Looking for NON gasification indoor boiler

I am looking for an indoor non gasification indoor boiler. Thanks to anyone with tips and suggestions.

ericjeeper said:

I am looking for an indoor non gasification indoor boiler. Thanks to anyone with tips and suggestions.

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Couple of questions - any sense of what size you need? Any reason other than price for wanting non-gasification? There are quite a few choices out there.

Perhaps there should be three things to consider:

1.) How much money do you want to spend.
2.) How much space do you need to heat.
3.) How much wood do you want to burn.

From these you can probably make a pretty good assessment of where you should be looking for boilers. You may also want to take a look at some of the hearth.com sponser websites. Cozy Heat in Northern Michigan has quite a selection....

stee6043 said:

Perhaps there should be three things to consider:

1.) How much money do you want to spend.
2.) How much space do you need to heat.
3.) How much wood do you want to burn.

From these you can probably make a pretty good assessment of where you should be looking for boilers. You may also want to take a look at some of the hearth.com sponser websites. Cozy Heat in Northern Michigan has quite a selection....

Click to expand...

I might add a couple of additional points-

4) (a) how much comfort and convenience do you want
(and)
(b) how much do you want to try to avoid use of other energy for heat as much as you can

especially if you have a personal schedule that will have you away or not able to feed the fire often (a gasifier + storage opens whole new doors in terms of having heat for long intervals between fires)

and

5) how long do you plan to stay in your house? A gasifier will cost more, which may change the payback horizon, on the other hand, it may add more value to a knowledgeable buyer- only you can try to use your own crystal ball to foresee what you think will happen on these points

pybyr said:

stee6043 said:

Perhaps there should be three things to consider:

1.) How much money do you want to spend.
2.) How much space do you need to heat.
3.) How much wood do you want to burn.

From these you can probably make a pretty good assessment of where you should be looking for boilers. You may also want to take a look at some of the hearth.com sponser websites. Cozy Heat in Northern Michigan has quite a selection....

Click to expand...

I might add a couple of additional points-

4) (a) how much comfort and convenience do you want
(and)
(b) how much do you want to try to avoid use of other energy for heat as much as you can

especially if you have a personal schedule that will have you away or not able to feed the fire often (a gasifier + storage opens whole new doors in terms of having heat for long intervals between fires)

and

5) how long do you plan to stay in your house? A gasifier will cost more, which may change the payback horizon, on the other hand, it may add more value to a knowledgeable buyer- only you can try to use your own crystal ball to foresee what you think will happen on these points

Click to expand...

I plan on staying in this house til the day after I die. I built it..
I have a 3200 square foot home. heat loss figures out to 26k an hour. I originally was heating with a Bock 32 gallon water heater at 104kbtus per hour. It did fine til the oil man got stupid with his pricing. Now I have an OWB that is a waste of wood. I am not sold on the gasification boilers.. I understand they use less wood.. Also require large storage devices,.But in the long run I see them as being maintenance whores. Basically a fire in a tube of water with some secondary burn to it is what I am searching for.
I am for sticking it to the oil woman as long as I can,although I will still have the Bock for Backup.
I have radiant heat in the slab. So Laynes Caddy won't work for me.LOL

You have an outdoor boiler but want to switch to an indoor non-gasification boiler? Why? I don't see you picking up much in the way of wood consumption if you stick with the same technology but simply relocate it indoors.

Gasifiers don't require storage, it simply improves their efficiency and convenience. The Europeans have been using them for decades and I don't think you'll find many who will describe them as "maintenance whores"....they are very simple machines....

Many gasifier owners, at least those who frequent the Hearth.com Boiler Room are people who, by nature, like to measure, tweak, tune, and report on all of the above. This may give a mis-impression that the gasifiers themselves are high maintenance.

I saw a Biasi Wood3 last December-- it looked like a very well made non-gasification boiler. BUT the owner was having a terrible time with creosote build-up and with regulating heat output on moderate days. It did not look like it was going to end up being more maintenance than my gasifier- they were having creosote gum the door to the point that it was hard to open.

If you plan on staying where you are for life- how about putting a "Garn Barn" where your OWB currently is?

Same deal here, same size house but a little higher Btu requirement (further north), only my boiler has no secondary burn.

One other thing to consider is time between feedings. Manufacturers make claims on burn time but talk to people who use them. Yeah, it depends on the type of wood you burn, how big, species, moisture, etc, but by talking to a bunch of users you'll get some idea of what you're facing for burn time.

I can tell you I almost put in a new 5 section Biasi. At the same time a friend did and he took it out in January. 3 hour burn max. It was like a newborn baby.

Two others put in New Yorkers. Longer burn but one had a chimney fire problems. They have forced draft that shuts off and you get smoldering wood.

There are many out there so you're doing the right thing starting here.

My boiler is 25 years old and serves me well. It isn't the most efficient, the most sophisticated, or the best looking but it does the job and once I add some storage I'll be in golden.

Good luck!

