I’m back in Victoria researching Dickinson Newport operating procedures on the internet.  One of the main issues I’m experiencing is the buildup of soot on the door when I go to light the heater.  After 30 minutes to burning you can’t really tell the size or type of flame in the stove because the glass door is sooted over pretty badly.  After several hours on the internet reading blog posts it seems that this is a pretty common problem which is caused by the flame burning too rich during startup caused by too much fuel and not enough draft.  This is due to the length of time to get the heater hot enough to vaporize the diesel when it’s first ignited.  The built in fan helps with draft apparently but I don’t have it hooked up yet.

After hours of research into lighting procedures I purchased a bottle of BioFlame Ethanol from Canadian Tire as a starting agent.  Apparently a quarter cup of this will burn for 5-8 minutes and raise the temperature in the burning chamber to vaporize the diesel and heat the chamber and chimney to create draft in the chimney.  It’s odorless, doesn’t produce soot, is 99.999% ethanol and apparently is non toxic so should get the chamber nice and hot for burning diesel.

I’m moving the boat from Ladysmith Marina to Sidney as the girls are coming over to sail this weekend and therefore I wanted to have the diesel heater up and running as it’s getting cool at night.  I packed up the truck, picked up Deb after work and headed to Ladysmith.  She’s bringing me up to Ladysmith to drop me off and I’ll spend the night and sail down in the next couple of days.  I’ll see her in a couple of days in Sidney when I get the boat moved down.

When I went to start the heater this time I turned on the fuel shut off valve on the day tank, made sure the diesel was entering the chamber and turned the fuel shutoff valve off again.  Then poured about a cap full of Biofuel into the heater and lit it.  I watched as the flames grew and then died off after about a minute.  Hmmmm…  That’s not quite long enough to get things hot enough to cause a good draft.  It’s bad news to pour more fuel into the burning chamber until it cools down so to kill some time I changed the oil in the engine for the next 15 minutes while the heater’s chamber cooled.

Next time, I poured 1/4 cup of BioFlame and threw a match in and whoof up went the flame and it burned a nice clean blue flame for about 5 minutes heating up the burning chamber.  When I noticed the flame dying down I turned on the flow of diesel and in a few seconds the flame started to build again.  However this time it was a nice lemon yellow flame that was burning optimally with no soot or smoke.  Wahoo…  I enjoyed the yellow flame for a while and went back and finished changing the engine oil.

After letting the flame burn on setting #1 for a couple of hours, and the cabin heat build to a comfortable temperature, I increased the flow of diesel to setting #1.5 and noticed the yellow flame turned orange, smoke whisked from the end of the long tongues of flame and soot started to build on the glass.  It appears that without the fan working the setting #1 with minimal fuel flow is optimal when the outside temperature is around 10 C and there is little wind outside.

I’ll hook up the fan tomorrow and play around with the settings some more.

I’m very pleased with the heater thus far.  Setting #1 is nice and cozy here in the cabin while I’m listening to blues and enjoying a drink of Jameson…