Well, I cleaned the boiler the other day and thought I'd do this post.
I still burn wood in the insert. It doesn't keep the house evenly warm, especially the upstairs. The pellet boiler provides baseload heat and dhw, so the upstairs stays warm and the house stays warm when the insert's fire goes out. We went through, approximately, 3 to 3-1/4 cords of wood.
This was the first season for the BioWin; it worked well. I set it at 100 (10kw) during an early cold snap. It seemed to me to not keep up, so I set it to 150 (15kw), which seemed to be much better. Of course, I was fooling around with settings on my buffer tank as well, so that might've been a factor.
I put in a total of 122 bags, or 2.44 tons into the 4'x4'x4' wood box I built for the pellets. As an aside, the box holds a total of 57 bags (1.14 tons), of 41 bags (.82 tons) are usable with no user intervention (angle of repose and one pellet vacuum pickup). I ran the boiler until it wouldn't run anymore, moving the pellets with a shovel over the intake. Not counting the waste from the day hopper and the wood bin, I'd say I burned 120 bags, or 2.4 tons for the season. The unit's tonnage reading is somewhat low: it reads now about 1.8 tons, total. I suppose I could fiddle with the settings to make it more accurate, but I'm not.
I did one mid-season cleaning. The boiler was a demo, and came with 73 hours and 35 starts on it. The mid-season cleaning was at an indicated 605 hours/253 starts, so for my usage, 532 hours and 218 starts. Maybe the pellets were ashy (Dry Creek), I don't know, but the ash cassette was packed and the ash had started piling up in the chamber, so I feel it needed it. It's easy enough to open the boiler's door when the unit is off and see how much ash is built up. Other than brushing and vaccuming ash, I cleaned the burnpot components. No big deal.
At the end of the season cleaning, I brushed out the flue-hardly anything came out. I didn't want to remove the connecting pipe because of the hassle, so I put a couple of strings on the brush and managed to squeeze it into the pipe through the cleanout tee. I pulled it along the pipe until the reducer section, the boiler vent hole (the induced fan had been removed at that point). I used a hand brush to do the boiler vent area and up to the reducer, and vacuumed. One has to be careful of the sensor in the boiler vent.
I put a plastic shopping bag filled with plastic bags in the flue to stop the downdraft (there is indeed some-who knows). The cleanout cover is still off and I wrote myself a note on the boiler switch to remember to take it out.
The unit is cleaned sequentially from top to bottom. As noted, the induced fan was removed and cleaned, and a boiler brush run down from the top through the cleaning mechanism, plus vacuum. The baffle plate is removed, and the area brushed and vacuumed (again, there is a sensor in there to watch out for), ash augers vacuumed out. Note that there are two ash augers, one that is visible for what I will call bottom ash, and one that is behind a plate that you have to remove for what I will call fly ash.
The burn pot components are cleaned as before, (soaking in water does help), day hopper pellets removed, etc.
At the end of the season, I had put on 758 hours and 319 starts, for an average run time of 2.4 hours. If the boiler would have assumed more of the building's heat load, I imagine the average run time would have been greater.
That's all I can think of. There's another 5 tons of pellets in the basement, in addition to the 1.5 tons left (I'm a hoarder, but want to have enough for a season of pellet only burning). I'm ready to go for next winter!
I still burn wood in the insert. It doesn't keep the house evenly warm, especially the upstairs. The pellet boiler provides baseload heat and dhw, so the upstairs stays warm and the house stays warm when the insert's fire goes out. We went through, approximately, 3 to 3-1/4 cords of wood.
This was the first season for the BioWin; it worked well. I set it at 100 (10kw) during an early cold snap. It seemed to me to not keep up, so I set it to 150 (15kw), which seemed to be much better. Of course, I was fooling around with settings on my buffer tank as well, so that might've been a factor.
I put in a total of 122 bags, or 2.44 tons into the 4'x4'x4' wood box I built for the pellets. As an aside, the box holds a total of 57 bags (1.14 tons), of 41 bags (.82 tons) are usable with no user intervention (angle of repose and one pellet vacuum pickup). I ran the boiler until it wouldn't run anymore, moving the pellets with a shovel over the intake. Not counting the waste from the day hopper and the wood bin, I'd say I burned 120 bags, or 2.4 tons for the season. The unit's tonnage reading is somewhat low: it reads now about 1.8 tons, total. I suppose I could fiddle with the settings to make it more accurate, but I'm not.
I did one mid-season cleaning. The boiler was a demo, and came with 73 hours and 35 starts on it. The mid-season cleaning was at an indicated 605 hours/253 starts, so for my usage, 532 hours and 218 starts. Maybe the pellets were ashy (Dry Creek), I don't know, but the ash cassette was packed and the ash had started piling up in the chamber, so I feel it needed it. It's easy enough to open the boiler's door when the unit is off and see how much ash is built up. Other than brushing and vaccuming ash, I cleaned the burnpot components. No big deal.
At the end of the season cleaning, I brushed out the flue-hardly anything came out. I didn't want to remove the connecting pipe because of the hassle, so I put a couple of strings on the brush and managed to squeeze it into the pipe through the cleanout tee. I pulled it along the pipe until the reducer section, the boiler vent hole (the induced fan had been removed at that point). I used a hand brush to do the boiler vent area and up to the reducer, and vacuumed. One has to be careful of the sensor in the boiler vent.
I put a plastic shopping bag filled with plastic bags in the flue to stop the downdraft (there is indeed some-who knows). The cleanout cover is still off and I wrote myself a note on the boiler switch to remember to take it out.
The unit is cleaned sequentially from top to bottom. As noted, the induced fan was removed and cleaned, and a boiler brush run down from the top through the cleaning mechanism, plus vacuum. The baffle plate is removed, and the area brushed and vacuumed (again, there is a sensor in there to watch out for), ash augers vacuumed out. Note that there are two ash augers, one that is visible for what I will call bottom ash, and one that is behind a plate that you have to remove for what I will call fly ash.
The burn pot components are cleaned as before, (soaking in water does help), day hopper pellets removed, etc.
At the end of the season, I had put on 758 hours and 319 starts, for an average run time of 2.4 hours. If the boiler would have assumed more of the building's heat load, I imagine the average run time would have been greater.
That's all I can think of. There's another 5 tons of pellets in the basement, in addition to the 1.5 tons left (I'm a hoarder, but want to have enough for a season of pellet only burning). I'm ready to go for next winter!
