I agree with you about needing to push and pull but I’m getting sick of this. Since I cleaned the back out it has been above 25* and in the 30-40 range during the day. It has been a problem keeping the water temp up. You can’t put enough wood in to make it through the day, unless you are there at least every 6 hours. I do plan on putting storage (milk bulk tank or I have two 300 gallon NH3 tanks that I can use) . I think I want to stay with non-pressure storage, can’t decide if I want to build a loop or use a HX. Don’t really want the other pump. Is there a way to get the water to circulate enough without electricity in the event of a power outage. I had 1 meltdown don’t want another.
Hello everyone, my first post concerning Adobe. My story begins in March 07 when I purchased an Adobe 100-Indoor build on site. My sales pitch was .... beat the price increase and get this boiler with all the new improvements. I bought the pitch after researching boiler options for appprox. 1 yr. The boiler was delivered and sat in my garage until final install was complete in the last two weeks of Dec. 07. I begin assembly of the unit in Oct/ Nov.07 with the vague instructions provided and find that the assembly instruction CD and fire brick diagram are nowhere to be found. I call Adobe and get my first taste of Adobe customer service. I talk to Phil , who sold me the boiler , he basically wants nothing to do with these issues . He refers me to Mark ,who is not an Adobe employee, who takes care of these things. Further into the assembly I am missing pins for insulation installation. I call Adobe....Phil’s response- They sell those at all welding supply stores and they cost pennies. So I spend half the day of MY day off from work to search for the pins . Well guess what, not everybody stocks them but they can order a box of 100 when I need 12. Again I call Mark and he does what he says- he sends the pins to me . Mark becomes my Go To Guy when I have a question. Forward to mid to late Feb. 07- I notice the paint bubbling in several places on the right side panel. I blow this off figuring it to be bad paint as it was applied with no primer below it. I pop these bubbles and discover creosote running out of all bubbles- pinholes in this side panel everywhere the paint is bubbled . There are approx. 50 pinholes covering 1ft.x2ft. area about 3ft. up from the bottom of the boiler. This cancer is getting worse each day. The boiler has been in service 3 mo. at the most ! I see my problems mirror several others on this forum. Apparently I need to contact the Attorney General to see if they can help me. Customer service and you do not exist after the boiler has been paid for. If anyone has questions feel free to contact me.
Welcome to the club, I think you wrote my story. Hopefully we can get these to work. Mark has been very helpful. I have contacted the Minn. AG they have tried twice so far to get in contact with Phil. I have also contacted Maine. You need to contact you state AG and Maine. I can give you more particulars if you want . Good Luck
I agree with you about needing to push and pull but I’m getting sick of this. Since I cleaned the back out it has been above 25* and in the 30-40 range during the day. It has been a problem keeping the water temp up. You can’t put enough wood in to make it through the day, unless you are there at least every 6 hours. I do plan on putting storage (milk bulk tank or I have two 300 gallon NH3 tanks that I can use) . I think I want to stay with non-pressure storage, can’t decide if I want to build a loop or use a HX. Don’t really want the other pump. Is there a way to get the water to circulate enough without electricity in the event of a power outage. I had 1 meltdown don’t want another.
I think the devil is in the details. I wonder how big a heat load you have and what the boiler is rated for. Is the boiler cycling on/off alot? That could be a BIG problem. I am curious as to how your boiler is piped to the system. Is the wood good quality or is it wet and sizzling with steam coming out of it? If you have good looking fire the heat is going somewhere. What is a typical stack temperature in mid-cycle? The in and out temps of the boiler? Is the boiler radiating a lot heat throught the casing? Are the tubes actually clean or totally encased in creasote deposits? One oddball remote problem is the possibility your heat exchanger is partially plugged internally from sludge/sediment so your not getting flow through all the tubes. I’ve seen large industrial boilers with similar problems over the years.
I would guess that if your boiler is cycling on/off storage would help to prevent this. When the power is out you could use a generator, batteries with inverter, use a gravity loop where the tank would have to be higher than than boiler where the different densities of the hot/cold water would naturally circulate, or as Eric says-have an automag valve open on power failure to dump to a zone above the boiler.
