Biasi 3Wood Install

I finished my install on mine yesterday. Of course the only reason I wasnt done 6 weeks ago was they forgot the little flue gas baffle for the top chamber and it took them a long time to get it here. First fire will probably be tonight.

I should get some pics of mine. First fire is just getting up to temp now. Congrats on the new boiler.

Looks good..

I installed mine a little over a month ago, seems to work well, all I had to do is address a couple of ghost flow poblems but nothing major.
I did install a bypass and a couple of tempeture gauges to help protect the wood boiler from thermal shock, plus it helps to keep the circulator on for longer run cycles.

I am going to install a second thermostat for the house and set it to 65 deg f. Depending on what you have for an oil burner you can either hook it up to the tt on the primary control or install a single zone relay and use one of the dry contacts to interupt B1 on the aquastat going to the oil burner. I feel this will hold off the oil burner more than setting the aquastat to a lower temp. Also this will only work for a cold start oil boiler as you need to maintain tempeture if you have a domestic coil.

I have the circulator set at 175 with a 25 deg f. differntial, the over heat thermostat set at 210 and it turns on my main zone which has the largest heat load. There is a large volume of water in my house due to the cast iron radiators so I had to install a bypass to limit the amount of heat drawn from the wood boiler and to slowly brind everything up to temp with out short cycling the circulator.

If you have a Becket or a Carlin oil burner look to see if the primary has TT connections. If so there is usauly a jumper accross them. Remove the jumper and run a thermostat wire to it then find a place for the thermostat. Set the thermostat to the minimum tempeture you would desire if the wood boiler was out and set it to that temp.
Your original thermostat will heat the house normaly as long as there is a wood fire and the second one will only heat it to say 60 or 65 if the wood boiler goes out.
In my opinion this will hold off the oil boiler for as long as possable. That way if there is large heat load it would give the wood boiler first priority to fullful that call for heat and stop the oil boiler from short cycling to try and compensate.

Kevin, have you fired the boiler yet? I nstalled a honeywell aquastat close to the wood boiler set at 120 which will cut power to the oil boiler when the wood boiler is above this set point. I have a Crown Freeport cold start oil boiler so it does not maintain a set temp, just cools down to room temperature.
I would be interested to know if you have to reload your boiler at 2 AM to keep it going, or will it hold a fire through out the night as it gets colder.

So how do you like teh 3wood now that we are part way through the season? I'm amazed at how well mine heats but I'm also amazed by the amount of Creosote mine will make. Especially right around the door.

So far I have burnt 1 1/2 cords of wood and 1/8 of a tank of oil. I havent broken it down yet but my oil consumption used to be just over 800 gals a year. I vacuumed out the uppper chamber of the boiler, cleaned my smoke pipe and checked the chimney. I have some build up of creosolt but I am pretty sure some of my wood wasnt as seasoned as well as it should of been.
Nothing gets me off of the couch faster than hearing the oil boiler light off, (time to fill the wood boiler)..

The only problem I have had with the boiler is the knob for the Samson draft regulator, the plastic threads stripped out, but I called Biasi and they had a new one in my mail box in less the 24hrs.

QHT is very good about supporting their products. Im at about the same consumption. I had been closing the damper when burning and that really helped suck the heat out of the wood but it helped creosote buildup a little too much too. Now that I just leave it open it burns a lot cleaner. Only been leaving it open for about 2 weeks but it definitely seems to help.

Not happy with my new 3wood7.

My house is moderate sized (I have a 107K oil boiler) which also heats the domestic hot water. The 3wood5 was sufficient size but I bought the 7 for growth.

I didn't have another flue in my basement so I installed the boiler in my attached garage. The 3wood is plumbed about 55' with 1 1/4" black iron and copper.

The first month I actually had creosote dripping out of my chimney. After it clogged so bad I upgraded the flue to 8" to my chimney which is 8X12 block. I also removed the metal divider in the smoke chamber. This helped the burn tremendous. Keep in mind I have burned wood my whole life for heat, so a wood fire is nothing new.

Here is my disappointment:

I burn 1/2 cord of wood a week and can only get a max six hour heating burn time, after six hours it never heats up enough to push the water to the basement. So unless you do the fire late and then in the middle of the night with out question the oil boiler is running by 6 AM. That is the big problem, I have gone through 3/4 of a tank of oil already since October. On the cold nights we've had recently, no matter how the fires burning in the boiler if I don't start my wood stove inside the 3wood can't keep up. I would have used less oil and wood this season if I was burning my wood stove only. I am so disappointed I am ready to pull it out, but have so much money tied up in it I fell stuck.

In my quest to stretch my shrinking wood pile I started trying coal. After about three weeks trying the coal I am still unable to keep a consistent fire. In order to burn the coal I had to open the bottom door and put a blower tube in the fire, this kept a decent fire but if you don't clean the FULL ash pan Daily it is nearly impossible to keep the fire up to temperature. Basically all the coal did was stretch the wood since I had to keep wood on top to keep the coal burning under neath. To top this off the ice storm two weeks ago took the power out, by the time I got home and hooked up the generator the 3wood vapor locked which in turn smoked my circulator and made an impressive mess in the garage.

