William & Susan Schran User on thu 25 may 06
Folks,
I've been in contact with Stephen Lewicki at L&L kilns to ask him about
adding extra insulation to sectional electric kilns.
I've forwarded the link to the thread on the subject to him and I'm hoping
he will respond or post something about the industry's take on the subject.
He did respond to me:
"Unfortunately that is a very deep subject with many many parameters. I'm
not even sure where to begin or if it is advisable to. The problem is that
much of what could be said would be misconstrued and misunderstood. To give
you just one example: there is a program that calculates heat loss and heat
storage in insulation. However, it is based on static conditions
(steady-state). However, in the clay world the heating cycles are very
dynamic as well as quite variable (fast glaze vs slow bisque for instance).
That changes everything and opens the results of the insulation calculations
to wildly speculative interpretations. I have seen some of the threads on
Clayart get totally out of control and you can be sure this would be one of
them. Send me the link of the thread and I will look at it and see if it
makes sense to comment. The other thing is to look at exactly what it is
people want to know - not just general principles."
Here's the link to the brick insulation information:
and scroll down to:
"KILN ENERGY INFORMATION" there's lots of information on BTU analysis
comparing 2 1/2" vs 3" brick.
If you'd like to contact him with specific questions, his email is:
steve@hotkilns.com
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