Tracy Dotson on wed 22 jan 97
Most of the kiln shed fires I have seen has come from not protecting any wood
construction from heat, primarly around the chimney passing through the roof.
I always try to have at least l8" between the chimney and any wood. Then
there is the heat, and at times flames that comes from the top of the kiln.
Here I try to have at least 36" of space above the top of the kiln. If you
love to see the flames of heavy reduction, then maybe put some thing to
deflect the heat and flames using some thing like " wonder board" used to
line bath walls for tile. Found at your local building supply store. Its
made up of concrete and fiberglass. Use spacers between the concrete board
and the wood you attach it to with 1/2" nuts spacers for circulation.
Please, please do not wrap exposed wood with fiberglass insulation. This
just traps the heat and wood will ignite where it cannot be seen and maybe in
the middle of the night after you shut of the kiln you may have a real fire.
The other some times forgoten hazzard is the radient heat coming from the
burner ports. Give your self at least 4 feet from the burner port to any
wood, or here again use the wonder board with spacers and raise the board 1"
of the floor for circulation.
When deciding what kind of roof you want, think of where the water will
drain if it rains. If you use a shed roof and put the chimney at the low
side, all the rain will collect and run down to the chimney. I use "gabled
"roofs and run the chimney through the peak. This way there is just the rain
that hits the chimney that will come into the kiln shed. Tin roofs offer the
best protection with a space of at least 3" around the chimney to tin. This
will also help let out the heat trapped in the shed.
Tracy Dotson
Penland NC
David Donica on thu 23 jan 97
At 09:13 AM 1/22/97 EST, you wrote:
>----------------------------Original message----------------------------
>We just finished building a shed for a 16 cu ft updraft Olsen kiln. Having
limited space we put a 3 walled shed that's 10' x10' on a 11'x 11'
concrete slab. Fred Olsen said that the shed should be at least 14ft
square, but as I said, I didn't have the room. This left me with 30"
between the kiln and the shed walls. This didn't seem like very much to me
so we left a 6" gap between the slab and the bottom of the walls and a 10"
space at the ridge of the roof (which is salvaged sheet metal roofing) and
ran a length of roofing lengthwise along the peak to serve as a ridge cap.
All of the framing members for the roof (we constructed trusses) are metal.
The walls are Hardipanel (wonderboard) spaced away from the exterior
(wood) siding using 1" lenghts of copper tubing. One gable end is open and
the other has a large vent. It's 11'6" to the peak of the roof from the
slab.Of course, it rained and snowed like crazy during the construction
project so we put plastic over the gable ends and strung a tarp off the
front. It worked great- we didn't even have to take down any of the
plastic during the firing and there was only a 12 degree temperature
difference between the inside and outside of the shed. I owe all of this
construction genius to my husband, David who even stayed up all night with
me getting the gas lines plumbed.
Maggie Shepard
FireWorks Pottery
Mt. Shasta, Calif.
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