Water Storage??

Don't apologize. we've all been there. I still am compared to some of the guys on this site.

Others will explain why, but storage with an OWB won't work well. My indoor boiler is next door in my garage. Insulated room. fire boiler once a day to heat storage and house. Boiler room has enough residule heat to keep from freezing, quite frankly, very comfy in there 16hrs later. A lot of people have built boiler rooms outside from the house. Made 'em big enough to store wood also. Consider this also.

About 18+ months ago i was looking to switch to wood. Up here in maine, the price of an OWB was about 12k, give or take. i bought a gassifer + storage tank for about 11k. Cost about 4k to have installed(BIL sold me materials at cost). Gassifier will use at least 1/3 less wood(maybe even 1/2 as much) than a OWB. No brainer for me.

There are cheaper prices on this stuff now. You can DIY on storage, or even go without. You will burn less wood, and have no smoke coming out your chimney.

Keep asking questions here, a true savings of $$$'s will happen.

Vinrum

Your state (Connecticut) has the following regulation you should be aware of pertaining to OWBs:

"Must have a chimney that is more than the height of the roof peaks of residences located within 500 feet of the OWF, provided the chimney height is not more than 55 feet. (This is to the actual roof peak, not the mid-line of the slope)." http://www.ct.gov/dep/cwp/view.asp?a=2684&Q=321780

These things can look pretty strange with a smoke stack that high, not to mention they weren't designed to have stacks like that...

I would echo what flyingcow said about an attached boiler room. Burying lines can be very expensive. A self-installed gasser and DIY storage in the form of propane tanks or an open tank can actually end up costing a lot less than an OWB. On top of the 12+k the unit costs, you have to bury the lines and since most OWBs are not fully pressurized, you have to buy expensive plate heat exchangers etc. etc.

My father runs and OWB and I have a gasser. I can personally attest that I use about 1/3 the amount of wood per year that he does and I even burn once a week in the summer for dhw. His system also cost more to put in and I am even counting the my cost of having an installer do mine.

There are some gasser OWBs, but they have not been on the market long. I have not heard good stuff about e-classic due to them putting steal in the path of the gasser flame. I just came across this one http://woodgasificationfurnace.com/index.php today, but I don't know anything about them. I still think it is safer to go with a proven gasser in a boiler room though... just my $0.02!

Well I think storage will make an OWB more efficiant as it will let you burn it hot and not let it idle but I would almost never tell someone to buy a new traditional OWB. They are inefficiant and smoke makers no matter what you do. A gasifier is so much better that I can't see anyone spending the same money for less. It's very easy to put a indoor gasifier in a shed, pole building, or my favorite shipping container. You can make it look better than an OWB with storage of your wood, water storage and have a nice warm place to be when you feed the fire.
As other here say having it inside has some advantages and I don't disagree but I feel having it in a shed or such is better. The hardest part about going to a gasifier is to relearn how to burn wood. If you have never done it you are ahead of the game as you don't have to brake bad habits.
DRY WOOD-----I repeat DRY WOOD at min one year cut and split and better yet two.
When first building a fire use very small splits and then small splits, let it burn untill you get a coal bed, then fill stove. You will NOT get gasification if you don't have a coal bed.
Once you have mastered these rules they are as easy as any other boiler to run.
There are a couple of OWB's that are gasifiers out there but I personally feel they aren't proven enough yet to recomend them. They are still built on the false idea that you can fill them up with LOTS of wood and get a LONG burn and that doesn't work well because if you aren't useing the heat it has to idle and that means smoltering and making smoke, creasote, and giving off gases out the chimney.
Thats the reason storage would help a OWB as you would burn up the wood and not put it out in the air. Of course if you fill up a large CB and try and put it all into storage you will need some really huge tanks. Keep reading here and asking questions and you will learn what is best for you
leaddog

You should look at a Garn which is boiler and storage in one. I would also suggest the Econoburn which has some high BTU units and storage could be added later, but then you must size the unit closer to your actual demand. By putting storage in at the start you can actually size the unit larger and if the boiler and storage are sized correctly, get a away with only one firebox burn a day. Once you get it down, starting fires in these things takes about 5-10 minutes. I get it started with the door cracked and bypass partially open and then come back in twenty minutes to turn on the fan and close the door and bypass.

What are you heating with now? Oil, Gas, etc? How much fuel in a yr?

What do you have for a delivery system? Baseboard, hot air, radiant floor?

You can figure a rough guess on wood usage with these figures. But should do a heat load calc.

What i used was 150 gals of oil = 1 cord of well seasoned wood. This worked pretty good. You got a lot of sq footage to heat.


My set up, i start a fire every day in the winter. Burns out in about 4 hrs, or 8 if i refill it, just depends on how cold it is. Only takes 10 minutes to start a fire and leave.

