New E100 Wood Gun is in the Basement.

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Gasifier

Minister of Fire
Apr 25, 2011
3,211
St. Lawrence River Valley, N.Y.
Hey, thanks for the responses guys. I am learning a little more everyday. I appreciate it.

Well I got The Wood Gun in the basement. I measured and remeasured. I did not know if we could get the right angle on it to get it through the window because of the weight. But the wife suggested I try it. This would put it right where it was going. I took two Anderson sliders out of their frame and we layed the boiler it on it's side on a piece of plywood on the ground. Using this tow truck of my brothers was great. It had two winch cables off of the telescopic boom! Swwweeet. We were able to lay it down, then use one cable on the lift ring on the top and then the other one on a short chain with a hook on each end hooked to the c-channel on the bottom. We then used the wheel lift on the truck to push it into the window as far as we could and coax it onto a sturdy ramp that I had built down to the basement floor. We were then able to unhook the bottom of the boiler and slide it down slowly by letting down on the top of it. A few scratches and dings, but nothing major. And did not have to try to man handle it. I will be looking for some input in the future for install. But I am going to take my time. I have printed out a couple of the simple diagrams and am having my HVAC guy look them over before we get started. Can't wait to get it going. But will take my time anyway. Looking for a used tank I can afford for thermal storage as well. Thanks again.
 
Congrats! But, no pics??!! :(

We have the same boiler and were lucky enough to be able to use a skidsteer to lower it into our basement entry by the top hook. Then used a floor jack to get her into the final position for hook up. I hired out the install work but in hind sight I learned to be sure there are shut off valves on either side of anything that ever needs to be replaced, have backflow preventer on the water supply line and be sure you have a big enough expansion tank...these were slight overlooks on my part.

As for storage, I was convinced going into this that I would at some point install thermal storage...and in the 1st shoulder season I often regretted not having storage. But, now that we are burning truly seasoned firewood I am rethinking this. I am truly amazed at how long the boiler can be idle and have the wood re-fire from the coals. We don't plan to burn wood in the summer(have electric dhw for that)...if we were to do this I def would have storage to cut down on the heat into the living area.
 
I will take some pictures and post them sometime when I get a chance. I am close to finishing a bathroom remodel for the wife. And now she has me tilling up some garden space for her. I had to get the basketball net back up. Then I have the rider I am getting fine tuned. Ya da ya da ya da.

Thanks for the advise. I will consider those things when we do the install. I have to read my install manual and find out when my guys can find the time to do the job. I am thinking of installing a tank of around 200-250 gallons for thermal storage. This won't be to large and let my boiler put most of it's work into heating the house when it is really cold. And this would help me in the fall and spring and even make it easier in the summer for domestic hot water. A few things to consider there.

I know I don't need it, but it will help to extend the burn season of the boiler and save me some money in the long run. I have six of us in the house, so I don't like the oil heating the water. In the Spring, Summer, and Fall, if I could fire the boiler, bring it and the storage tank up to temp and then let it shut down, it might last me a couple of days for water in the summer. At least I would have the option then. If the price of oil stays high or continues to go up I think I will be glad I have it. Still thinking it through. Will be asking you guys some more questions soon.

Some questions for you and any other Wood Gun owners. How long do you get out of your burns with your Wood Guns? I know all of our situations are different. But I am just curious what you guys get. Let me know how many hours you get and how much square footage you are heating. We have a lot of ash that grows in our area. I guess you would call it White Ash. Very plentifull. I burn it in my wood stove along with some maple, and sometimes some oak. Just depends what I can get out and cut, and what I can find cheap that someone is selling. Any of you have a preference? How about moisture content? Do you shoot for the 20-30% recommended?

I have been burning wood since I was about 14 years old helping my father load our forced air wood furnace that he hooked up and connected to the plenum of our natural gas furnace. That was a long time ago. I just showed him this new gassification boiler tonight when he was over for dinner. He said, it looked like quite a boiler, but that it sounded complicated. I agreed with him. But I showed him that my old Pacific Energy Super 27 wood stove was still there and burning at the time. I said "That is my back up plan in case anything goes sour. Always have a back up plan.
 
