Squatter

A neighbor decided, seeing as I wasn’t using my kiln, he would move in. It has finally gotten warm enough to get outside and I un-bricked the door of the kiln after having run test firings before Christmas and the cold spell. When I got the door down, I found all sorts of leaves and grass.



When I took out the last pair of shelves, I found a very upset rat. (and I do mean rat, not mouse) He was quite ticked off that I was disturbing the excellent nest he had finished building in the last two weeks.



He got evicted without any notice at all. Hopefully the weather will stay warm enough so I can finish off throwing pots, glaze and load the kiln for its first “real” firing.



Got to watch them neighbors here in Tennessee. Just before Christmas, we had a mountain lion (and I do mean eastern cougar, not Bobcat) walk across the edge of our yard. Maybe I could introduce them...

The pressure is on!

Middle Tennessee Gas Company came out in the rain and put pressure gauges into the system at several places. One before the regulator, one after the regulator before the meter, one right after the meter and another where the line change to 1/2 inch piping. Now with the two gages I have at the burners, that makes 6 gages in total. What fun for an engineer!

Took just a minute of running the system to determine that the orifice in the regulator was too small. It took just another minute for them to replace it. The pressure at the burners is where it was designed for.

Now, it is time to make some ware and see if it will reach temperature. [It also has to get warm enough so all my clay isn't frozen solid]

Close, but no cigar

The gas company's contractor and installed the new flow suppression device. I was banging away on my computer when I heard the backhoe.



The device is really nothing more than a spring and a ball. In the small one that was in there, you can blow into the end and make it close.



The scale of the photos distorts the difference in size. The new one is about 4 times as large. You can blow yourself blue; you won't get this one to close.



I was curious about how they connect the pipe. It is welded using "irons" that they heat to about 450 degrees.



They have mechanical guides the bring the pipe together once they apply the heat to it. Makes sense, just never seen it done before.



The whole process of changing out the device took less than an hour.

After they had the new device installed, I fired up the burners for another test. No shut down, but it still is not developing they pressure I want. My guess is that we have the kiln piping undersized and are not getting the flow needed. The gas company is coming out next week with pressure gages and we are going to troubleshoot the system. I think I will run some numbers and give Ward Burners a call.