The Steamboating Forum

The sidewheeler Margaret S. is currently Propane fired, using an ordinary Home Depot Weed Burner, and common 20 pound Propane cylinders. This setup works well, except the Propane gets sluggish when the tank gets cold, due to excessive draw down of the Propane, with quite a bit more Propane consumption than your typical barbeque grill. This makes an ideal refrigerated compartment on the boat, keeps the drinks cool, etc., but I usually have to switch to a fresh Propane tank after about an hour’s hard running.

In Steamboats and Modern Steam Launches, 1962 vintage, I saw an article about a fuel oil burner, where the atomizing gas was not steam or air, but Butane gas. I would like to try a similar burner, but with Propane as the atomizing gas.

This would cut the Propane consumption to a very small fraction of the present setup, allow burning the much higher energy (and much lower cost) no. 2 fuel oil, and hopefully give a hint of smoke issuing from the stack, for the sake of a little steamboat dirt and grime. It really has some potential advantages over pressurized vaporizing oil burners, warm-up on gas, then allow gravity feed of oil into the burner as required.

Has anyone ever had some experience with this setup?

fredrosse wrote: Has anyone ever had some experience with this setup?

Yup... this is exactly how I start the Otter's boiler from cold. Most folks w/ steam atomizing burners use a wood fire to start and as a target for their oil burner so as to keep it lit. I decided to approach the problem a little differently, since I was trying to keep the overall height of the boiler down, and adding a grate, ash pan, etc. would not help. Instead, I built the firebox so that the burner enters tangentially; the fire from the burner wraps around in a circle and helps keep things lit. Since I have no way of building a wood fire, I just use propane in my steam atomizing burner instead of steam.... and this works like a charm. Sure, the mixture needs a little attention, but the basic idea is very simple.

Now, since I don't like having the propane running all the time, I switch to steam atomizing (disconnect propane, open steam lines) once there's 30 psi or more on the gauge.

I wrote an article for Steamboating magazine a while back on oil burning in the Otter; I cannot seem to attach the pdf files containing the drawings, though; send me an email (barts @ smaalders.net) if you'd like me to send them to you.

- Bart