I own an E200. Heated the house great this year. I also planned for storage originally, but I think I am going to scrap that plan. It's too **@@###! complicated to do storage, and I simply didn't need it with my wood gun this last year.

I have 4 zone thermostats, and they are all programable. I simply programmed each thermostat to turn on at different hours of the night (for instance, the living room zone is set for 80 degrees from 10:30 to 11:00 PM, the basement from 2-2:30 AM. etc.) This ensures enough heat usage through the night to keep the wood gun lit during october when my heating needs are minimal. This was not at all necessary in December.

We have a sweet system for domestic hot water (the woodgun supplied every drop this last year). Let me know if you need some input on this.

Andrew
 
Thanks for the info. Yes, I would like to hear the details about your domestic hot water set up. Thanks.

I have a Triangle Tube Phase III Smart Series hot water tank. It is nice, it only holds 36 gallons of DHW but with the oil boiler feeding hot water through it (it is a s.s. tank within a carbon steel tank) and it gives us endless hot water. This hot water tank has been great. Soon, the wood gun will be feeding hot water into it 7 months of the year (or more) and I can get by on very minimal oil from then on.
 
We heat apprx 2200 sq ft, roughly half of that is marginally insulated old farm house and the other 1/2 is fairly new well insulated addition. 2 zones, 1 in most occupied area and other in the "addition". Our 1st year was wood probably no less than 25% mc...was a challenge to relight fires after a long idle time...this year mostly 15%-20% ash and a BIG difference. Feed it well seasoned wood and just like most any other boiler you'll be happy you did. Burn times greatly depend on demand and outdoor temps, but in the highest demand times we loaded the boiler 3 times/day...keep in mind we don't stuff it full. We go thru around 4 cords/year, this is heat and DHW for about 8 months for us. We keep our indoor temps at 70 when using the space, 66 when not using it.
 
Thanks for the info, sounds like the ash works well for you. You must be talking 4 full cord. If you get through winter with 4 face cord, I want your system. I have a few cord of seasoned ash already stacked and a few more cut, just need to get it back to the house and stack it. Then try to get the rest of it cut and stacked by the end of May. It drys very well for me in my back yard. How about splitting. Do you split all your wood? Do you mix some whole logs with some splits? Or, do you put whole logs in without splitting? Just curious. I am going to try a little bit of both I think. I have a guy who will sell me ash pretty cheap without having to split it. Just drop it and block it. I am going to buy some from him as well. This will save me some time to spend with the kids. And anyone else with a Wood gun, or other gassifier, have experience with burning Ash logs. Does whole or splitting work best for you? Have any input? Thanks again.
 
All our wood is split, but the quicker drying (like ash) are fairly large splits versus oak which I spilt fairly small. I find the WG burns large pieces fairly well.
 
We burn a lot of ash as well, burns great. Our house is about 6000 sq feet all told with big windows. I load the E200 twice per day, once at night and once in the AM. Basically one fire from December to March- no problems keeping it lit. A 5 X 10 trailer full of wood heats us for about a week in cold weather.

Assuming you need 120F water to heat your house:
170F high temp on wood gun (you could go higher.)
170-120 = 50 degrees F for your delta
200 gallons X 8 btu/gallon/F X 50 F delta = 80,000 BTU of storage.

On the hot water system- I assume you have a heating coil in your E100. Plumb the heating coil into your water heater with a thermostatic mixing valve and a circulation pump. I'll send you a diagram- it's too complicated to describe. It gives us an unlimited supply of hot water. As an aside, it also makes for one heck of a home beer making setup. When you shut down the boiler for summer, you just change the setting on the mixing valve and turn the hot water heater on. Works really great.