I have an EKO with no storage and it works fine to heat my 1 1/2 story 2800sf house in northern Illinois . I have it in a shed out behind my garage and have had little maintenance. I know many of the folks here like to tweak the boiler and install all sorts of controls I on the other hand am going for simple.
I have a simple thermostat controlling the forced air furnace turning on everything except the gas burner. The boiler is in dumb mode just keeping the water hot and pumping it thru the system I load wood 2/3 times a day and a few times 4 when it was super cold.
The way I see it the only difference is I use a little less wood and have a little cleaner burn than the standard boiler.
That being said I intend to add some radiant panels and storage over the next couple of years to decrease the amount of wood and allow more flexibility in burning fires.

I hear your maintenance concerns but that house with radiant just screams small gassifier with storage.With that low of a load
and decent storage you can just burn when it is convenient.

I think you can keep it stupid simple and still stick to the oil man though. I have for 15 years. :coolgrin:

You might want to think about the difference in how clean a machine burns to. No need to poison yourself or your neighbors. I hope that the polluters will eventually be shut down.

All wood boilers need a decent load, if the home is a big enough load you shouldn't need storage. If the home need is low then I believe you need storage (no matter what boiler you have).

Energy King Boilers have a long and very good rep.

I don't tweak my tarm much at all. Only once since i got it set up. Went from really dry wood to just dry wood. I clean the tubes out about every 2 weeks in mid winter. My thought was to burn or buy/cut/sharpen saw/split/stack/lug/lug out the ashes a whole lot less than my neighbors. This thought process = gassifier! A little routine maintenace =not being a wood whore. A sh!tload less time cleaning the boiler(which you have to do no matter what you get) than extra time for wood. But...........that being said..........you need a GARN. Thems cool units!
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Figure a third or less wood use with a gassifier or a GARN. My neighbor has about 1/2 the heatload I have. He has an OWB. He burns about 6 cord a year. I use about 6 1/2 to 7 and I heat my DHW all summer long, he doesn't.
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Now that you got us knuckleheads wound up, are you happy? :coolsmile:
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Yeah, they cost more. How much wood do you use with your OWB? Is it hardwood or softwood you burn? Is it seasoned wood?

Eric,

I have a Thermo Control conventional boiler in my detached garage. It heats the garage by itself (heat from front door/stack/radiant from sides) plus the house via underground pex and a water to air heat exchanger in the furnace ductwork.

What the gasification veterans here are saying are all quite true. Based upon the experience I have had with this boiler THUS FAR (2008-2009 heating season) I would NEVER place one of these in my house simply due to the risk of chimney fires caused by creosote formation. My wood was not the best the first year so take this with a grain of salt. I was cleaning the chimney every 2-4 weeks.

The boiler made plenty of heat for both the garage and house. If creosote formation was not an issue, and it was in the basement of my house, I would say this would be an excellent conventional boiler choice. It probably would have used 1/3 the wood.

There are no "real" draft controls on this boiler. I had to add my own to keep it under control. I did not like the idea of a barometric damper. I have more control of it now but still keep close watch on the creosote formation.

If you have the money, do the gasser. I would love to try one.

Unless you are one of those types like some of us [me included] who are afflicted with the desire to never leave anything well enough alone and keep tuning ....

Gasifier maintenance =

Clean ashes out +

Scrub fire tubes periodically (at least once a year- more often will help your efficiency).

The first, you'd have to do with any solid fueled unit (or for that matter, pay someone to do at least once a year with an oil unit). The second is not rocket science- it's medium size wrenches and a brush and maybe a shopvac.

With pre-gasifier boilers, which I heated with in some places that I lived/ rented about 20 years ago, you're looking at ghastly accumulations of creosote in the firebox and flue. Think bubblegum that smells like woodsmoke. And woe unto you if it lights off- flue pipe will glow red, and the pressure relief on the boiler will send steaming hot water all over the floor (I know this from experience...)

I will wager dollars to doughnuts (up to a limit of 50 of either) that if someone ran a test of a gasifier that had the ashes removed consistently, but never had the fire tubes scrubbed, that it would still break even (or, I expect, better), in terms of heat yielded per unit of decent firewood, compared to a pre-gasifier. Plus, your chimney and flue pipe will stay immensely cleaner, and you will have extremely low risk of chimney fires compared to the 'old school' units. I just got done scrubbing mine (after previously owning a real 'retro' heating unit fed to the same chimney) and I'd rather deal with vacuuming fine ash out of a flue than worrying about creosote and chimney fires, any day/ month/ year...

Have a New Yorker WC90... burn coal on moderate days... high demand it burns wood okay... do need to keep chimney pipe clean... no tubes in it so that's not an issue... So far things seem to be going well... Second season with it this year.

I don't think I will burn it much this winter, except really cold periods... cost of oil is nearly break even so the extra work may not be worth it...

Give me a chance to evaluate the effect of the new heating system overall...

As others have said creosote will most likely be a problem. I routinely had 1500 degree flue gas temp out of my Energy Mate(non gasser) only to have it coat the chimney on idle. Cost was a big issue for me on the next boiler so I bought an Atmos. I believe you can buy an Atmos for about the same price as a Biasi 3 wood from Connecticut Green Heat. Mine came from Kotly in Poland when the exchange rate was much better. Rich at CGH has some real bargains on boilers now as do others like Zenon of New Horizon. They sell non gassers also, this not the way to go though, Randy