bb live at the greenhouse
Jan 25th
Note this is long post with a sound track and pictures – you have been warned… After a long time and many, many hours of work, our big boiler (BB) is back online. It’s actually been up and running for a few weeks now and I have been able to get some of this down for posterity.
Back in April of ’11 the cast iron steps in BB collapsed. We limped out the rest of the spring just with our little boiler. I spent quite a few spare moments over the summer pondering what to do next and how to go about it. Something new was out of the question we just couldn’t afford it. After quite a bit of reading and research I decided to perform a fairly radical retrofit. I settled on trying to model the refit after a commercial wood fired boiler made by a company in Worcester called BCS. Luckily the Cavicchio’s happen to have a couple of these in use over in Sudbury. Both Paul and Jake were super-helpful in letting me ask 1000 questions and crawl all around in their boilers.
The whole project didn’t get started until September. I knew going in it was going to take some time. I broke the work into 2 major phases, the first being a major plumbing change to be more efficient in how the hot water is used and circulated. The second phase being the actual refit of BB. I was optimistic that the phase 1 changes would buy me the time I would need to finish phase 2 while only running with the little boiler (LB).
Then we started to attack the plumbing. All of our major pipes in the boiler room are 4″ steel. These beasts are welded. We were able to cut, fit and re-plumb to alter the water flow. The problem was once we put the water back in we had a nice rain shower going on. I’ll take copper pipe and solder any day after that. We eventually got some outside welding help and dried things out. The changes worked great and ended up allowing us to run the little boiler down into temperatures in the mid-20′s. In the past we were lucky to run into the low 30′s with only the LB. As it turned out later this was a huge boon as the second phase was rather ambitious.
Phase 2 involved cutting off half of the firebox from BB, rebuilding the refractory wall, installing a new elevated floor with special airflow capable firebrick and installing a new horizontal chip feed mechanism. The first part was the easiest, of course. Take a cutting torch go wild. I think I am going to amend the old saying, if you can’t fix it with a hammer and duct tape it’s not worth owning now that I have a cutting torch. We yanked the old parts out with the CAT. Rebuilding it took somewhat longer. By way of Jake I was very fortunate to hook up with Walter Lane. Walter’s a great guy who knows alot about boilers. He and his brother drove out from Troy and sold me a bunch of awesome leftovers from other projects. He also had a few great tips and ideas on how to greatly simplify what I was going to do. He saved me hours and a good deal of money I am sure.
We ended up finishing the basic work somewhere in early December. We then got into a boiler tube replacement dance, where the fire tubes leak, you yank them out, put in new ones, and in the process open up leaks in a few more tubes. Rinse, lather repeat and it’s almost Christmas. We finally started getting a fire going sometime in late December. Of course we had a few issues to iron out. The main one was the new chip feed jammed all the time. I was worried when we put it in that we had undersized one of the tubes. That proved to be the problem, so we cut it off and put in a much larger tube. Since then we added some fine tuning and a off delay timer to help smooth out the feed. We have been running it nice and hot when we need it, it burns less chips, hardly generates any slag and can be too much fire if it gets too warm outside. The next tuning/tweak we are now doing is to alter the drive gearing to slow the chip feeds down even more. There are times when we run too hot and by the time the heat has been pulled off and pushed into the greenhouse the fire has gone out.
The following gallery is a series of pictures I gathered over the last few months as we hammered this out (literally). I now have time to write this, and even work on other things.
- The Western Foundry Conifer 49-S, final moments.
- Plumbing. Yes 4" steel tube is *very* heavy.
- Cut off at the edge of the fire tubes. All fire will be under the tubes now.
- Ready for new bricks.
- Adding over fire air tubes to the north end.
- The new I-beams for the elevated floor, allowing for under fire air.
- Yes, I played some Pink Floyd this week, it was required.
- The under fire air tube is on the lower left.
- The new vertical 2 horizontal chip feed tube (undersized vert tube on right).
- More welda.
- Getting closer to a new south wall. Chip feed is in.
- Keeping most of the old chip feed system.
- The over fire air is seen wrapping around on the right.
- Using scrap to stablize the 45 degree part of the chip feed.
- The new floor is all in. Each tile has venturi holes for under fire air.
- View from the north side. Floor is angled to help ease ash removal.
- Bricks are in, new outer wall is being welded in place.
- Oh, yea. Wiring hell. The egads moment in making a new sub panel.
- New chip feed with hopper. No motor or horizontal drive yet.
- Another shot of the new feed.
- The motor and screw for the horizontal feed are now in.
- The new hopper for the vert chip feed.
- The 45 degree feed.
- More wiring hell. Conduit wire pull day. Royal pain in the ass.
- The new view port with heat shield.
- And more welda.
- The new controls. 3-phase motors for feed & over/under fire air, new thermostat and temp gauges for firebox and stack.
- The new opical sensors. Thanks Jim.
- aka the port that ate my hand
- New Temp Gauges – Fully Cooking
- Off Delay Timer – Stops Feed Chatter
- The Chip Feed – In Action
the circus act
Jan 13th
Now that I have some spare time (yes it has happened) I’ll be digging into my picture archives and clearing out a bunch of post ideas I’ve been saving. This is the start of the series…
Farms are infamous for their stories of dangerous tools and things to do. We are no exception. One of the scariest and probably most dangerous things we can do here is to work on the glass panels that make up our greenhouse structure. There has been a panel that was broken quite some time back and replaced with a polycarbonate sheet. That sheet had broken down in the sun and was ready to collapse at any time.
