Your stoker is one of the most important components of a combustion system. No matter what type of stoker your facility uses, it needs to be in optimal shape if you want to maintain efficiency and cut costs.
Far too often, however, stoker maintenance takes a backseat to other concerns. This is a mistake. Regular, ongoing maintenance of your stoker systems is key if you want to keep your efficiency up and avoid wasting your resources.
But reactive, run-to-failure maintenance isn’t the solution. Reactive stoker maintenance is more expensive in the long run because it inevitably leads to more repairs and more replacements.
It’s better to undergo preventative maintenance for your stoker so you can cut down on the number and scale of any repairs you’ll need to make by identifying a problem in an early stage before it mushrooms into something much more expensive to fix.
The Main Benefit of Preventative Stoker Maintenance
Cutting costs by avoiding costly repair/replacement work is only one benefit of preventative maintenance. The main benefit is that it prolongs the lifespan of your equipment, giving you a better return on your investment over the lifespan of your stoker configuration.
We’ve seen many situations in which maintenance was infrequent or reactive, and the stoker gave out well before it reached the end of its designed longevity. This is a waste of resources. We’ve conversely seen several situations in which preventative maintenance helped a stoker system last longer than its design would otherwise dictate. That’s always the goal.
How Maintenance Should Be Conducted
Preventative rather than reactive maintenance, then, is the name of the game.
We accomplish this by regularly and thoroughly inspecting all key components of the stoker, from lubrication systems to bars, bearings, bearing housing and stands, shafts, drives, chains, sprockets, support rails, feeders, hoppers, and thermocouples, etc. These detailed, exhaustive inspections allow us to produce a report that details potential problems and how to fix them through maintenance so they don’t turn into bigger problems down the road.
The knowledge we gain from our inspections serves as a foundation for recommendations moving forward on how to prolong the lifespan of your stoker. We have decades of experience handling stokers and we know how to maximize the potential of any design.
Contact our stoker repair team if you have questions about preventative maintenance for your stoker system, or if you are in need of emergency repairs or replacement parts.