Seton had a meltdown. Help me pick the replacement!

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ISeeDeadBTUs said:
Power outages and wood boilers don't work well together. I've gone powerless a few times, and it sucks :shut: Heaterman says the Garn can handle power outages, but what about the rest of the house? If you need a generator to run circulator pumps, then buy the Genny and get the hydronic you want, not the one that handles power outages the best.

You know me, if someone handed me back my investment in the GreenWood I would have this awesome boiler!

2012. Patience my good man. Patience Supposedly we will have availability of the entire Viessmann wood burning line.
 
Fred61 said:
snowman49820 said:

Why would you want a transfer switch? Do you have some other source of power or have you mistakenly identified this unit as a inverter?

This is the unit that I purchased:
http://www.theinverterstore.com/the-inverter-store-product.php?model=pwric150012s
I might not always be there to start the generator. The last time I lost power it was for two days.
 
good Luck with your decision EP. Have you got any #'s on heat load? or heat load calc? This might shed some more info on what you want to buy. From what I know, the Tarm solo 60 can be run w/out storage. The Froling can not or can the Innova(which is what I have)These have to have storage. If you decide you want storage, the price of a Garn is = to a good gasser w/storage. Thats figuring on buying your storage system ready to go.


Just curious, how much wood you burn in a year?
 
heaterman said:
2012. Patience my good man. Patience Supposedly we will have availability of the entire Viessmann wood burning line.

I'm savin up!

No more fancy $5 coffees :blank:
No more Sheenesque nights :shut:
 
snowman49820 said:
Fred61 said:
snowman49820 said:

Why would you want a transfer switch? Do you have some other source of power or have you mistakenly identified this unit as a inverter?

This is the unit that I purchased:
http://www.theinverterstore.com/the-inverter-store-product.php?model=pwric150012s
I might not always be there to start the generator. The last time I lost power it was for two days.

But the unit you highlighted doesn't make any power! It's a transfer switch!
 
Thanks for all the replies guys. I didn't know what I was doing when we first installed the boiler and I'm still trying to figure out the best course of action. It's gong to cost me about $1k to get the seton back up and running. I'm gonna need a bailout pretty soon. Why didn't Fred Seton mention to me that I should have a system in place to protect during a power outage. I remember him mentioning that the damper Door would automatically close if power was cut off.

What should I do at this point? Fix the seton and add storage? How much storage do I need?
 
I've never dealt with the Seton, but here is my impression of the design gleaned from others' reports:

The basic design, if built with quality materials [which some of the 'Seton design cousins' were definitely not] is OK. Not great, but not poor. Better than some of the older wood boilers which were just a firebox surrounded by water, but not as good as some of the newer firetube gasification-type boilers.

In your case, the biggest factor is: you already own it.

The money you spent so far is already sunk, and if it's in a state that you need to sink money into it to make it work, I am guessing you won't do well selling it without re-furbing it.

Once you re-furb it (and is it really $1k- they don't sound that complex to work on), then you might as well try to put it into use to try to recoup your investment, given that any of the other options are likely to cost a minimum of $5k- and perhaps a good bit more.

Sizing storage is a matter of ascertaining your BTU heat load for your end uses, then your maximum temperature for your chosen storage type (pressurized or not; if unpressurized, you're limited by tank liner temp limits and/ or plain old boil-over), and your minimum useful temperature in supplying the heat load (radiant floor can use low temperature water, fin-tube baseboards or air-water heat exchangers need rather high temperature water). Raising one gallon of water one degree F takes 8.34 BTU, and, accordingly, one gallon can give you back 8.34 BTU when you pull it down one degree by transferring heat back out.

Do some math with all of that, and also the desired times you want to be able to have between burns, and you'll start to get the picture. At the same time, if the heat load is not much lower than your boiler output for a large portion of your heating season, storage will be of limited use, as you can't store BTUs that you can't spare from immediate and ongoing heat load needs.
 
Just talked to my plumber. Replacement pumps, pressure tank, aquastats, gauge, PRV/TRV's and 2 hrs labor =$723. At least the silicone door seals I made held up.

It sounds like the Garn would be an awesome upgrade, but at around $15k + install it's out of my range. I will prob fire the Seton back up for the time being, hopefully without any unknown problems appearing, and look for a good deal on a TARM 60.

I'll sell the Bock I currently have and install a regular Well-Mcclain oil boiler or the like. That Bock runs almost nonstop and eats around $800 of fuel oil a month.
 
That Tarm 60 sounds like a good plan, Randy
 
Just to update anybody who stumbles accross this thread...i sold the bock for $1500 and installed a toyo om-180 which works great and burns about half the oil the bock was using. I refurbed the seton and added a custom made sheetmetal smoke hood with a 1575 cfm flopro fan from Amazon to catch all the smoke and ash during loading and cleaning. im adding an 820 gal storage system with HX from American Solartechnics which is going to run me about $5k shipped after its all said and done. would love a Garn, but theyre $18k now before install/insulation/framing etc so at this point it makes more sense to add storage to the Seton and run the thing. Ive learned a lot over the past year and have gleaned valuable info from this site and its members so thanks guys!
 
Just to update anybody who stumbles accross this thread…i sold the bock for $1500 and installed a toyo om-180 which works great and burns about half the oil the bock was using. I refurbed the seton and added a custom made sheetmetal smoke hood with a 1575 cfm flopro fan from Amazon to catch all the smoke and ash during loading and cleaning. im adding an 820 gal storage system with HX from American Solartechnics which is going to run me about $5k shipped after its all said and done. would love a Garn, but theyre $18k now before install/insulation/framing etc so at this point it makes more sense to add storage to the Seton and run the thing. Ive learned a lot over the past year and have gleaned valuable info from this site and its members so thanks guys!

I just stumbled across this thread. What did you do to prevent a meltdown from happening again? Glad to see you are up and running again. The Toyo sounds like it is a nice one.
 
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