I put a jacket on the boiler, with some insulation–I bought one pre-made, kind of cheating, but it went right on easily and all the holes lined up.
Also took the burner out, cleaned the jet, and added some mesh screen to the burner–some fine stainless steel mesh I got from McMaster-Carr. What a difference! The mesh appears to have mostly silenced the burner, so it’s not whooshing and rushing, and more important has made it possible to control the flame, so it’s not constantly blowing off through the safety valve. I ran the thing on rollers and it just kept going and going. I was getting twice the run time I got before, or at least it seemed that way: longer runs using less water and less gas. It’s been raining hard all day and I didn’t bother to take the whole mess outside
I have no idea why it worked–It’s not, I don’t think, functioning as an actual radiant burner. Maybe it just spread the flame out and slowed it down? I’m not going to ask too many questions, and since it’s not broke…
