My whole system is pressured, I run it about 20 lbs. I wonder if it would help to close off the rear nossle as you guys talked about until I figure a new piping layout.
Heaterman, i’ll wait to see what you think too. If Nofossle can do what he is doing with a tiny eko 25, I know I should have some muscle here. Pretty impressive man.
I dream od a season I could go on 4-5 cords, and this is why I chose a gasifier. Can anyone say how much mileage 1000 gallons can get me if heated up? Do I need 1500? Nofossle, any way I can see a pic of your plumbing? Anyone else with photos I can see?
Thanks!
Follow the link in my signature below. It has diagrams, pictures, and descriptions. Whether it makes any sense or not is a different question. Hope it helps. I’ve been following this thread, and it seems like you have several problems conspiring to give you trouble. If I were in your shoes, I think I’d approach it this way:
1) Get the boiler burning clean, with solid secondary combustion. May need to clean out secondary air inlets, decide on blocking second nozzle, determine whether wood is dry enough, etc.
2) Settle on a plumbing approach. Do you have a way to scan and put diagrams on line or on your site? There have been good suggestions, and perhaps there’s a short term and longer term approach.
when starting a new fire, its unbearable the smoke. Poor draft. Your right I should change to 8”. what is the key piece though from the eko to the 8” tee? It seems to be an odd size to match up to U.S. 8”.
Well, I was out of wood this morning at 6, fired up at 10:30 last night. It was cold, got into the teens. I had a pretty easy time restarting and good gasification. I raised the water about 8 degrees even with the furnace running, but it has kind of leveled off after ah hour and half, Im guessing the load is in its stage of combusting the new wood. Last night, got up in a hurry, I probably started to idle around midnight or 1. I must need more storage.
I wouldn’t let 2” of chimney diameter get in the way of my love life. I bet just by doing that you’d fix a lot of your problems. You shouldn’t really be getting smoke in your face during startup. The only time I get smoke coming out of the boiler into my boiler room is when I’m loading wood, and that’s only because I don’t take the time to open the ash door and give it time to vent out. The older EKOs like yours had somewhat different hardware specs. I see you have flange connections instead of threaded pipe nipples, which is what the new ones have. So the exhaust diameter might be different. Mine takes standard 8” stove pipe, but you may have to modify your pipe slightly to make it fit. Shouldn’t be too big a deal. What size is your chimney?
We have a member in southern Ohio--termite--who just got his Biomax 60 going. That’s a very similar boiler to the EKO 60. I think you made a post asking if anyone in your neck of the woods is running a gasifier. I’d check with termite.
I will probably limp along until I have the coin for new 8” pipe. It’s 6” but I had to ad an elbow horizontally when I moved my eko this fall, and it lined up right with a roof joist. I hated doing it that way, I should grit my teeth and make it work straiter. I dont seem to have problems getting to gasify, maybe the rear nossle, but I do smoke out my lean-to.
I’ll look the guy up here see how its going. Thanks. Your like the mentor here.
I just hate to see a fine machine like the EKO 60 not performing up to its potential. In any event, get rid of that heat saver in the stove pipe. They’re nothing but trouble.
I’m attaching my suggestion for plumbing here rather than in the other thread where it would be off-topic.
Mr. Moderator, is there any way to move the post with barnartist’s schematic from the other thread to here?
In this schematic, both pumps should be controlled by thermostats so that they’re on when there is demand. The Laddomat will put heat into the storage tank if the pumps aren’t running, and the pumps will draw from the tank if the Eko isn’t running. I left out expansion tank, relief valve, air traps, and so on.
That looks like a pretty easy change. Sorry about the odd post position.
My house loop will always be pumping because of DHW. Thus really no stratification, but still heat stored...?
That looks like a pretty easy change. Sorry about the odd post position.
My house loop will always be pumping because of DHW. Thus really no stratification, but still heat stored...?
Don’t know what your DHW system is, but perhaps you could use a sidearm so that it’s heated any time water is circulating, and use the DHW aquastat to force the circulator on if it needs heat. Running the circ all the time doesn’t seem like a good plan, especially a big one like you have.
I would need to see how to tell a single pump to run when forced air kicks on, and DHW, and a radiant all in the house. Am I not thinking correctly ?
thats the trouble with storage away from the house.
I missed that you have radiant in the house - how do you get the water temp down to an acceptable level? You don’t want 170 degree water heating your radiant zone, but you do want really hot water for your other loads.
If you used a zone valve for each heat load in the house, you could use the zone valve contacts to control the pump. Plumb all three loads in parallel between the supply and return lines. I’m assuming that the radiant loop has some sort of mixing valve and it’s own circulator - maybe I’m wrong.
Zone valves have four terminals: two terminals are for 24vac to open the valve, and the other two are switch contacts that are closed wen the valve opens. Those contacts could be wired in parallel and connected to a 24vac relay that switches power to the circ. That way, if any zone valve was open, the circ would come on.
You can run radiant zones @ 170F as long as they are in concrete, I’ve been running mine at that temp for 21 yrs without problems and I used polybutylene, before PEX was available. The only problem I had using the higher temps was that the fittings didn’t last more than 10 yrs, they were a push & twist type made by Delta, the new style copper crimps work fine. If you have radiant in a wood floor, toss out what I just said, you need tempering valves, temps should not exceed 120F.
I have my radiant mixed. I run it at 150, It is only 1/3 complete, it heats my addition, but mainly a bath. It would work well if competed, I think transfer plates would be better though.
I did not mention the radiant before, did not want to overload you nofossil. I also have in slab radiant in the entire addition, but have given up on it because it was insulated poorly, rather I had bad advice to leave the middle of the floor uninsulated for a bigger “heat sink”. I dont have that room finished right now, so its not a top priority. I did run it my first year, heated great, but sucked the btu’s.
What insulation do you have? My garage is insulated at the exterior walls only, 2” styrofoam 2’ in from wall and 2’ down the wall, along the front wall 2”, 2’ in and 2’ down again. The front wall is where the 16’ overhead door is. My basement has no insulation. The theory was that the earth under the slab would stabilize in temperature over time, and 2’ down the wall and 2’ flat to the wall would prevent cold infiltration. Over the years I have been extremely happy with the performance of the radiant in my house, which is only the basement and garage. This installation was primarily an experiment since no one had radiant in my area, and using plastic tubing in concrete was virtually unheard of at that time. When you place insulation under concrete you also run the risk of settlement cracking which I was very wary of at the time.
Question for barnartist: how did you make your homemade underground lines? I’ve been kicking that idea around, but the CB lines are really nice. I will have 2 runs, one about 125’ the other about 80’.
I did not insulate the edges very well, 1” edges, and I insulated underneath with 1” 4X8
sheets of foam board, but I left the center, about 0 uninsulated. I think this was a mistake because it may stablize, but the heat will be lost into the groud with no real way to come back up.
This slab is about 9’ down though, while slabe on grade is really needing the edges done well as you said you did. I should have used 2” foam, and insulated the whole pad.
As for the underground lines, I used scedule 30 sewer pipe, PAP, pex-aluminum-pex lines, and foam
pipe insulation. Problems came when the earth that was dug up was softer than the dirt around it, lots of water accumulated and the seams of some of the sewer pipe let water in. Add to that my run was downhill to the house, and a big rain would let streaming water to my basement where it entered through the block. When I dug it up for replacement, we dug out the middle so water would lay there. I bought the $12 a foot stuff from Central Boiler, wish I had from the beggining. I lost lots of heat in the ground. I have pics of all of this, i’ll try and post.
