Storage addition to Biasi7

You will probably have to go unpressurized for storage if the basement access is restricted unless you go with several smaller tanks in series. Take a look at some of the companies that run in the add banners here for ideas of what is commercially available. Though not a true gasifier, the Biasi does have secondary burn and your unit is 120kbtu. Storage should help even out performance some. With that said, there is also the possibility that your 1850 farm house is requiring more btus than your boiler can produce. If the insulation, windows, etc. are in need of updating that may be the case. There is always the option of building your own storage in place and saving some money. There are many here who have done that. Check out my page in my sig for more info.

bwfvt, storage has lots of benefits, but what it won't do is increase the output of your boiler. Typically a storage tank is set up so that the only time heat is sent to storage is when it is EXCESS heat. Storage's primary benefit is in the off season that allows you to continue to burn the wood boiler when otherwise you would have to shut it down for lack of load (creosote and condensation problems). The main benefit of plumbing the tank this way is that if you have been heating off the tank for 24 or 48 hours in the Spring and deplete the stored heat in the tank, you can then send heat straight from the wood boiler into your zones when you fire it back up. In other words, you don't have to wait for the tank to come back up to temp before you can get heat into the house.

On the other hand, if you were to put the tank 'between' the boiler and the house, then I guess it would act as a bit of a buffer when multiple zones called, but only for a while.

We have customers set up tanks both ways, I expect you will get some more input from the folks around here that will help you make the decision which set up is best for you. Let us know what you decide.

Chris

I have a Biasi-6 and burned 6-7 cord. How well seasoned was your wood? You will get poor performance if less than 9 months seasoned. I have a 4-zone 3,100 ft. house (newer built), and I didn't have a problem. Actually when the outside temps got to around 10deg. is when the system ran the best. What operating temps are you running your Biasi at? I know the guage on the unit is not 100% accurate. My system is directly plumbed up to my oil boiler & there always seems to be a 15 deg. difference (Biasi being higher). I tried to keep the water circulating at 180 deg. - hope this helps

I looked at your piping diagram in the thread you linked to above and your problem is that your system is setup in series. This means that the boilers are piped WB feed to OB return and OB feed to WB return. This works fine until a zone calls for heat. The return water from the zones also goes to the OB return where the WB hotwater is coming in. The two mix and lower the available heat coming out of the OB feed to the zones. When you get multiple zones going at the same time, the available temp for heat gets lower and lower and the house is not getting the heat it needs. In this situation the OB will often start running to make up the temp difference and the Biasi actually stays nice an hot because the water going back to it is the same water going to your zones. This is a poor design that unfortunately is suggested in a lot of "add on boiler" manuals. I know because I am stuck with one myself and plan to redo things this summer.

There are other ways to pipe these systems that works better. If you decide to add storage, consider also changing the piping configuration at the same time. The simplest modification you can do is the pipe the feed to the feed and the return to the return. That way the hotwater from the WB can go directly to zones and then if no zone is calling the flow reverses through the OB keeping it hot and closer to temp in the event that it needs to take over for backup.

Another option would be to follow the sticky on Simplest Pressurized Storage System Design which is the same idea but the OB sits cold until needed.

How much per load and how many cords? I paid $900 for an 8 cord load, had gone up $175 since last year.

Moldey oldey time.

Can anybody give some 'recent' feedback (lots of old stuff on here) on the 3Wood, and the 3Wood with storage?

maple1 said:

Moldey oldey time.

Can anybody give some 'recent' feedback (lots of old stuff on here) on the 3Wood, and the 3Wood with storage?

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I am still running my 3Wood full time. Do you have any specific questions that I can help you with? I also just met with the manufacturer last week.

Well, first thing was generally how good is the 3Wood. Seems to me from the reading I was doing it was about the best you could expect from a non-gasser. Then, how much better or how good is it with storage? The biggest complaints I read about was creosote (natural for anything that idles), and short burn times - but if it could burn hot until it burned out using storage, those issues should maybe go away? I guess that would depend on how efficient it actually is with respect to heat recovery - it looks like it should be good there, just looking at the construction & castings, especially compared to this hunk-o-junk of mine I am desperately needing to replace. The price difference between this unit and a gasser is rather large - I'm still leaning gasser, but want to make sure I consider all the angles I possibly can before signing on the line.

I do not have storage. For me i couldn't see the pay back fast enough to go with storage, plus in warm months I need a break. As for efficiency, the 3Wood is not the nest, but you have to compare payback times as well. The burn times are not as long as we wish, but you could jave yhe other boiler as navkup to. For me, I set all my electronic therms to turn down in the morning until I het up to re load the stove. Make a list of what is most important to you and how much $ you are willing to spend for it. It does buildup in the chimney quite fast so on a nice day in January I will send the brush down down the chimney to lnock the big stuff down.

Thanks for the feedback.

Maybe I should have started a new thread - I was mainly interested in real life feedback on how much adding storage helped someone in a non-gassing situation. Before & after like. It wouldn't necessarily need to be just 3Wood related - any model experience would be helpful. I checked out a 3Wood in the fall at a home show, I thought it looked pretty impressive for something that didn't gassify - although their literature talk about a secondary burn almost made it sound like a gasser.

maple1 said:

Thanks for the feedback.

I was mainly interested in real life feedback on how much adding storage helped someone in a non-gassing situation. Before & after like.

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Non-gasser with NO storage / non-gasser WITH storage = 40% drop in wood consumption!

hobbyheater said:

maple1 said:

Thanks for the feedback.

I was mainly interested in real life feedback on how much adding storage helped someone in a non-gassing situation. Before & after like.

Click to expand...

Non - gasser NO storage / non- gasser WITH storage = 40% drop in wood consumption !

Click to expand...

That's pretty darned significant. I'd expect even larger improvements on creosoting & all round dirtyness? I've also been trying to find similar looking specs across different boilers for comparison purposes (e.g. BTU recovery per pound of wood, or burn times per given wood volume at given output capacity, etc.), without much luck.

Is that something you realized first hand? I'm starting to think there are larger gains (or at least similar gains) to be realized by simply adding storage to whatever the appliance is and adjusting burning procedures, as compared to simply (?) going from non-gasser to gasser. Although there is no doubt the largest efficiency/operational gains would be to go to gassing with storage, best bang for the buck might be to just add storage to what is there now, if the appliance has the capacity. Or to do it a step at a time starting with storage, if there are budget etc. constraints you'd want to spread out by doing things in stages over a couple of years or so. Storage > Gasifying?

I keep thinking myself around in circles...

[quote author="maple1" date="1331145627"

That's pretty darned significant. I'd expect even larger improvements on creosoting & all round dirtyness?

.[/quote]

The Tasso boiler was a small cast iron down drafter. When it worked in standby, it did produce creosote but the creosote got even worse when connected to storage. When it ran in standby, the water jacket stayed above 170 F but when connected to storage, it could be as low as 100F. A thermostatic mixing valve would have made a big difference but were they around 30+ years ago? Wood gasification and the Jetstream showed up about that time so I made the switch and it burns around 50% less than the Tasso.