NEED ADVICE. The Wood Gun E100 should be here soon!!!

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infinitymike

infinitymike

Minister of Fire
Aug 23, 2011
1,835
Long Island, NY
Excited and anxious for the Wood Gun.

Does anyone have any experience with them or does anyone have any tips for a newbie like me.
Ex. how to plumb into oil burner, how to set up with DHW storage (my oil burner doesn't have storage.)
Does it come with diagrams or does anyone have any. My plumber has never installed one before.
He also thinks I'm crazy and after a year I wont use it anymore. Watch me prove him wrong >:-(

How about how much wood to burn at once.
are full rounds better or worse.

Any info from experienced burners is appreciated.
 
Congrats/
The guys there at AHS are eager to help, I bugged them every other day when I installed mine. As for your DHW, I run boiler water thru a plate type heat ex. to the hwh controlled by a Techmar and a circ. pump. I load mine stuffed full, rounds ok and seem to last longer (over 8" are a PIA) but splits seem faster/hotter. If you got the smoke hood, throw out that stupid smoke flap, I've never tried it but it can't be fun loading the box with that thing in the way. Not sure on plumbing with your oil burner but the guys here will hopefully chime in on that. I would imagine that you'll hook it up in line. setting the temp 10-15 below your WG.
 
thanks 711

I didn't order it with the hood. They didn't offer it either.

I did order a DHW coil to be installed so I'm assuming I dont need a heat exchanger.

I guess time will tell.
I'm just so pumped. I want all the answers now, so I can get all the parts I need now, uncrate it, hook it up and start burning that night. OOH RAA

How do you like it?
Is it loud?
Does it radiate a lot of heat in the room its in?
How well does the reignite work when the house demands heat after the unit has "shut-off" when the house met its demand before?
Do you use it to heat DHW in the summer?
 
infinitymike said:
thanks 711

I didn't order it with the hood. They didn't offer it either.

I did order a DHW coil to be installed so I'm assuming I dont need a heat exchanger.

I guess time will tell.
I'm just so pumped. I want all the answers now, so I can get all the parts I need now, uncrate it, hook it up and start burning that night. OOH RAA

How do you like it?
Is it loud?
Does it radiate a lot of heat in the room its in?
How well does the reignite work when the house demands heat after the unit has "shut-off" when the house met its demand before?
Do you use it to heat DHW in the summer?
Click to expand...

I like it!
Loud? You'll grow to associate that sound with great comfort!
Yes
Just fine.
No, just me and my wife here. To me, it's like driving a tack with a sledge hammer.
Have fun!
 
thanks again
 
Best advice I can give is to read the stickies at the top of the boiler room page. You will find good solid info there that the been there done that crowd has been kind enough to share. The piping diagrams you seek are in those stickies as well as a lot of other very necessary info. Good luck with your project.
 
Frozen Canuck said:
Best advice I can give is to read the stickies at the top of the boiler room page. You will find good solid info there that the been there done that crowd has been kind enough to share. The piping diagrams you seek are in those stickies as well as a lot of other very necessary info. Good luck with your project.
Click to expand...

The stickies can give you plenty to think about, especially the primary/secondary discussion, but I must say that printing out 'The Simplest', handing it to a plumber who has never installed one before, and hoping for the best would be risky.

Tarm has been very generous in providing detailed schematics of a variety of approaches. In many cases they incorporate complications and expenses that it would be possible to do away with. But it would be a very valuable exercise to study the layouts they've suggested, figure out what design requirements the configurations satisfy, see if any given requirement and the approach taken to address it is relevant to your situation, and then put it all together to fashion a system that does what you need to do.

http://www.woodboilers.com/admin/uploads/public/WoodBoilerPlumbingSchematic0111Web.pdf
 
Thank EWD. I'll check out the site.
 
Congradulations on the Wood Gun. This will be my second season heating my house with an E200.

The DHW coil on our unit works beautifully. I have a standard electric hot water heater that I use in the summers. I have it plummed such that I only have to turn a few valves to turn over to heating DHW with the Wood Gun. It also, BTW, works BEAUTIFULLY to make beer.

