyone with a gas furnace run a UPS, and what's been your experience with it? We've had a couple brown outs that have sent the furnace down, and our alarm company had been botching the calls when it happens. Our grid is relatively reliable, so it probably wouldn't ever need to run much more than a minute.

I've never done it myself, but I expect running the power for a gas furnace's controls through a UPS would work just fine for getting through short power outages. A controller and a couple solenoid valves hardly draw any power at all. Depending on their respective sizes, the blower could probably burn through a UPS's backup charge fairly quickly, but I think it would take way more than a minute or two to do it, so you'd still get through quick power blips okay.

[Shawn Everette]

We use csc. Usually they're pretty good, but there are some f'ups over the past couple months. Think on the last one the phone system went down too and prevented the call.

I see the $50 yearly, but what's the actual sensor cost?

It's actually tied into the temp somehow, rather than the actual power loss, but that's always the cause. Maintenance handled the setup, and I really didn't give it much thought because it actually worked before.

I went to shop tech school at illinois state, madison, and the school of hard knocks. Pretty sure the last one is the only that's accredited for this sort of thing.

[Shawn Everette]

It's the blower that I worry about. Ours is a fairly small(6") squirrel cage that holds temp at about 30%.

[John Riepma]

I think that the unit cost is about $220 now. It's a prepaid cellular device that send a text to up to 3 numbers when there is a power outage. It sends another text when power is restored. The $50 annual fee is for the cellular service.

One thing to watch out for with a UPS is whether the battery in that is up to snuff. The only times that I've ever needed one for my home electronic equipment the battery had run down and the thing didn't work.

[Art Freas]

If you go with a UPS make sure it really is a UPS. Some of the battery backups don't guarantee a clean uninterrupted power flow. Also with my controller set up it trips on power weirdness not just outages, we have an alarm for outages but most furnace shutdowns are from weirdness that doesn't trip the outage alarm.

[Josh Bernbaum]

I went to "shop tech school" by being hired by Charlie Correll years ago and working with him for 9 years. I think I would have really flailed, and/or spent a ton of extra money on buying equipment, if I tried to start my own studio here without that experience for which I am grateful to have had.

I got one of the Pump Alarms last year for my gas furnace after a recommendation from other members here. It's worked well for the most part, and since I don't have a land-line it's been the best option for an auto-dialer for me.

I finally got a generator here with an auto-transfer switch about 5 years ago, and it's been nice having that now since I live up in the woods and get a lot of outages and flickers. But I do wish my Protectifier safety-control wasn't so touchy. It won't let the solenoid re-open on maybe 75% of quick brown-outs that occur. I had been under the impression that there was a time-delay that it allowed for, but this one (that I have at least) usually needs the manual restart no matter how quick of a power interruption. And at that point at least the Pump Alarm lets me know the flame is out. So maybe a UPS would help me too there, I don't know.

But I'm also wondering how a UPS would keep your blower going. Would it really provide enough power to run even a small squirrel cage?