kedel pellet boiler

Very happy with my first year. My neighbor liked it so much his is getting installed next week. Very versatile unit with lots of options that come standard.

No matter what brand you get, DON'T oversize the unit. You don't want cycling of on/off, you want the boiler to modulate depending on how much heat your home needs, and that's far easier to do in the heel months if you get an appropriate sized boiler vs oversizing.

My neighbors boiler is in and I've helped him get it tuned in. He went from 12 starts/stops a day to 1 or none. Even in the low 50's it will only start once a day using indoor temperature reset. We take a temp probe and put it in the house. We use the "outside temp reset" curve to keep the inside of the house within 2.5*F and allow modulation of firing rate based on that. His is appropriately sized (54Mbtu) so no buffer tank was needed. I put in a 102MBtu unit with plans to put heat in my garage too, so I installed an 80 gallon buffer tank. I cycle 2 times a day in this weather, but I still wish I got a smaller boiler

Here is my neighbors trends with his Kedel K54: http://stokercloud.dk/dev/showgraph.php?mac=kurtz

Here are my trends with my Kedel K102 with about the same size house: http://stokercloud.dk/dev/showgraph.php?mac=diesel

my "External temperature" on the graph is my buffer tank temperature. His "External Temperature" is the temperature in his house.

I had the 105 kBTU Kedel system with the 700# hopper installed by Paradigm in Hooksett, NH in September. So far, so good. It seems like a quality system, requires very little maintenance and its pretty easy to clean. I ran it for a couple weeks in October and so far this November its been pretty cold. I heat a 2800 square foot house in central NH to 70 F and so far I've burned 1450# total, as of 20 November. If I can average one ton per month I'll be pretty happy.

Now I'm going to ramble on a bit about the control system. Forgive me if its kind of boring and technical. I don't know if its the standard control method for the Kedel (which is actually an NBE product), but when connected the way mine is you really need to keep an eye on the outdoor temp compensation curves and tweek them in to maintain the house near your desired temperature. The Kedel control (in my case) has no idea what the thermostat is set for, and has no idea what actual house temperature is. It ONLY knows when a circulator pump is running - in other words, the thermostat is calling for heat. At that time, it starts itself up and ramps to the maximum allowed output power for the outside temperature. You set the max power for a given temperature locally on the touchscreen control panel or through a web page - from anywhere in the world. It gets outside temperature from an internet based weather service (or an optional wired thermometer). Then, when the boiler reaches 173 F (or whatever you set it to), the boiler pump runs, allowing the circulators to push the hot water around the house, until the boiler temp gets down to 163 F (or whatever you set it to), then the boiler pump shuts off. The circulator(s) continue to run constantly until the thermostat is satisfied. According to my installer, the best way to run this system is to have it on as continuously as possible at the lowest output needed. I set my thermostat to 72, hoping that the house never actually gets there, but hovers between 68 and 72, keeping the system running all the time. To do this, I installed wifi capable thermostats so I could monitor them from anywhere. If the house gets up to 72 F, and the temperature increase to get there was fast (quicker than 1 F in five or six hours), I know to tweek down the max power for that outside temperature, or tweek down the temperature for that max power. If the house is slowly getting cooler I can do the opposite. Its all about getting the output of the Kedel to continuously and exactly match the houses heat losses at your desired inside temperature. I suppose by the end of this winter I'll have my curves tuned in so I won't have to mess around with them anymore, but I'd really prefer if the Kedel control knew what the thermostat was set for, and knew what indoor temp the thermostat was seeing. I've been in contact with NBE about this and I'm currently waiting for a response from Honeywell regarding the API for their wifi thermostats. My thought is that since both the thermostats and the Kedel control are sending and receiving data on my home network, why can't they talk to eachother? Then the Kedel could ramp its output based on the difference between actual and desired house temperature and avoid unnecessary shutdowns.

BTW, if you check out the NBE-Global website you'll see that they've released an updated pellet boiler called the RTB (ready to burn). It looks like the same basic system but more consolidated. For instance the control panel is built into the housing rather than having to mount it somewhere. It also adds some more compressor cleaning - to the heat exchanger, I think. I don't think the US importer (Interphase) has them yet but I'm sure they will pretty soon.

etcmjoe: Ask your installer for a ~$70 temperature sensor and hook it up to T5 on the control board (external sensor). Then string this sensor into your main living space. You can set up an "Indoor Reset" curve on the Weather page from 69-71*F (or whatever range you want to maintain the house) and the boiler will limit it's firing rate as it gets too warm in the house or ramp up as it starts cooling. The only problem with this is if you want night time set back for cooler temps in the house while sleeping or while off to work. I set it up in my neighbors house and he doesn't cycle at all if he leaves the thermostat on the wall alone... I'm hoping Kedel will do something a little closer to what your saying... if it could read an external thermostat (perhaps a special one) that you can remotely turn up/down the heat and the boiler KNOWS what the temperature is as well as the set point... not just "heat/no heat" with contacts.

Hi Guys,

I'm new on this site (just arrived a couple of minutes ago). I found the site due to I was "googling around," and my eye caught this discussion regarding pellet boiler (Kedel/RTB etc.) and how to control inside house temperature.

I see you use the T5 (External temperature) to start/stop the pellet burner Withen a given temperature spand, and this is also what it is intented for (well, it is intented for outside temperature regulation of the kedel performance max/min. % of power, start/stop within given temperature etc.)

I reccomend to get one of these Wireless roomthermostats, it is connected to the "Ext." on the main board, and combined with this feature, you can use the T5 (external temperature) to trim/reduce the power of the kedel boiler due to the temperature/sun outside and by this (can also be combined with Watch periode timer, to not know what they called the menu en English) and thereby reduce the amount of pellets used without loss of comfort inside the house

Link for Wireless thermostat (in Danish): http://www.nbe-shop.dk/index.php/tr.../traepillefyr-tilbehor/tradlos-termostat.html

I got my firs "Kedel" pellet burner (in Denmark where NBE originates it is called "Scotte" or "Woody" depending of which reseller you buy from, the Company is Northern Jutland BioEnergy, also called NBE) in 2009 when the miss and I bought our house, and the central heating boiler was a Oil burner from 1990 on a kedel from 1965.... (WTF) we used this burner to replace the oil burner(16kw, I do not know what amount Btu) for 5 years without no problems (the boiler has, as I see it, one weak point - the igniter - but I have not have any issues yet) and as we renovate the climate screen of the house, then we got a good Price on a new RTB kedel.. and I must say, the normal model is EASY, but the RTB is really nice! I have only refilled pellets into the hopper since october and last week I emtied the ash tray (one more month of ash was possible, but I had the time to emty) the RTB really cleans out itself, and I have (I got to BETA test some firmware for the control unit) to expand the RTB with my solar panels for hot Water/heat production, which also is comming for the V7/V10/V7RTB control unit in the near future.

I am very happy with my central heating system, and our budget for heating our house is reduced with 75-80% (please note, that we have made heavy renovation on the climatescreen of the house) and I felt like sharing my positive experience (sorry for my English though) and if any of you have questions, please ask, and I will make my efford to share my experince within this brand and its features.

all the best to my Fellow Bio energy friends "over there"

Greetings

Danni the Dane