Chris Franklin, Managing Director of Ranheat Engineering Ltd, one of the UK’s leading manufacturers of wood-waste burning equipment, continues his series of articles exclusively for Furniture & Joinery Production.

The location of a wood-fired industrial heating system is often dictated by the location of the dust extraction system. Generally, if installing an integrated dust extraction and industrial wood fired heating system you don’t want it at the front of your premises.

New 4m diameter storage silo being lifted over the building to the rear of the building

Often dust extraction systems are installed at the rear and sometimes access to this area is none-vehicular, particularly with a bag based dust extraction system. Individual bags can be carried through standard doors and put into a skip.

As companies expand and with the introduction of high speed CNC machines the changing of bags becomes a regular and messy operation. So, the solution to getting rid of the bags is to install the existing filter onto a new storage silo.

Ranheat modify the base of the filter and supply a new storage silo that the existing filter can sit on connected by a purpose made flanged upstand.

Existing filter unit being lifted onto the new silo at the rear of the building

The silo is fitted with accredited burst panels on the dirty side of the filter. By using this method no expensive to run transfer fan is needed.

Obviously with no vehicular access to the rear of the site a large crane is needed. Specialist lifting contractors were used to provide a 200 tonne crane able to lift the new silo and other components to the rear of the factory and to lift the existing modified filter onto the silo.

Finally the 300 kW Ranheat heater is lifted over the building Ranheat systems have a separate combustion system that either a warm air heater sits on or a boiler based system. The heater weighs in at just under 3 tonne and the base at 2.5 tonne, each is a separate lift.

The three-tonne heater is lifted over the building (note the deflection in the crane jib)

All of the craning was complete in one days hire using specialist lifting contractors King Lifting.

Most makes of dust extraction filter systems can be modified and used in conjunction with Ranheat Silos. The existing hand loaded warm air space heater was also being replaced by a wood chipper to deal with off-cuts again saving time spent in loading the heater as well as the time spent in replacing bags on the extraction system.

For more information or a detailed site survey contact Ranheat Engineering.

01604 750005

sales@ranheat.com

www.ranheat.com