** How to Make an Electric Furnace Regulator [388]

We have a furnace in our house and a part of my work each evening last winter was to go down in the basement at 9 o’clock, fill the furnace with coal for the night and stay there until it was burning in good shape, then to close the draft door.  As this performance requires from twenty to thirty

[Illustration:  Details of Furnace Regulator Construction]

minutes I concluded to make a self-acting device which would close the draft and leave the furnace safe, without any further attention on my part, after putting in the coal and opening it up to burn.  As some other boys may like to build the same regulator I will tell just how to make one and how it operates.

Referring to Fig. 1, you will see a straight cord is attached to the draft door of the furnace, D, and is run over the pulley P and finally is attached to a small piece of iron H. This piece of iron is hinged to 1.  To the other side of H another cord G is fastened, which passes over the pulley N and terminates in any convenient place in the rooms above.  This piece of iron H is held in place by the release A. Now C is a coil of wire from a door bell.  R is an armature which works A on pivot J. M is a U-tube, filled with mercury, one end being connected to a half liter glass flask F by the tube T, and the other end terminates in an overflow tube O. B is a battery of three bichromate cells which are connected up with the C and the platinum points 1—­2, which are fused into the U-tube.

On fixing the furnace the iron piece H takes position X, this being the normal position when draft door D is closed.  On arriving upstairs I pull the cord G, which causes the piece H to become fixed in the vertical position by means of A. This opens the draft door at the same time.  Now when the furnace heats up sufficiently it causes the air to expand in F, which causes the mercury in M to rise a little above the point 2.  This immediately causes a current to flow through C which in turn draws R towards it, raises A and causes H to drop to position X. This shuts the furnace door.  Now the furnace, of course, cools down, thus causing the air in F to contract and consequently opening the circuit through C. If at any time the furnace should overheat, the raising of A, on which is grounded a wire from a signal bell upstairs, will make a circuit through the bell by means of the point Z and wire leading therefrom.  This bell also serves to tell me whether H has dropped or not.  This same device of regulating the draft D can be used to regulate the damper, found on the coal doors of most furnaces, by simply fusing a platinum point on the other side of M and changing the cord which is attached to D. A two-contact switch could also be inserted to throw connections from 2 to 3.  It would work in this manner:  The damper door, of course, which keeps a low fire, would be up in a position similar to D; on the furnace cooling too much, connection, due to contracting of air in F, would be made through 3 and C, causing H to drop, thus closing door.  This simple device worked very well all last winter and gave me no trouble whatever.