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safety on gas line into kiln

I work with a non-profit studio that has a home-made gas kiln situated in a commercial building. It appears to be vented properly. It has one single gas line in that is split into two lines servicing two sides of the kiln. Each of those two lines has two torches attached. Before the torches on each side are attached safety switches with little red buttons (required by local codes). I'm fairly new to the group of assistants doing the firings there. I haven't had much experience with kilns with those switches, I do work with two other potters that have their kilns in the back yard and are not subject to these requirements so they just have the regular on off handles controlling the flow of gas. At the studio, we try to fire to cone

  1. However, at the point of body reduction the safety triggers and we spend a lot of time trying to relight the torches and also that last little run between cone 9 and 10, that should only take 15 or 20 minutes, the kiln stalls out and those switches trigger and we are usually on on our hands and knees holding those little red buttons down for another hour.

Any ideas on what might be causing those safeties to trigger? Are they too close to the heat of the torches (they are situated about 12 inches from the flame under the kiln). I understand they have been replaced once but still suffer the same problem.

Thanks in advance for any and all input.

Diego

Reply to
Diego
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HI Giego,

Actually those saftey triggers are attached to a device called a thermopile. the thermopile opens the gas valve when the flame from the pilot heats up the element on the thermopile. When that thermopile loses contact with the flame the gas valve will shut down as a safety precaution. That's why you have to hold those red buttons down for a few seconds after the pilot is lit. It's so the gas valve senses the flame from the pilot and opens the main Gas portion of the valve. Sounds like when you increase gas pressure you're causing the pilot to lift away from the thermoplie, thus cooling it down and shutting the gas valve down. when you fire it that way again, check to see if indeed the pilot flame is licking around the the thermopile element. If not, readjust the pilot so so it does.

Randy

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Randy

Thank you both for your input. We fired again yesterday. We backed off the reduction to half of what we normally do. Only had three events when the safeties shut off during the first two hours. There were no events during reduction nor during the final run to cone 10. The burners easily relit after each event. We'll see tonight what affect the "reduced" reduction (sorry for the double use :) ) had on the pieces inside.

Randy, I'll be back in that studio thursday night and check the distance from the pilot to the thermopile. Could be they weren't attached in the right place or have moved.

Thanks again. The firing was much more pleasant this time.

Diego

Reply to
Diego

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