Pressure Atomizing Oil Burner Equipment and Systems – Other Components and Parts
Employed to automatically bypassing air up the chimney, this automatic draft stabalizer, for use on home heating systems fired with coal, fuel oil or gas was equipped with cast iron frame with sheet metal boot. The brake-formed, pivoted damper blade is decorated in handsome red, wrinkled finish, with balancing weight affixed to a travelling screw, which is manually adjusted with a rotating knurled hand wheel, Draft-O-Stat, circa 1935.
Features:
– Equipped with gold lettering Accessories
– Handsome red, wrinkled finish
– Needle point pivot damper mounts
– Original installation instruction sheet
Technical Significance:
– The introduction of automation for home heating systems in Canada brought with it a range of engineering and operational challenges, which were often unexpected. A largely unanticipated requirement, in the early years, was the need for an over-the-fire automatic draft control.
– The performance, safety and efficiency of automated combustion was dependent on reasonably stable draft – not too high not too low. It was a period in which heating systems operated on conventional chimneys, which would produce a great range of draft conditions, depending on height, flue size, wind strength, direction and so forth.
– The simple, weighted, pivoted, bypass damper blade system opened to allow excess air [beyond what was required for clean combustion] to pass up the chimney, rather than be drawn over the fire.
– The system was ideal for the heating applications of the period, which were predominantly of the “conversion” type in which existing furnaces and boilers, operating on conventional chimneys were converted from manual to automated combustion
– The device, in various configurations, would become the standard of the industry for home heating systems, through to the introduction of forced draft and induced draft combustion in the latter part of the 20th century.
Industrial Significance:
– With increasing sophistication in system design came the need for greater precision in the setting of draft regulators. The draft gauge and combustion efficiency test kit would become an essential tools in the installers and service technicians tool box [see Collection Group 12.12]
– An exemplary “Cadillac” version of the draft stabilizer, this device by Draft-O-Stat, decorated in black, red and gold, would soon appear in much lower cost versions, as the pressure for cost reduction and market forces began to be key factors in the development of automatic home heating equipment.