Google GARN and check that beast out. Should be a video of a older gentleman showing you his set up. Good vid.

Vinrum,
I suspect from your question that you already own an OWB and just want to get more efficiency out of it. If so, sorry I can't help you with that question.

If that is not the case and you're looking at OWB's you might want to take a look at this site.
http://www.alternativefuelboilers.com/products.htm

It seems the good folks at Econoburn have entered the OWB market.

Vinrum
Where in CT are you? I would suggest going to see a few setups if you get the chance. There are a few different ones here in the state.
6000 sq ft is an awful lot of house to try to heat. Is that all living space or does that include basement/garage/outbuildings?

Greg H

vinrum said:

No, I havent took the plunge yet.. I am trying to do as much research as I can before jumping into it. As a matter of fact, the Oil Man is comming in the morning dropping another 200 gallons. It makes me sick,

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I still remember the day I called the oil company up and told them to stop delivery. One of the best phone calls I ever made. I am 100% oil free in the house!

Ok for what is worth here is the opinion of someone who has used an OWB for 10 years.

NO WAY would I ever install another one on my property. My nearest neighbor is 2-3 miles away & I can easily follow the smoke from my unit to their residence.

All of the newer OWB's are untested/unproven in real world circumstances. You get to pay for the priviledge of being their guinea pig. Whether the unit works as promised or not. You are the free test case.

Of the 45 OWB companies that I was aware of 3 years ago only 20 are still in business & that number keeps on shrinking. If the OWB company that you buy from closes it's doors your warranty may as well be used to....well....start a fire.

You will spend the same money for an OWB as you would a far more efficient gaser even when you factor in the cost of a shed that would also keep your wood dry BTW.

You will use 3-6 times (or more) wood with an OWB. Trust me on this. Some of these OWB's have real world numbers as low as 20%. So 80% of your work in that case would be for nothing.

IMO you should keep reading here (a lot) & try & decide which of the gasers would best suit your situation. Buy that unit, plan for storage even if you do it later as budget allows.

You will spend the same $$$$, burn far less wood, pollute far less, enjoy your wood burning experience much more for much longer. IMO unless OWB's can be priced at $750.00-$1500.00 new there is just no way that they can compete with gasers. As you would need to save at least that much up front in order to have a prayer of breaking even with the cost savings of a gaser as time goes by.

1 gaser should have the same life span as 3 OWB's (assuming equal quality of construction). Gaser will burn far less wood (not even close to OWB territory). Gaser will produce a tiny fraction of the pollution of an OWB (again not even close to OWB territory). You do the math, see which one makes sense for your situation.

vinrum,
i have my boiler next door in an unattached building. About 40ft from house. My storage is in basement of house. From boiler to storage is about 100ft. Tank is under living rm flr. Check out the link at bottom of page. This is the company that I bought my tank from. Works very good. But it's only 820 gal, i suspect you will need more than that.

Yes, you can put your storage in shed also. Keep posting here and asking questions. Well worth your time.


The GARN is not a gasser, but performs like one. This has storage built in. Might be your best choice. Small units go for about $12,000, give or take. About the same price as a gasser with storage. So it's a wash. On the GARN site there is a BB of people that have bought and installed them. Also there are quite a few GARN users here. If interested, start another thread asking GARN users to give you their feedback. Some of them have blogs and pics and day by day as they install. Good reading. The "beast" has quite a following.

As someone pointed out, there are quite a few people that have gassers, that are on this site from CT. Might be able to get one to let you take a peek.


Good Luck, might want to start buying or processing you own wood now. It needs to be dried close to a yr, preferably more, to burn in any of these units. Buy it now green, make sure to cut/split/stack soon. Never too early. You mentioned 200gals of oil. Figure that to be = to about 1 1/4 cord of stacked wood(approx). check out wood prices for area. Figure total oil for yr, roughly figure 150 gals of oil= 1 cord of well seasoned wood.

vinrum said:

Greg I am in Somers.. My house is 3200sqft, basement 1700sqft and garage 1200sqft.. If I was to go with with a indoor gasser in a wood shed, would I have to put the storage in that shed, or will it go in my basement? The basement would be a problem due to only having a bulk head. Also, is there gasser with the storage built into them?

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It is prefered that storage is as close to the heat load as possible, but it could work in your shed if that is the only place you can located it. A couple of smaller propane tanks in series might fit through your bulk head or you could build a non-pressurized tank in place. There is quite a variety of DIY tank builds on this site.

The only built in storage that I know of is a Garn. If you are into the DIY tank thing (either propane or open), then going with a regular gasser can cost less.

Another option would be to build a boiler room in or onto your garage. The advantages being that you do not have to bury pipes and do not have to go outdoors to load. With a separate exterior entrance it can make access to wood very easy.