how much time to heat your water to 180*

What is your starting temperature?
What is the outside temperature?
Even with those questions not answered, it seems like way too much time.

For example; If my 720 gallons of pressurized storage is at 135-140, outside temp 40F, not really that much load from house, I can heat the tanks to 195 - 197 in about two - three hours.
My unit is bigger than yours, but then again your only trying to heat a small amount of water.
Something seems strange. Hopefully some eko owners will give you some insight as to cleaning. I usually clean the heat exchangers once a month, and the ash weekly.

i use the stack temp as a tool for cleaning the tubes. When cleaned, stack runs 400. When it starts getting over 500 pushing to 600 is when I clean. This has worked very well.

And i agree, it does seem to take too long. When the zones are off in my house, I can bring my 820 gals of storage from about 110 to 170 in 3 to 4 hours. Basically one fire box filled does this. My boiler is rated for 105,000 btu's.

One of the easiest (and most important) ways to know whether or not your EKO is producing "adequate heat" is to see what temp the return water is and compare this to your supply temps. Do you have a mixing valve/bypass loop setup? A properly setup system should run 20-30 degrees increase on water temps from return to supply. So if you're feeding your EKO 140 degree water constantly it's not unreasonable to think that it might not regularly hit 180.

I am wondering if your air setting are up too high, and you are forcing all the heat out the chimeny. I know that the EKO 25 is that same as the Paxo 25 I am getting, and they use the same fans fir the EKO 18, 25, the EKO 40 so if they are set on full open, that is way too much air It needs to be turned down to 50-70% Check out page 18 of this manual.

http://ahona.com/Orlan_Paxo/Manual Paxo web.pdf

Also how are you testing your wood for MC? There can be 10-15% difference in reading if you just [lug the probes in the end. vs splitting a piece open.

Unless your house is trying to draw 40,000 BTU/ hr while you are trying to heat your water, you either have:
Huge losses in your underground run like 50%
Very dirty exchanger tubes
very wet wood
or setting are out of whack

Here's a shot of my EKO 25 starting this afternoon. Here's what happened:

4:12 - light fire

4:16 - Controller detects that fire is lit and turns on EKO circ and storage circ and opens bypass valve. Hot water from storage starts circulating through boiler. Boiler inlet temp starts to rise, followed by outlet temp.

4:21 - I close the damper and turn on the fan. Doesn't really start secondary combustion. Only real temp rise is from storage water circulating through boiler.

4:36 - I stir the fire a bit. Secondary combustion kicks in immediately. Combustion temp shoots to 1300°F.

4:42 - Outlet temp is hot enough that the storage circulator turns off - no more preheating from storage.

4:59 - Recirc zone valve closes for good.

5:24 - Outlet temp reaches about 170. Controller starts adding optional loads, so outlet temp never gets any higher.

5:44 - I add a load of normal fuel - larger splits.

In this case, it took from about 4:36 to 5:24 (about 50 minutes) to get from around 120 to just under 170. During that time, high priority heat loads were getting serviced (bottom floor and main floor heating zones). It wasn't at full throttle since it only had a starter load of kindling and smaller splits.

What are the sizes of your splits, and how much do you load in for startoff?

Is your wood in a semi-warm location or is it coming in straight from the cold to the firebox?

I notice an immense difference in the "liftoff speed" of my Econoburn if I put in plenty of fine kindling and then lots of finely split wood (ideally no longer than 3 inches on a side)-- and not too big of a load of wood to start (maybe 1/4 of the height capacity of the firebox).

Once that's gotten a bed of coals going, I can put in more medium sized pieces and/ or cold wood from outdoors, but if I try to build the fire with an entire firebox full of medium to large pieces that have just come in from outside, it becomes the woodburner's version of Waiting for Godot.

Yes, I see this too. I have conceded defeat on this issue and remove the turbulators twice per burning season to clean the tubes on my EKO25. There is a buildup on the tubes even with dry wood that seems to be mostly flyash. If you let it accumulate your stack temps will rise and your heat transfer to the water will be lower.
BTW, it is a pain to get the turbulators out. Have fun!

Ryan

Strange - my EKO 40 has turb's that go all the way to the boiler floor. Well beyond the bottom of the HX tubes. I wonder if what you guys have is unique to the EKO 25?

The turbs on mine don't go all the way to the bottom either. I don't get any build-up of crud though. I clean the tubes twice per heating season with a wire tube brush. Only remove a small amount of fly ash. The bottom of the tubes should be the hottest so crud shouldn't build up there. The turbs fit loose enough in the tubes so I wouldn't say the tubes are clean after cycling the lever. If cycling the turbs cleans anything from the tubes you have to be way down on the efficiency curve.

Every time I clean the tubes on my EKO I say out loud "next boiler I buy will have tubes that are easier to access"

I suspect you don't want to hear this but here it is: Get yourself some storage!

I would have to agree, get storage and you will only be cleaning fly ash.

No question that running with storage will result in more efficient burning and cleaner tubes. But, that being said, you can improve things by running smaller, more frequent fires whenever possible. For some folks that's not easy to do, depending on time away from home and/or boiler being installed outside at some distance from the house. Firewood seasoning makes a big difference in what builds up in the tubes as well. In year 1 with the Econoburn, I wasn't aware of these things (no choice on the wood), and ended up that year with lots of creosote built up in the tubes - basically a nightmare. Hook - if you have creosote, it will not come off with a brush. You can probably tell if it's creosote by trying to see if it can pry some of it off with something like a flat screwdriver - if it flakes off reasonably easy, then it's probably just impacted ash. If it's very difficult to pry off, then it's likely to be creosote. Econoburns have 2" tubes, and cutters generally don't work well on creosote in a tube that big. But I believe most other boilers have smaller diameter tubes, and spinning something like a spade bit may work. If you are really stuck, and nothing is getting the stuff off, I can PM you a procedure that worked for me to get the creosote off after my first year. It's a homebrew cleaning method using an ash/water mix - results in a mess, and I hope you are able to get the job done by brushing or scraping, instead of what I had to do. Also +1 to what Fred said about working the turbs. Moving them only serves to knock off loose fly ash - they're not designed to (and will not) keep the tube walls clean by scraping them.