I’m not sure of my heat load. As for the size of my boiler,good question as I didn’t get the boiler I ordered. The dimensions don’t match the dimensions on the invoice, and the serial number seem to be altered and since no one will reply or answer the phone it’s pretty hard to get to the bottom of it. The boiler does cycle on and off, if it didn’t you could never keep enough wood in it. I haven’t had time or the money to buy all the monitoring equipment. I have a well insulated home 2900sq ft . I only put heat in the basement and main floor, bedrooms just get what comes from below. The boiler is outside in my machine shed. I have a sidearm and heat exchanger in the furnace (that is on a programable Tstat and zone valve. There is some fintube in the basement on its own zone valve. I have some wirsbo in a 12 x 24 addition on its own stat (that is on very little). And there is a steel wall radiator on north basement wall that is throttled way back. For the most part supply and return are not to far apart in temp (touch method). So you can see I have a real dukes mixture. I know that storage will help (more money). If I was rid of this boiler I’d have a Garn by fall. This sure is more complicated than my old AquaTherm and all I wanted to do was burn less wood.
i dont know if i’m responding right--but i’m another victim to this scam adobe bioler sold me--its roting to death and eats wood like no tomorrow--i’m trying to contact them--and no response! i’m a military guy just returned from sunny downtown bagdad and asked one of my fellow sevice men to e-mail them and they responded--i need help to fix these unamerican bums!! my unit is less than a season old and very disappionted--i cant believe there american company’s operating and doing this to hard working american--help!!
Sorry to hear of these problems. I have never heard of Adobe Boilers...and perhaps I don’t want to! My advice to people would be NOT to experiment when it comes to boilers....buy ONLY from a company that has a 8-10 year+ GOOD experience and reputation with difficult weldments/pressure vessels, etc.
There is NO excuse for the type of service that you have been getting and certainly no possible reasons for pinholes in a relatively new boiler.
Everyone needs to contact the attorney generals office. Talk to them. They are selling these boilers over state lines. The more people that complain the better chance we have, also the more states .
Thanks fro the brain storming steam man. You mentioned heat loss through the casing. I installed my boiler in a remote workshop 1000 sq ft.
The workshop is much more comfortable than my house ie. just radiant heat from the Adobe. I have 160000btu water to air heat exchanger in the plenum of my hot air furnace, 10 cords of wood in 3 months heat output is marginal at best trying to heat 2500 sq ft.
Burning chunk back to the push & pull. After installing the draft inducer I disconnected the forced fan & tried natural draft. The result was good & bad.
The gases stopped forcing there way out through the panels & the bad odour from the gases disappeared. O n the other hand the thing took forever
to reach cut out temp 180 degrees & the fire was very lethargic. I am suspect that the creceote problem increased during this period.
So I wired the forced fan back up, I actually wired the forced fan & the draft inducer together so they cut in & out simultanously with the damper & controlled by the aquastat. The result good & bad. Super improvement in output. from 160 to 180 degrees with no load in 4 minutes.
On the other hand the bad odour was back & small amount of gases were evident. My theory is the forced draft was creating to much pressure
inside the unit & was forcing gas & odour out through the unit. So I took a piece of metal sheet & covered 50% of the air inlet on the forced draft.
The result I still have a hot fire no odour & no sign of gas seepage. Still worried about the water vessel, no way to check the vertical section without
tearing down the unit.
ps I have a battery power pack in my basement hooked up to my circulator, learned the hard way, cooked everything first power outage.My advice
buy a heavy unit to keep circulators going several hours , as you know the refactory holds heat long after unit shuts down.
My heart goes out to you Burning Chunk
is there a solution or a class action suite that can be applied against this company--i purchased my unit from phil in banger maine--is that the actual manufacturer? does any body have an actaul address to phil house?i’ll personally deliver this unit to his family--this is not the american way of doing business!--i hope adobe reads this stuff--cause i’m coming!!
Pretty impressive video, Right. Why do you suppose we all bought these boilers. Burn green wood, huge amounts of heat, no creosote, etc. Hindsight is good, the boiler is burning full tilt 24-7 never has to cycle in that situation I am sure it won’t plug up there, chimney straight up heated most of the way. Can you blame us?
thanks for the video--i agree why did we buy these units--i have my unit in a pole barn and put lines under ground to the house--i am heating the house but the stove is rotting away and the pole barn is loaded with gases and smoke--my brother owns a old aqau therm.--its about 12 years old and the only thing he replaced is a few pumps--it is not that efficient cause its old--but its holding up all these years--my unit looks like its 15 years old--i’m going to watch all the great info you guys are putting out there and my be we can salvage what we have--before i put this unit in phil’s living room--and if anyone comes up with a way to chase this company down and make things right i want to warn any other poor sap not to purchase nothing from this crap company--thanx--for letting me vent---druzzy
Hampden huh? Pretty close by. I get there fairly often. I may make a visit just to look things over and ask a few questions.
I also know someone who made copies of the Adobe but will talk to him about them. His is stainless skinned so I didn’t see any rusting problems.
Another friend who (who doesn’t know about this site) has one (with problems) and actually called Fred Seton about it. Fred sent him some info on it to help him out. What a guy.
