ETA Hack Grate Burn out - AGAIN!

[Funny Farmer]

The boiler is a 140kW and the 2nd tilting grate in 10 years has just burnt out. The area burnt is roughly the same so just wondering if this is a common / design problem. The remainder of the grate and the other half are perfect.

 

[Salt'n'Pepper]

I also have an eta boiler,almost 9 years old but never had to change the grate,but it is not used at full capacity(probably about 70%).
However,the motor for flipping the grate packed up the week before Xmas and very suspiciously just 1 day after its annual service!!!
The company involved didn’t have a spare and have shown me how to ’work around’ the problem till a new one can be sourced in the new year(manually cleaning the grate and bypassing a switch)
Would a faulty grate(has a small crack) cause the motor to fail?
I advised the service technician of the the crack(shown to me the previous year) and he said it wasn’t a problem.

Should I push for some sort of compensation?

 

[Adeptandy]

I think you’ll be very lucky to get compensation for an existing fault and if you were a customer of mine and asked for it, I doubt you’d still be a customer
A service should repair ( with permission ) any defects found, but afraid a crystal ball isn’t in my toolbox or any other service technicians. I think they’ve been more than helpful to keep it going for you.

 

[Rod Dumbreck]

We had two new grates in the early days of our eta 90, replaced under warranty the last replacement has done several (say 8) years with a small crack for most of that time. I don't think you can blame anyone, its a wearing part, but the life will be determined by operating conditions. The tec who fitted the last replacement fiddled with the settings and improved things a bit. We now have less clinker, so probably a lower ash temperature. We had a fait bit of jammed grate faults but the system coped with that perfectly.

Im no expert but was told that damp chips lead to overloading of the grate and rat-holing from the primary air bursting through, this could cause local hotspots. Also if using very dry chip you needed the exhaust gas reciculator to keep the combustion subdued.

The secondary air holes are supposed the be cleaned out on the annual service, but apart from that, its difficult to imagine what would cause such concentrated wear/erosion in the op

 

[wilber]

as above settings need adjusting slightly. grate burn out can be down to it getting too hot mostly to do with the chip thats being used. exhaust gas recirculator helps as it lowers the temperature in the chamber.

 

[Funny Farmer]

The chip we get is normally less than 20% moisture, but I had a look at the boiler settings and the fuel moisture is set at 25%, could that affect the grate temperature ?

 

[wilber]

The chip we get is normally less than 20% moisture, but I had a look at the boiler settings and the fuel moisture is set at 25%, could that affect the grate temperature ?

I would reduce it to 20% and see. Have you had it serviced by an proper ETA Technician? Chip boilers are far more complicated than log ones and they release software updates that change parameters a proper ETA techie should update that as part of the service.

 

[f0ster]

the air holes on eta boilers are common for blocking up, not all off them block up but where you get blocked holes you gat overheating of that section of the grate. this causes that section to burn out.