D R A F T R E G U L AT O RS I keep seeing these mistakes when I do expert witness work
and field consultations. They can and do become very costly for all involved. You can bet doing it wrong will eventually catch up to all of us, so for your own sake or that of your employer, follow the instructions. Without a doubt, I see two items that keep getting put in the
wrong place, the oil safety valve (osv) and the draft regulator. There is no doubt that these are both essential and valued devices and that when used properly can greatly enhance not only the quality and safety of a job, but also help protect the image of oil heat. I've written a few articles on both and yet I keep seeing them put in wrong in my travels. So, here's the "real deal" on the positioning of the regulator following one of the newest drawings out there and my thanks to Field Controls for its use. The draft regulator or control has a lot of names; a draft door,
barometric regulator, a damper, a flapper, a butterfly and a host of others or variations that include my favorite, the Draft-O- Stat®. Let's take a look at the legal definition of a draft regulator right out of the Code books. "A draft regulator is a device built into a fuel-burning appliance
or made a part of a chimney connector or vent connector, which functions to reduce excessive draft through an appliance to a desired
value by admitting ambient air into the appliance chimney, chimney connector, vent or vent connector." A few things of note, a chimney or vent connector is a flue
pipe or what most of us still call one of the dirtiest terms in this business, a smoke pipe. Ambient air is surrounding air or in most cases room air. Keep in mind that a regulator will only reduce draft output from a venting device, it will never make it, and that as I say on my website is a FACT! I don't expect every inspector or tradesperson who works around
oil burners to read a Code book, but in my seminars I strongly sug- gest to all that you at least read the definitions section. Reading the definitions section not only clears up a lot of technical issues but also prevents a lot of misunderstandings with inspectors. Using Figure 1 note the proper locations for the regulator or
even more importantly, where it's not supposed to be. It should never be in a plumbers tee or in the run of a tee. That
puts the regulator into a bullheaded tee and those opposing flows are wrong. If you tried to do this with steam, and in many cases water or air, it just wouldn't work, so why do we expect it to work with draft? Remember, draft is just another word for air. The problem with putting it into a tee like that has to do with air flow. Although the draft regulator in a plumbers tee
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