-20 outside in Estonia today, but toasty warm inside with my heaters burning merrily. The Bialaddin had a recent Christmas themed paint job. Difficult to see the glow in the sunshine but the Kayen seems to give more heat.
ha ha, I had a similar experience. The heating stopped working last night. So this morning it was cold inside since we have a winter day with minus 6 outside. So I lighted a Aladdin table lamp which gave enough heat to survive until 11:00 when the repairman came, 15min. fettling, a new burner fan and the house can heat up again.
As you say, it's difficult to tell in the light, but both of those should have all of the mantles glowing red. Could we see a photograph of them burning in darkness?
Kayen burns really well. Pricker not so great. The wheel is really small, so hard to turn fast enough without putting out the heater. Managed to stink the house out with kero vapour. Lesson learned keep a propane blowtorch handy. Bialaddin will only burn 1/3 to 1/2 way down the mantle. Any hints to get it to go better?
Assuming everything else is clean and in good working order, it's usually the vapouriser. Once you've got it sorted, I think you'll find the Bialaddin will at least match the Kayen in terms of heat output...
Been fettling a bit over the last week. Bialladin now works great and the Kayen not so well at all. Both have only the tiniest little stubs left on the pricker. My Kayen keeps getting blocked and won't clear. Tomorrow I will throw the generator into the log burner for a few heat quench cycles. Hopefully this will remove the little scraps. As a British lamp newb here are some silly questions. Is it true that you can't buy a pricker rod? The generator was really designed to be scrapped and a new set of parts installed every season? Bowl fire pumping out heat. My workshop feels like a solarium. Cherry red all the way down and a little bit of blue coming out of the bottom.
The vapouriser was designed to be non-serviceable i.e. simply thrown away and replaced when it reached the end of its service life - not necessarily every season - obviously it depends how much you use the heater. You could buy replacement pricker wires though. They came on a card of five and I suppose they were sold like that or maybe you could buy them singly from a hardware shop. I found one of the cards a few weeks ago as I was tidying out a spare room. I'll have to find it again, now...
Spare wires for Vapalux / BiAladdin vapourisers are available from Base-Camp.co.uk Cleaning wire with spring, all lamps and heaters £ 9.95 Henry.
Here's the link:- Vapalux,& Bialaddin Lantern Spares £9.95 each is daylight robbery IMHO - at least Dick Turpin wore a mask...
