Roaster Ducting Advice Requested

JHCCoffee

I just bought a FreshRoast SR800 and am setting up some basement ducting, to vent smoke and odor to the outside. I bought an 8” to 4” duct reducer that will sit above the SR800. I bought some 4” round semi-rigid aluminum ducting that I will run all or part of the way to a white anodized steel dryer vent with an internal flap. The dryer vent will be inserted in a piece of plywood inserted in my basement window. If need be, I will insert some fully flexible aluminum foil ducting close to the window end, to allow easier duct routing. I will probably buy an inline duct fan. So far so good.

What I haven’t figured out is how to suspend the duct reducer over the SR800. I could build a stand, or I could suspend the duct reducer with rope or wire through a pulley. Or … ??

I welcome your suggestions, and any photos of your setup.

JHCCoffee

Please see the attached badly drawn sketch (I am definitely not a draftsman).

Any suggested enhancements?

DavecUK

JHCCoffee Looks good!

Gagaryn

JHCCoffee Please see the attached badly drawn sketch (I am definitely not a draftsman).

Any suggested enhancements?

I understand the intention of this but I don’t think this will work at all. Maybe there is something counterintuitive that I’m missing, I’m no expert, but why would the forced air from the fan pull air from the duct pointing at the roaster? There is no Venturi effect at play here because there is no reduction in diameter so no lowering of pressure by increasing air speed. I can’t help thinking the fan is more likely to blow on the roaster than suck!

Quite possibly missing something, I’ve never tried this and Dave is confident it will work so presume he has. What am I missing?

tompoland

I really don’t have much idea about this sort of thing. But I would just point out that my fan is in line. I.e. Between 2 parts of the ducting pipe. Whereas yours appears to be off the side and I’m wondering if that would have an impact on lowering the air flow?

DavecUK

Gagaryn I’ve only tried in line, bur it should work, similar principle to a Dyson bladeless fan.

Gagaryn

DavecUK it should work, similar principle to a Dyson bladeless fan.

I’m not seeing that at all. The magic in bladeless fans is the aerofoil which accelerates the air, creating low pressure laminar flow which “sucks” the air it passes along with the forced air. I can’t see how a simple fan in one side of y duct will do that. Surely there will just be turbulent air hitting the main pipe. Curious now to see what the results are.

JHCCoffee

I think I will try placing a thermocouple at the top end of the bell shaped duct reducer, to determine the temperature. I’ll then attach 2 feet of duct and test again there. If the temperature is low, I won’t need the WYE.

I am still curious about the “dyson effect”. Might try the DYE just for the heck of it.

The FreshRoast SR800 arrived today and the Extension Tube will arrive in afew days. My roasting journey (and the next chapter in my coffee journey) begins (well restarts, as I had a Behmor many many moons ago) … The hope is that I will be able to: a) roast better tasting decaf (roasted to my roast level taste) than I can get locally, b) have a much broader choice of decaf beans, c) buy and roast beans that I like.

Most of the decaf here is under-roasted because many roasters roast decaf to the same colour as caf (But decaf roasts to a darker colour at the same roast level as caf. They look darker than they taste.) Or because they cater to 3rd Wave tastes. Sorry but I don’t like “notes of truffle and mango” in my coffee. 🙄😁

Others burn the cr** out of the beans.

I’ve thrown out more pounds of decaf coffee than I can count. Now I can atleast throw out my own roasts. 🤪😁

DavecUK

I sort of feel it should work, but if it doesn’t, then it can always be mounted normally.