The woodgun is a monster. I pack mine twice per day, morning and night.

I had originally planned on putting storage in my system, but I have basically abandoned that idea. I have done fine without it.

Can you give us a bit more information on how your current system is setup? Do you have radiators? forced air? in-floor radiant heating? How is your oil burner setup currently?

Andrew
 
emesine said:
Congradulations on the Wood Gun. This will be my second season heating my house with an E200.

The DHW coil on our unit works beautifully. I have a standard electric hot water heater that I use in the summers. I have it plummed such that I only have to turn a few valves to turn over to heating DHW with the Wood Gun. It also, BTW, works BEAUTIFULLY to make beer.

The woodgun is a monster. I pack mine twice per day, morning and night.

I had originally planned on putting storage in my system, but I have basically abandoned that idea. I have done fine without it.

Can you give us a bit more information on how your current system is setup? Do you have radiators? forced air? in-floor radiant heating? How is your oil burner setup currently?

Andrew
Click to expand...

Thanks Andrew,
My current system is as follows. A very old oil burner made by Ford (when did they get into oil burners) it has no markings other then the name ford. I dont know the size or btu's output.

There is a DHW coil inside and I don't have any storage for the DHW.
It struggles in the dead of winter to keep hot water throughout a shower.

The 1st floor is SunRad convectors (they are 4" deep by 3" tall by 36" long base board radiators). They are recessed into the 2x4 wall so the back of the radiator is right up against the plywood of the house. Stupid detail. You should see my house 2 days after a snowfall. all the snow is melted where the heaters are. :ahhh:

The are connected by a monoflow system. inch and a half black iron pipe looped all the way around the house. at each radiator there is a tee that reduces to half inch copper to feed them. Another stupid detail. You should feel the floor where the pipe runs, nice and hot.

The second floor is all baseboard radiators fed by 3/4" copper pipe.

I want to put the Wood Gun in the attached garage. Pipe in line with the oil burner and then get a DHW storage tank hooked in there as well.

I would love to install staple up radiant for the 1st floor. Maybe next year.

So about the wood gun.
How did you hook it up?
Do have it hooked up to another system?
Do you have schematics for your plumbing?
Any other tips you might have?
 
Maybe you ordered these options but if you didn't you should try and add them. Low temp shut down and cycle timer. Without the first one the fan will keep running after the fire goes out and cool all your water and the cycle timer will make sure the fire never goes out.
 
mark123 said:
Maybe you ordered these options but if you didn't you should try and add them. Low temp shut down and cycle timer. Without the first one the fan will keep running after the fire goes out and cool all your water and the cycle timer will make sure the fire never goes out.
Click to expand...

Thank you mark,

No I didn't order them. They didn't offer it to me.
I will call them.

I assume you have a Wood Gun?
What other options are there?

I read something about a timer that you have to set to let the gasses cool down before you reload. Is that standard feature or option?
Do you have any issues with that? I read some guys saying that the timer doesn't fully shut off.
 
The timer is standard, it turns on the induction fan for a few minutes to suck out the hot flamable gases so when you open the door they will not ignite when they come in contact with oxygen. The last time I talked to Jeff at AHS they were working on a new control board that had many of these options on it. You should ask about it. I am happy with my E-180 but there are some things that really bug me. One is the chugging, if I put small wood that is "too" dry such as 3" rounds and put to much in at the start it will start to sound like someone hyperventalating and smoke leaks out. When you get it, take the air inlet box off (1 bolt) and re-silicone it with orange hi temp silicone Mine leaked creosote and it is a very simple thing to do when new, if you leave it it might be alright but if not and it leaks the creosote makes removal very hard. I use mine all summer, I burn 2- 3 sticks in the morning and have domestic hot water until the night. Haven't bought oil in almost 3 years. Also as for option get the stainless steel version and the smoke hood if you are putting it in your house. There is no need for strage in my opinion, these shut down completely when up to temp so there is no smoldering like other boilers, mine stays lit all winter long. I don't like the idea of re-lighting every day.
 
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