Boilers in Bangor

Went right after opening yesterday morning. I expect it will be even more packed today.

Chris Holley is there with a Garn, indoors! BIG! A substantial piece of hardware.

Met Duane at the Econoburn booth. Nice, heavy duty boiler!

Spoke with Bub at the Revision booth. Had a Tarm Solo and a Scantec there. Both very nice bits of engineering.

Ed and his brother were there from Connecticut with several Atmos's on the floor. Prices on those units were very good.

And outdoors, the folks from upstate NY were there with a Paxo. They had it on a trailer, operating. There was a rep from Poland there as well.

I did not stop at the OWB's.

Lots of gigantic wood chewing equipment, including a full tree chipper that was operational.
A lot of noise and even thought it was far away from everything, you could see it devouring whole tree logs in
seconds.

A friend went to the Bio Energy Thermal conference in Nashua. He told me that the forestry people told them that wood heat is not carbon neutral, it is carbon negative, since 30% of the captured carbon from a tree is sequestered in the ground!

Cool selling point.

I wonder if I go back today, if they would let me run a grapple loader?

Nice report Tom, I was up there yesterday as well, sorry I missed you... Definitely a good boiler show, and the other stuff was kind of neat too...

Actually the Polish guy at the Paxo / Eko booth was one of the Orlans, as in "Orlan / EKO" - his father runs the company back in Poland, and he is here long term, and apparently is taking over the US distribution of EKO boilers, along with bringing in a lot of other European equipment - he was showing me pictures of some nice tanks, and was talking about solar panels as well. (As usual the biggest obstacle is getting the various US approval labels - despite already having passed all the (far tougher!) tests to get TUV and CE certifications...

Interesting point on the wood burning / carbon point... Of course presumably that sequestered carbon would be released relatively quickly as the roots rot, but it is still locked up for quite a while...

Gooserider

It was great seeing everyone at the show. Well actually, I didn't see everyone, but I enjoyed meeting the people from Hearth.com that I did, including:

Gooserider
Pook
Smee
Sweatheat
Piker

And maybe one or two others whom the fatigue is keeping me from remembering.

It was a very successful trade show, especially considering the economy. We had just over 6,000 people register, so it was busy both days, and every exhibitor that I talked to said they had a good show. Some even sold some pretty pricey equipment (as in, deep into six figures). The boiler displays were really impressive, I thought. It was great talking to the people manning the booths. It was fun getting Chris Holly's Garn 2000 into his booth and out again after the show. It took a big forklift with long forks to handle the job, but we had some really good operators working this time, so I got to spend less time on the fork trucks and more time supervising. I did get some forklift time in, which is always one of the highlights of the shows for me.

Anyway, thanks again for your support, and I hope to see another good group of Hearthers at next year's Expo in Essex Jct., Vermont. I know the boilers will be there!

Great show, missed you in the travels. I made new topic under the gear forum. Theres' a link to a video that has Eric on it from the show. Met the econoburn crew, Mr Holly(got to see a garn in person), Revision energy, orlan, display outside was neat. The whole function had a real good flow to it Eric. Not your first time around the barn on this deal. Nice day on sat.

As I think I mentioned in the video we started putting on the show in its current, expanded format back in 1983 in Bangor. Over the years we've taken it to Niagara Falls, Syracuse, Springfield, MA, Essex Jct., VT and of course, Bangor every second or third year.

Sorry we didn't connect. Next time around, I hope Craig takes me up on my standing offer to provide some space or a booth for the Hearth.com crew to hang around.

EDIT: I forgot to include Watkins Glen for the first time this year. I think we'll be back there with a bigger, better Expo in 2011.

I was also able to attend on Saturday. What a great show, tons to see. Nice representaion of gassers and great to see and touch a Garn. Some nice firewood processors too, but certainly not practical for the typical homeowner! I look forward to next years!

I agree, it would be good to have a Hearth.com space - both for the fun of meeting folks that are here in person, but also for site publicity - I don't know if anyone has ever done a demographics study, but I suspect that the people at the show included a greater than average percentage of wood burners, but several of the people that I talked to over the course of the show seemed not to have heard of the hearth....

Gooserider

The show was great, and it was nice to put a face to a few of the names I have seen floating around the forum here. Nice meeting you all. I will definitely be looking forward to seeing you all again at the next one.

I would love to get my hands one of those firewood processors for an afternoon...

cheers

For the past 30 years or so, any time I have seen equipment like that, firewood processors, skidders, excavators, etc, I have always offered to let them park them in my yard over the weekend. One guy took me up on my offer and parked his skidder in my yard but took the keys.

I have often thought it would be an interesting business venture to start the "Big Kid's Sandbox" - get something like an old sand and gravel pit, and a bunch of construction machines, logging equipment and other such "toys" and charge the yuppies some significant amount of money to come play on them... Big question is whether I'd need to paint everything yellow and paint "Tonka" on the side to make them feel at home? :lol:

Gooserider

I thought I was going to make the Bangor event as I live close by but I was busy lighting off a ship steam plant in Bayonne. While doing that they were filming a "Law and Order" episode starring Jeff Goldblum episode with the ship as the backdrop. I wanted to smoke them out but thought better of it. I'll have to see that one.

Mike

What? someone from millinoket wanting to smoke out neighbors? seems like this is what started off the debate with the OWB's in your area. Don't get those guys down there grumblin'. Sorry.....couldn't resist making a local joke...... :coolsmile:

Some other bunch of Yupsters would immediately try to ban it, on the basis that it offended their oh-so-sensitive sensibilities.

Bayonne?

Smoking out anyone in Bayonne?

Impossible. Absolutely impossible.8

I used to date the really sweet daughter of the owner of a liquor store in Bayonne (she really was an absolute sweetheart, although she was an extreme city mouse and I was/am an extreme country mouse, so we were not meant to be together, in my estimation).

I could blow my nose and make a Kleenex black after even a short visit to Bayonne.

I have to say I had a preconceived notion of what bayonne would be like. however, I have found it to be pretty decent. There's a very high end golf course nearby, a cruise ship terminal next door, and a very high end gated apartment complex going up here also. I suspect it has changed from the days of Saturday Night Live jokes about "New Jersey".

Mike

Sounds as if it has come a very long way since 1988, the last time I visited, when it was truly an armpit of a city.