advise for new oil/wood boiler

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nils

New Member
Dec 9, 2010
1
Central Va
I need to replace my oil/wood boiler located in basement of my 3500 sqft house that is heated by cast iron baseboard. I have been looking at Tarm Excel 2000, Wood gun E140, Biomass Combo 40. I use the oil to heat to late November and early spring (march). Use the wood to heat rest of winter. Can these system work without water storage systems? I am not interested in storage.
 
trussman said:
I need to replace my oil/wood boiler located in basement of my 3500 sqft house that is heated by cast iron baseboard. I have been looking at Tarm Excel 2000, Wood gun E140, Biomass Combo 40. I use the oil to heat to late November and early spring (march). Use the wood to heat rest of winter. Can these system work without water storage systems? I am not interested in storage.

Welcome to the forum, Trussman. Most gasifiers work just fine without storage - I ran that way myself for the first year. Some manufacturers might require storage for some models, but most do not. It's a little funny that there's so much emphasis on storage with gasifiers, because as far as I can tell storage would help conventional boilers just as much. Maybe it's that anyone shelling out the extra bucks for a gasifier is probably interested in getting the best efficiency and performance out of it, and storage definitely helps.

From my experience the biggest benefit of storage is convenience. I can skip days much of the season and build fires at times that are convenient to me.
 
Can only comment on the Tarm. User friendly, good people to deal with. The Solo I have now is wood only but I had a combo unit back in the 80's and both are rugged quality units.
 
Welcome trussman. Are you going to use truss scraps in the boiler? :)
The units you are considering are quality built. On a combo unit, it is beneficial if the oil is fired into a seperate chamber than the wood. This can help with efficiency because the wood ash/creosote buildup won't effect heat transfer from the oil gun. I believe the Biomass is built this way.
Good luck!
 
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