So here I am Thousands of dollars out, 5 cords of wood 175 gallons of oil and 750 pounds of coal later with the door open trying to get a good fire going listening to my oil boiler kick on every time my wife turns on the hot water.

I feel better already getting that off my chest, my wife is ready to kill me over the money we have into this and I don't know what to do next. Any ideas? Suggestions?
I will post pics of the install soon.

First thing I would do is get an indirect water heater. I have been doing 2 fires a day an am and a Pm fire. heat the house to 78 then let it fall to 70 and start over. the indirect control is wired to only call for heat if the wood is hot so it keep water hot without using the water in the indirect to heat the house and I have the oil switched right off. Creosote on mine is much improved now that I dont really ever let it idle. wood consumption is way down too. I go through 2 fireboexs full even on monday when it was cold and the wind was blowing like theres no tomorrow. To get the longer burn you really need to be way oversized. Then youre creosote production will be through the roof. sounds like that was what was going on when it was warmer out. when its colder you dont get as much creosote but you get even less burn time.

My big problem is I can heat my house the same with a small woodstove and 550 gallons of oil a year. I bought the boiler because I have my own source of wood and wanted to eliminate the oil or mostly eliminate minus the small amount in the summer for hot water. At the rate I'm going I will burn the same oil more wood and more coal. The 3wood just doesn't seem to keep up.

I have also installed a aquastat on my oil burner that turns down to 140. I have just turned off the oil but once the 3wood is behind it never catches up. A picture is worth a thousand words so I will get a couple pics up as soon as I can. I am still confident there is a solution but running out of time and money to find it!!

I was originally looking at the Alternative Fuel Boiler (http://www.alternativefuelboilers.com/products.htm) but the Biasi was 1/2 the money.

Id be tempted to just set up a 6006 aquastat for the boiler instead of what they give with the biasi. that way it will turn off the oil when the wood is hot rather than just reducing the oil. its bad for the oil burner to run down at 140. the 6006 switches from 1 source to the other so you can only have 1 running at a time. A boiler cold water protection setup might help too. with the water cooled grates sending cold water at the biasi is very very counter productive to a good fire.

Where are you in VT?

Near Killington. I am not familiar with cold water protection? Who makes the 6006?

Honeywell L6006 aquastat relay. you can set up to switch power from the wood circ to the oil burner. cold water protection is mostly done on the gassifiers. Tarm requires one. Basically you put in a valve that prevents water under a certain temperature from getting to the boiler. With the biasi I've had times when I built a small fire and when the boiler gets up to temp and all the cold water gets sent right at the coals of the fire the fire dropped way down and almost went out. same thing happens when a zone kicks in and the boiler gets hit with cold water from the pipes in the zone that turned on. do this too often and it kills your combustion efficiency. Also causes the firebox to condense and can cause premature failure of the boiler block.
Unfortunately Killington is quite a hike for me or Id drive down and take a peak at things to see if there was anything I could do to help straighten things out for you.

Here are some snap shots of the 3Wood and the Smith in my basement.

Is there any way you could do up a rough piping diagram? Its hard to follow in the pictures.

You are not the only ones with these problems. I have a New Yorker WC90 hooked up just like you guys are talking about and I am having all of the same problems, short burn times, low water temps, having to fill the boiler all hours of the day and night and spending lots of money. I feel your pain!

All you guys with problems...do you have radiant or HWBB? My good friend put in a 5 section Biasi tied into his System2000. After several days of frustration the installers (he hired it) called in the Biasi rep. He said the 5 section was the issue so they put in a 7 section for no additional charge.

For 2 more weeks after installation they still couldn't get it running right. Water for heat wasn't hot enough, luke warm domestic hot water, and the oil and wood systems seemed to be fighting each other. They ended up taking out the 7 section, gave him all his money back, and he put his woodstove back in that was there in the first place. Through all this neither the installer or Biasi folks could explain why it wouldn't work.

My house is as big as his and I'm using a 25 year old Memco through HWBB with no issues. We run around in our underwear and take extra long showers to get rid of the heat. My friend has radiant in his garage slab and the rest of the house (1 story big ranch) is radiant. I think the Biasi holds around 17 gallons of water and when the circulator kicks on it gets all that cold water from the radiant and it just can't get ahead of the demand. I think the Biasi is a great boiler but there are just some installations they don't work well with. Fortunately the installer and Biasi/QHT do stand behind their product which isn't the case with many companies these days.

As far as your 6 hour burn time I think that's about all you're gonna get. I am barely getting that with mine and that's after messing with it for 3 months tweaking my techniques. It's like having a baby that needs to be fed at night, but at least is goes back to sleep easier than either of our boys did!

One last thing...I tried to talk my friend into some storage. I think that would have helped but he was at the end of his rope and had shelled out several grand at that point. It's easy to throw good money after bad but I think if you're running any wood boiler storage is the way to go, especially if you've got radiant.

Good luck to all of you...

I here what you are saying about the cold water and not being able to catch up, but I have HWBB with my WC90 and I'm having a hard time as well and I would take a 6 hour burn time any day of the week over my 3 hour. I'm eating up wood like crazy!