Is anyone familiar with this gasifying wood boiler?

I’ve seen a couple, but never one in operation. It’s similar to the Tarm/EKO/Econoburn/Biomax design, though it does have some important differences.

One of my neighbors has one, and I’m going on a field trip to look at it this week, hopefully.  They make a unit that is all stainless steel inside, which does away with some of the concerns with the breakdown of the units.  They really push the ss units over the carbon steel units even though they continue to make the carbon units.  One of the big advantages they claim the stainless units offer is the ability to (I’m probably not wording this correctly but) shut the fire down quickly, basically on demand.  The point being that the creosote will harden on the ss walls and then just burn off with the next firing.  Because the walls are ss, the creosote and other junk won’t break down the walls as quickly, like they would on the carbon steel.  This allows a more on demand boiler and does away with much of the need for a separate water storage tank.  All this is according to them, so take it from whence it comes.  You end up paying a couple thousand dollars more for the ss units, but they mention on their website they have a number of ss units that are functioning well at over 20 years of age.  I hope this helps, and I’ll post back once I have seen the unit in operation.

This was originally called the Eshland Wood Gun - made in Essex, CT. It dates back to 1990 or so when Gasification boilers were just getting started. They had a number of units which were somewhat competitive with the Tarm, but not as “finished” (rougher looking). They did have some larger units, which were useful for those with much larger homes.

They did have some major problems with corrosion - much more so than the Tarm. A very large percentage of early units failed. I’m sure the move to ss is because of that - but some welders and metallurgists here have indicated that SS does not solve all of that sort of problem and is not the best material for boilers. I’ll let others with more expertise comment on that.

What did you find onyour field trip?

My friend has been using his wood gun for 2 full heating systems now.  He is very happy with it overall.  I think his words were “working as advertised”.  He does not have any water storage and he didn’t see any real need for it.  In actual use, in the cold months, he filled it three times a day and never had any issues with it going out or anything.  The only issues he mentioned, and this was also mentioned by the people at wood gun, was that you should expect to replace some of the refractory bricks regularly.  It is an easy easy thing to do, but I would expect to do this every couple of years, maybe $200ish each time, I’m sort of guessing but close.  I ordered one of the carbon steel units.  I saved a substantial amount by going with the carbon unit, and my general feeling is i should get at least 15 years out of it, and I would bet in 15 years the technology will be much better than what we currently have and I will want to change anyway.  With oil as high as it looks like it will be, I figure no more than a 3 year payback… 1300 gallons of oil even at 3$ is $3900 I can get the wood for $1000 ....should be 3 years easy.