The panels are 6′x12′ tempered glass. They are really heavy and hard to move around. Our first attempt at this was done by carrying the panel inside the greenhouse and lifting up up and through the hole. It was a huge lift that nearly exhausted us before we even got the glass up and outside where it needs to be.
Once you get the panel up on top, the procedure is to push the leading edge into a channel on the top then slowly lower the bottom edge. This causes the panel to flex and curve which actually bends the glass to follow the form of the greenhouse structure. Any imperfection in the glass like a nick or a small speck of sand on the edge will spell disaster for the panel. I’m the lucky guy who holds the glass up from the bottom as it’s fit into the top channel since I am the only one tall enough to do it. Our first attempt exploded on my head. After all that time getting it up, boom it’s gone. We were all in quiet shock looking at what was left of it below us.
For the second attempt I got all new gaskets and we used the fork lift to hoist the glass from the outside hoping to minimize any chance for nicks. These pictures are from the second attempt. It worked fine, we flexed the huge panel into place, and sealed it up nice. As it turned out, it was also in the nick of time. That was the last Friday in October. The next day we had 12-16″ of wet heavy snow on the roof and a nice power outage to go with it. While the generator saga that ensued is a story for another time, we didn’t have to deal with a collapsed panel and cold and snow in the greenhouse.
bucket brigade
Jul 16th
Sorry for the long gap in posts, the summer schedule is a bit off the hook. We have lots going on here. All the outdoor fields are going and need tending as well as the greenhouse. The markets are also in full swing. We are now doing about 17 a week. Some are not every week. Things are looking good, though the orientals are not keen on the high temps we had a week back. We also have a small band of teenage boys to help us over the summer. Chipping away at tasks I never seem to get to. This day it was cleaning out all our buckets we use for the flowers. Beats weeding any day.
have flowers, will bike
May 26th
We had a booth at the Stow Springfest last weekend. The weather was great and we had quite a good amount of traffic (and sales). Thanks to everyone who came out and said hello. I had to take this shot of our friend Carol who was going to bike off to home with a nice bouquet of flowers strapped to her backpack. It’s always nice to sell a bunch of flowers and have a customer walk (or ride in this case) away with a smile on their face.
we got steam-no punk though
May 9th
We do steam the old fashioned way, we boil water for it. Actually it’s an integral part of our process here. We normally steam the soil at the end of the planting cycle after cutting and cleaning off tables. The steam helps kill the weeds and bad things in the soil making for a nicer material. We stopped doing it in mid-January to conserve fuel (we use our wood chip boiler to make steam). About a month back the big boiler went kaput, the cast iron step grates that hold the chips while burning cracked and collapsed. So I’m riding it out on the little boiler for now, planning to fix the bb over the summer. The problem was that the little boiler wasn’t setup to make steam. After a little google-fest I found a mechanical water filler to install and help automatically keep the water from getting too low (we did that by eye on the bb – great when your eye is on on it, but when it’s not …). We recently finished the hookup and now are back in the steam biz. The steamed soil smells great when we use it, and the lilies love it.
- steaming pile of soil
- the mechanical filler
- the sight gauge
happy Easter
Apr 20th
Catching up on some updates… Haven’t had time to update the last week or so. Easter has been busy here, the usual array of fix it now projects are always cooking (making steam, new irrigation pumps, etc). We are also planting seeds and plugs for farmers markets and starting to get a steady stream of lisianthus which will take a few months to start flowering.
We are also having a Easter sale here at the greenhouse tomorrow from 4-7pm. Come on by if you can, we will have our usual great lilies, sweet peas, ranunculus, some hydrangeas, and lily bulbs (it’s a perfect time to plant these now).
Here’s a picture dump of recent activity. Enjoy!
- blue hand sized
- white hydrangea
- big blue hydrangea
- sweet peas
- white and dark purple peas
planting crazy
Mar 28th
We got the guys to come and help us get some of the spring outdoor flowers going, and we are also giving Nate a plot for veggies outside. Here’s a few shots of them getting it going, and yes we can’t wait for spring either.
- Max getting the soil
- Nate getting dirty
- The ageratum seeds are tiny
- One per cell
- Hard at work
- All smiling
- The aerial view
- And the final product (for now)
Waltham Winter Market, Mar 26th 10-2
Mar 19th
We are doing the Waltham Winter Market, at the Waltham Community Center at 510 Moody Street on Saturday, March 26 from 10 am to 2 pm. Come on out and pick up some fresh flowers. We plan to have lilies and ranunculus. It’s an indoor market, so we will be there rain or shine. Check it out: http://www.waltham-community.org/WinterMarket.html
ranunculus ready to go
Mar 2nd
Our ranunculus has really started to come in over the last week. We are now cutting every morning. They look really good. Here’s some pictures of them. Enjoy!
- ranunculus-1
- ranunculus-1-2
- ranunculus-3
- ranunculus-5
- ranunculus-4
- ranunculus-6
- ranunculus-2
famine to feast
Feb 27th
After much consternation, paperwork, and untold miles of travel, our new shipment of bulbs have finally arrived here at the greenhouse. It was certainly an educational experience for me. I now know more about shipping a container of living agricultural products from overseas than I ever imagined. It should also be much smoother next year as I have a book full of what not to do. It’s nice to have these now in our freezer, all stacked and separated. Asiatics on one side, orientals on the other. Now it’s time to get planting (again).
- Clearly ready for more
- The container finally arrives
- Get the fork going
- Ready for organizing
- Into the shed
- The orientals
- The asiatics





































