Andrew
 
Negative Emesine. I do not have a coil in my boiler. At least I did not order one. It was a s.s. floor model and I doubt they gave me one for free. I have a hot water heater already that uses the water from my oil boiler to heat my DHW. The hot water heater has a stainless steel tank inside of a carbon steel tank. The boiler water goes into this indirect hot water heater and heats the inside tank. Works great. The hot water is endless. The problem is I am heating it with the oil boiler. Now that I have the wood gun the hot water from that boiler plumbed parrallel with my oil boiler should heat heat it the same way. Correct? Here is a question for you guys about that. I am a little boiler plumbing impaired so hang in there. If I install a thermal storage tank between my wood gun boiler and and my old oil boiler system following the simple diagram posted here, how does the water from the storage tank get from the tank to the manifold that serves my zone valves that is on the other side of the oil boiler? I would guess from the diagram that my pipe would go out of the top of my wood boiler, up to a 90 deg angle, then over the top of my thermal storage tank where a t fitting would feed down to the storage tank and straight through to the t fitting above the hot feed of the oil boiler. That would feed the zones when they called for heat. But how does the water get taken out of the storage tank instead of the wood boiler if the wood boiler has gone out or is not as hot as the tank. If I have let it go out on purpose or it has gone out because we are not home in time. Again, sorry about being rather boiler plumbing impaired. Thanks.

Sorry folks. You need this info. Each of my zones is supplied by a small circulation pump. So I guess I do not understand how when one or two zones are calling for heat is it not drawing water from the oil boiler or the wood boiler if I want it to draw from the warmest place like the thermal storage tank.
 
Storage gets complicated fairly quickly. On the other hand, that's part of the fun. The sticky on simplified pressure storage diagram is probably your best bet- just take some time to understand it fully.

What do you heat with, baseboard heaters, radiators, in-floor pipes?

If you have a water heater that will take boiler water, it should be easy to do domestic hot water. Do you have a mixing valve exiting your water heater to keep super-heated water from scalding you 4 little ones (not to mention the wife.)

Andrew
 
I have looked at that diagram. It uses a circulation pump for each boiler. I would imagine those circ. pumps are run by the thermostats at each zone. The thermostat opens the zone valve and the circulation pump for the boiler sends it through. My system is run by smaller circulation pumps for each zone. Those are run by their respective thermostats. So how does it draw the hot water from the storage tank and not the wood boiler if the wood boiler is out of wood and the temp is down. But the temp is up on the storage tank? Do you understand what I mean? Imagine my zones are on the far side of my oil boiler. (They are first.) Then my oil boiler, then my storage tank, then my wood gun boiler. Now the zone calls for heat so the circ. pump for that zone turns on. The oil boiler is set at lets say 140 degrees. I don't want it to draw water from that. The wood boiler is out of wood on the far side and is only currently at 125. I don't want it to draw water from that. But the thermal storage tank is 170 degrees. And I do want it to draw water from that. How do I get it to do that?
 
I am going to try to explain this without drawing a diagram. If you look at the Simple Storage, there is a check valve in the main hot line that separates the boilers from the storage. The flow check serves 2 purposes, not just for flow direction, but it also creates a slight bit of heat loss, so in your example, the wood boiler is cold, the storage is hot and you want the oil to stay off, your zone circulators will draw heat out the top of the storage. Now there is a "T" symbol on the top of the storage, thats an aquastat, when the storage drops below a set limit AND your zones are calling for heat the oil boiler will come on.
Now in your situation you have the setup with an oil boiler and heat zones. You have the option to split the plumbing, or add the wood boiler and storage on the end. Then you would put a check valve on each boiler branch to create that slight head loss so you draw out of storage.

When you have storage, you control the wood boiler by having it turn on and off based on a set return temp to the boiler. If the zones are off, the wood boiler will push the heat to the storage, when the return on the storage is at say 180 deg, the storage is saturated with heat, and the boiler will idle.
 
Thanks for the information guys. That helps. Any additional suggestions would be appreciated. I guess the only difference in the diagram and how the positioning of my system is going to be is that the storage tank will be between the wood boiler and the oil boiler. Anything different need to be done with that situation? You see, my oil boiler is on the front side of the house and runs with a power vent. On the outside of that is where the manifold feeds all the zones. My chimney (double wall insulated) for my wood stove, which is where the wood boiler will vent into, is on the back side of the house. About 20 feet away. I will just disconnect the wood stove from that and hook up the boiler to it. So the location of the two boilers will require me to install the storage tank between them. It looks pretty simple as far as the main piping goes. The hot feed will go from wood boiler to a "T" fitting above the storage tank, then continue to a "T" fitting above the oil boiler and on to the manifold that feeds the zones. These are fed hot water only when the thermostats call for heat and turn on the circulation pump for that zone. Now I just need to understand how the check valves and aquastat work and put them in the right place. I am glad I am going to have my boiler guys do the piping for me. I just want to make sure I understand how the system is going to work so I can be sure it gets done right. They both do this for a living.

