Wood Doctor or Central boiler

I am curious as to why this type of boiler would be easier for your wife and son to use. I am looking at gassification units and they look like you just open the door and fill it? Am I missing something. The gassifiers also seem to work better with smaller pieces of wood?

I don't think keeping a gasifier going is any more difficult than tending a wood stove. The main difference between a gasifier and an OWB is in the engineering and design. All that stuff is pretty transparent to the user. And my EKO 60 can take as big a chunk of wood as I can lift. If you can get it though the 12 x 18-inch door, it will burn. That's assuming it's sufficiently dry. You need very dry wood with most gasifiers. You can burn green wood in an OWB, but you'll get creosote and smoke.

Loading frequency is one of the most misunderstood and abused measures that exist when it comes to stoves, boilers and furnaces. Your loading frequency is tied to so many different variables, that any prediction is worthless, IMO. Type and condition of wood, outside temps, house demand, insulation, etc., etc., all factor into the equation. It's probably the least relevant measure of any boiler, but it seems to be one of the most frequently asked. The salesman tells you whatever he thinks you want to hear. With the right size gasifier and hot water storage, you can get away with loading the boiler once every couple of days under the right conditions. Or, you can load the same boiler 3 or 4 times a day. Same with an OWB.

I truly want a gasifier but since I have no dry wood ready right now and may have to go the first season with mostly green wood should I not go with a gasifier??? From what I have read thus far I will sacrifice the efficiency using mostly green...but I could still do it? I'm hoping to get away with paying the premium cost of already seasoned wood from somebody locally and mixing with what I cut between now and the upcoming heating season. The OWB was my first choice mainly due to lower pricing at the time...but it seems they are rapidly increasing in cost with the supply/demand at this time.

I received a flyer in the mail today from Wood Doctor and I also got a phone call from their local distributer. Nice enough guy and would have talked all night if I wanted to. Basically he answered all my questions but the thing that got me was he said to run any underground piping 18 to 24 inches and not worry about going any deeper. I always thought the lines needed to be below frost line which around here is around 36". He swears he's never had a problem with his or any of his customers going only 24"....sound right to you guys? He pointed out that their models have a secondary burn chamber but stopped short of calling it a gasifier although he said their "converter" model was a gasser but unless I had at least 3k sq ft that it would not work for me?

We really need an 'energy star' type sticker for wood boilers - something that shows fuel consumption and particulate emissions for the unit under consideration compared to the range of available units. Right now, salesmen say whatever they want and it's hard to dig up the straight story. I for one don't care whether something is technically a gasifier or not. The issue is how much wood does it burn to provide a season's worth of heat for a typical house, and how much smoke does it generate in the process.

I'll agree that operation of a gasifier is not terribly complicated. It's fair to say that there's a bit more to it at first, and there's more opportunity for 'fine tuning' if you're so inclined. However, a gasifier outperforms an OWB by a huge margin, even if the gasifier isn't operated at the peak of perfection. As Eric says, most of the technology is invisible to the user, unless the user cares to look for it.

It sounds like dry wood for the first season is a major issue for you. I would suspect that if you got wood now and cut/split/stack it so that it's covered but with decent air circulation, it will be dry enough by November. You would need some drier wood to start fires, but once it's going you can burn partially seasoned wood with no problems. I started cutting wood for my first season in September. I had to find dead / solid trees, but I did fine.

Is there any possibility of putting the boiler in your basement? Gasifiers don't create creosote, so the chimney fire risk goes away. Indoor installation also means that you and your family members don't have to go out in the snow to tend it. Indoor also saves the expense and heat loss of buried pipes. You'd be burning less than half the wood, so wood handling is reduced as well.

Welcome aboard, Dude! I would seriously recommend you take a chill pill before plunking down any cashola. You are making decisions based on salesmen and sales brochures. For example:

knteriele said:

I can put larger pieces of wood in a OWB so less splitting.

Click to expand...

A 14" red oak round weighs about 70# at 18". That will easily fit in my GreenWood gassifier. Will it take a 20" round? Technically, yes. But I'm not picking it up to put it in! And certainly, neither is my wife!

But my biggest concern is the 'OWB - bigger is better- mentality'. You say the wood Doctor is good for 8k [] and so you think it's the right size for half the space??? :roll: They need to come out with an OWB that has a chute where you can drop a bucket loader full of wood into it :exclaim:

BTW, two pieces of the aforementioned oak would go 10 hours on a typical Upstate day in MY GW.