Orlan Eko Garage Installation

CCPFIOL said:

Hello,
I'm not sure if I'm in the right place but I have a question. I just got An Orlan solo 40 that I was planning to put in my basement to replace an old wood furnace. While getting it off the trailer I had a moment where my life passed in front of me and decided that the basement might not work.

Can I install the boiler in my garage, with storage, and have it ran to an air exchanger in the basement (which will run with my existing propane furnace) without too many problems or am I adding thousands of dollars to the project? Along with a air exchanger I plan to add a couple water radiators in the house eventually.

Or, should I suck it up and pay someone $12,000 to move the boiler into my basement?

Thank you.
Pete

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Woodburning appliances are generally not allowed in garages by national fire code. Your insurance company may care even if you live in an area where the local code gestapo doesn't care.

I suspect that paying someone to lower it into your basement might be a tad less than $12K. I've seen a boom-type wrecker used to lift and lower heavy items into a cellar bulkhead opening (with the stairs removed) and I've seen winches used to ease heavy items down oak planks laid on the stairs in other cases. Probably makes sense to hire someone with the right equipment, though. Having that thing rol over you and go end-over-end down the stairway would likely ruin your day.

Once it's downstairs, steel pipe rollers are a good way to move it where it needs to go.

nofossil said:

Woodburning appliances are generally not allowed in garages by national fire code. Your insurance company may care even if you live in an area where the local code gestapo doesn't care.

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Does anyone know whether there's a legitimate way to avoid, but not evade [a key distinction] that code prohibition by creating a distinct room within a garage that the gasifier can go in?

I ask not for myself (my Econoburn is already in the cellar) but for an acquaintance who's already very committed to heating with wood but is doing so with an old/ undersized VT Castings stove (so she and her husband and kids are all are shivering)

Their situation (existing baseboard hot water with a propane boiler) would be PRIME for adding a gasifier boiler, except that their very old house has a very tiny cramped basement with almost no access, no headroom, etc. Not unusual for old VT farmhouses...

Their garage is the one apparent place so far that they could fit the boiler and get to it in order to tend it

Here's what I was told. I live in an area where i don't need/have a code compliance officer. But the insurance company told me i can install this in my garage(unattached, 20 ft from house). Need to have a solid wall between garage and furnace room. Furnace room needs to have an outside entry. No entry allowed from garage space to furnace room. Vapors and such combustibles are a concern. Quite frankly, I can see their point(Just a little bit). So after a lengthy discussion, I have reclassified the garage as a wood shed/storage. Promised no vehicles or gas cans, etc. So far they seem o.k. with that. Ironically when I asked what hoops/requirements do I have to jump thru to put this in my basement, the insurance rep said just do it, no problem. .."You have more requirements for me to locate this in an unattached building, but not when I put the wood appliance under my family?" No response.

My Tarm is in an attached garage. We have no code enforcement here, and the insurance company didn't say anything about it.

I like to be able to drive firewood right to the boiler, it eliminates moving it one more time by hand.

My insurance company also told me no problem with putting my Tarm in an attached garage. They even said I may possibly be coverd for a freeze up. Just think how many thousands of woodstoves there are out there in garages.

machinistbcb said:

My insurance company also told me no problem with putting my Tarm in an attached garage. They even said I may possibly be coverd for a freeze up. Just think how many thousands of woodstoves there are out there in garages.

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Glad to hear it- but, as someone who has spent a lot of time dealing with insurance companies via my day job, and even some time, a number of years back, working on their behalf--

if your local agent said that, then GET IT IN WRITING, ASAP.

Even if you they won't put it in writing on their own, and tell you that you don't need it in writing, and time has passed since the conversations, then write your local agent that told you it was OK a letter that basically says

"Dear [name of local agent who told you it was OK]

During [month] of [year] I asked you if it was OK under my existing homeowners' insurance policy with [name of insurer], without complicating my coverage, to put my [XYZ make and model] wood boiler in my garage, and you said yes.

In reliance on your verbal representations, I spent [A] thousands of dollars and [tens or hundreds] hours of my personal time, installing that wood boiler, that you said was OK, in my garage, and now further rely on your aforementioned assurances in now heating my home with wood without going broke on oil.

Based on the foregoing, and your authority as an agent to bind the insurance company you represent, I am proceeding in reliance on that basis that my coverage is and will remain in full force and effect."

send it certified mail, return receipt requested, and keep copies of the receipt and the letter

Here's why you need something along the lines of that magic legal mumbo jumbo

the people that are local insurance agents who initially market and sell insurance policies and get commissions on them have an incentive to keep you happy-- they make their living on the commissions to sell policies and keep existing customers- so they have a built- in incentive to tell you (but not necessarily document) what they think you want to hear

and

the people who review claims when the insurance company's "home office" that might have to pay out beaucoup bucks when something goes wrong somewhere (even if you have a fire totally unrelated to your wood boiler) have a _whole_ different set of incentives- they make their livings and bonuses by how many claims they _deny_ AND absent proof in writing that someone told you it was OK, they will not believe your "word" of what some local insurance agent "told" you during a conversation. they have a built in incentive to send you to the cleaners, regardless of what their same insurance company's agent said to you but no one put in writing.

Nor, most likely, will a court take your side unless you have written documentation that you were assured it was OK.

it's probably only going to get uglier right about now, because insurance companies and their loss reserve investment portfolios that they have to pay settlements out of are most likely taking the same bashing that all other investments are lately in the current economic turmoil - giving them all the more self-serving and desperate incentive to try to stiff or short people on claims- even valid claims.

Hate to sound like the grouch, but I've seen too many situations where decent folks got hosed because of the above competing cross-incentives.

With insurance, and documentation of what it covers you for, like with boiler controls, better safe than sorry.

Nothing new, unfortunately: the same cross-incentives have been going on since commercial insurance emerged around the time of or shortly after the US Civil War.

Insurance has a valuable role, but only the wary and assertive are likely to get their full paid-for value from it when push comes to shove.

Good advice.