On a different subject. I have been burning wood just about every night lately. Start the fire about 7pm and burn it until I go to bed. Just enough to keep the oil boiler from turning on. I do this a lot in the fall and spring. Last night was 45 degrees here. The night before that it was 39, and the one before that was 35! What the .... I did not expect to be burning everynight in the first week of May! Then again, I am on the Canadian border in northern N.Y. I should not be suprised after living here for 38 of my 43 years. All of my wood burning experience has been with my fathers wood furnace when I was younger and my wood stove. So this gassification boiler is going to be a little different. But I can't wait. Love heating with wood. Saves me a lot of money and gets me some well needed exercise. And there is nothing like the immediate progress and accomplishment that you see and feel from cutting/splitting/stacking/burning wood. Thanks again.
 
Gasifier said:
These are fed hot water only when the thermostats call for heat and turn on the circulation pump for that zone. Now I just need to understand how the check valves and aquastat work and put them in the right place.
The thing that the simplest sticky makes too simple is not minimizing return temperature to storage.

With a single pump and multiple zone valves you can do a pretty good job with a constant pressure ECM variable speed pump that can be adjusted to run slow enough to avoid churning storage.

But with multiple circulators you're pretty much guaranteed to be eliminating any stratification by running the water round and round. Have a look at the Tarm schematics that they have been kind enough to publish and see how they use a Termovar as a diverting valve to send hot water back around through the loads until it's cool enough to return to storage. Primary-secondary and hydraulic separator are two other ways to do it.

I did not expect to be burning everynight in the first week of May! Then again, I am on the Canadian border in northern N.Y. I should not be suprised after living here for 38 of my 43 years.

Worked with a guy from Minnesota who lamented he only found out what cold weather was after he worked a tour at Plattsburgh AFB.

--ewd
 
Keep in mind your storage tank is only going to hold about 80K BTU. Is it really worth the expense and trouble?

Andrew
 
emesine said:
Keep in mind your storage tank is only going to hold about 80K BTU. Is it really worth the expense and trouble?

Andrew

I missed the 200 gallon part. 200 gallons would make a nice large buffer tank, where the difference between storage and a buffer is that a storage tank is big enough to normally store all the heat from a single burn and buffer tank is used to eliminate short cycling of the boiler.

From what I gather, Seton and Woodgun boilers can make good use of a buffer tank because they supposedly can cycle on and off better.

At any rate, if you're looking at running a 200 gallon buffer tank, disregard my comments about trying to minimize return temperature, just let the system cycle as fast as it needs to and cycle the boiler on a wide hysteresis, which should allow the boiler to burn steady for a good while before cycling off again.

--ewd
 
Thanks for the responses guys. I do believe the tank will be worth it. For three reasons. I am looking at using a used 250 gallon propane tank.

1) Heat domestic hot water spring and fall, maybe even summer. (If it is to hot out I can always blow any excess heat out of the basement with a small window fan.) And six people use quite a bit of hot water.
2) Extend my sleep time as much as possible. Fall, winter, and spring.
3) Increase efficiency. Allow boiler to run in gassification mode longer and less shut down time.

I have six zones, each has its own small circ pump. 4 living area zones with baseboard heat. Only 2 kept nice and warm at 68-72. 2 kept at 60-65 degrees. 1 is garage with in- floor radiant heat kept at 45. And 1 is the hot water heater kept right around 110-120.

As long as I can get the install done right. Will be a few weeks before I get started on it. What do you think? Anyone bought a used propane tank from smokeless heat? Do the tanks usually have fittings already in them you can use for plumbing it up? Thanks.
 
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