Operating A manually Fired Boiler.

When firing a boiler manually you must bear in mind that you are working the controls, and that a constant watch must be kept on the pressure gauge, to be able to detect any change in the boiler pressure.
It must be borne in mind that for every 100kpa that the boiler pressure drops it takes an hour to recover that pressure. Therefore, with this in mind care must be taken that when the pressure starts to drop adjustments must be made to rectify this drop in pressure and the dampers must be opened accordingly.
When opening the dampers always start with the ID damper followed by the FD dampers. If the pressure continues to drop, the fuel trim must also be adjusted to increase the length of the fire on the grate and the coal bed increased.
When the pressure is high and you want to decrease the pressure in the boiler, the dampers must be closed to decrease the amount of air to the fires. Remember when closing the dampers always begin with the FD dampers followed by the ID damper.If this is not done in this order you will pressurerise the combustion chamber and the boiler will smoke from the front and possibly have flames shooting from the front of the stokers, which could possibly injure somebody. If the boiler needs to be turned gown further, the fuel trim can be adjusted and if need be the coal bed thickness can be decreased,to help reduce the boiler pressure.