Here is the Which stove should I buy question

[maplewoodshelby]

Hey Folks,
I'm new to the site but was hoping to get some pointers in the next few weeks. Going with an OWB to heat house, water, and pool. I have narrowed my choice of stoves down to 3 and was hoping anyone with info could light in on this. I'm looking at the Central boiler 6048, the Central boiler E Classic 2300, and another brand named Crown Royal 7400. The Crown Royal dealer is less than a half mile from my house so it may be a wise choice to go with him although the stove is pricey but seems to be a good stove. Anybody on here ever run the CB 6048 and then go with the E classic. Just wandering if the E classic is worth the extra money. I have read other places that it will not readily burn big logs and has a fire brick problem and creosotes up bad. However, I would like to go with this newer version of stove if it will work. Any thoughts would be appreciated

 

[jebatty]

Having had 9 years experience with an OWB and 2 years experience with a wood gasification boiler, for me it is a "no brainer" to go the wood gasification boiler route. I would be hard pressed, probably next to impossible pressed, to reach a conclusion that an OWB is a wise and reasonable choice over a wood gasification boiler.

 

[maplewoodshelby]

Well I have been looking at the wood gasification boilers as well but here are my drawbacks from going that route.
It seems very efficient but it seems like way too much work! The reasons are below, please feel free to tell me where I am mislead.
You have to use small split wood that is very dry (Very labor intensive and headache if your wood is not bone dry)
You have to relight the fire every day to fire it. (doesn't burn all day long)
Requires a lot of attention with adjusting flaps for primaries/secondaries
Requires water holding of at least 500 gallons to be effective
Is it actually safe to be in a basement with those kind of burning temps?

Overall it just seems very touchy and needs constant attention to work right. I work all day long and need something I can load in the morning and at night to keep my family warm. My house is 4000 sq feet with hydronic baseboard heat which right now is fired with propane boiler.

The positives of wood gasification boiler would be the following:
I have a place to put it already with a chimney/flue. I could store wood in this area with no problem. I do have room for water storage nearby. I would not have to build a big woodshed for the OWB. run pipe and all that
But I always come back to the OWB because the wood does not have to be perfect, will hold fire all day long, and I know it is safe and away from the house

 

[jebatty]

You have to relight the fire every day to fire it. (doesn’t burn all day long)

Takes 5-10 minutes to light, then load and walk away. If you decide not to add storage, which has tremendous pluses in many situations, size the boiler to meet you heat load, refire morning and night if necessary. I commonly had to refire my OWB, especially during MN fall, spring and winter warm spells, because I did not need all the heat and the fire would go out or I would do a smaller load so it wouldn't smoke and cake creosote inside the boiler and the chimney. It is easier and faster to fire my Tarm than the OWB, and I have virtually no smoke. I burn about 1/4 to 1/3 the wood I burned before. I found it easier and faster to make smaller splits with much less wood than 3-4 time the wood with bigger pieces.

Requires a lot of attention with adjusting flaps for primaries/secondaries

I can only answer for the Tarm. One air setting, set it and forget it.

Requires water holding of at least 500 gallons to be effective

The advantages to storage depend on your heat load, a desire to maximize efficiency of the wood burn, and the desire to extend the times between firings. I have 1000 gal of pressurized storage. During our coldest winter periods (-10 to -36F at night; 0 high for the day), I would burn two loads of wood per day. Temperatures 0 to 20 were almost always one load per day. Temperatures above 20 to whatever involve a firing from once per day to once every 3rd or 4th day. The boiler/storage need to be sized to your heat load.

The OWB needed to burn a load of wood, sometimes two loads, per day, regardless of the temperature outside, so long as heat was needed. It wasted huge quantities of wood producing unneeded heat that went up the chimney in smoke.

Is it actually safe to be in a basement with those kind of burning temps?

My Tarm is located in my wood-working shop, with wood dust, etc., while using the boiler. I won't answer for your safety determination, but I will say that the outside of the boiler, except right around the edges of the doors and the doors themselves - plus the chimney, are just warm to the touch. All the high temps are inside the boiler and well insulated from the outside of the boiler.

Overall it just seems very touchy and needs constant attention to work right.

Except for a person's desire to experiment and try new innovations, I can safety say, with respect to the Tarm, that the attention it needs is pretty much limited to: empty ashes periodically (about once/month), clean the chimney once per year, brush the hx tubes periodically. My OWB generated multiple wheelbarrow loads of ashes over the heating season. The Tarm generates about 2/3 of a cubic foot every month.

Keep in mind my experience is limited to northern MN, where it is cold, cold, cold and winters are just as long. Our forecast for today is 6-12" of snow today and tomorrow, -4F tonight, -14F tomorrow night, and 0 Thurs night. The ease of heating these past two years with the Tarm, as compared to the OWB, has been a huge blessing.

 

[shoeboxlen]

Well I have been looking at the wood gasification boilers as well but here are my drawbacks from going that route.
It seems very efficient but it seems like way too much work! The reasons are below, please feel free to tell me where I am mislead.
You have to use small split wood that is very dry (Very labor intensive and headache if your wood is not bone dry)
You have to relight the fire every day to fire it. (doesn't burn all day long)
Requires a lot of attention with adjusting flaps for primaries/secondaries
Requires water holding of at least 500 gallons to be effective
Is it actually safe to be in a basement with those kind of burning temps?

Overall it just seems very touchy and needs constant attention to work right. I work all day long and need something I can load in the morning and at night to keep my family warm. My house is 4000 sq feet with hydronic baseboard heat which right now is fired with propane boiler.

The positives of wood gasification boiler would be the following:
I have a place to put it already with a chimney/flue. I could store wood in this area with no problem. I do have room for water storage nearby. I would not have to build a big woodshed for the OWB. run pipe and all that
But I always come back to the OWB because the wood does not have to be perfect, will hold fire all day long, and I know it is safe and away from the house

I have a eko gasifier in my basement safe as safe can be
I burn all day long and I do not run storage at all
I have had 0 issues with it accept for a door seal smell issue which was easy and cheap to fix.

 

[Fred61]

Ask yourself this question.
How would you rather spend your time? Handling and stacking wood or lighting a fire?
My old and weary bones answered it for me!

 

[crs7200]

I have a Crown Royal 7200. This is my 3rd year running it. It is the smallest stove that they make. I heat my 1800 sq ft house that isn't very well insulated and it does my hot water all winter. I have NO complaints on this stove. I have NEVER had to re-light the stove. Not even if I have been gone away from the house for 15 hours and have come home to nothing but ash left in the bottom. Toss in some wood and the fans force the fire to burn. This stove does not smoke very much at all unless you are using wet wood. Most of the time, I would say 95%, there is no smoke to speak of. The dealer and manufacturor have been very helpful when I had questions in the beginning. Even with the small stove that I have, I only load the stove twice a day. Every 12 hours. Hope this helps.

 

[maplewoodshelby]

This maybe a dumb question but just starting to explore this option a bit more.
So if I wanted to i could run this system like a normal woodstove. Adding a little wood through out the day until later when i could add storage. Would it still gassify??
Storage is something else I don't understand. When the house needs heat does it draw water from the storage or send the storage back to the boiler to be heated again? What keeps the storage water from cooling off in say a propane gas tank as many people use
Do you guys have a backup system or rely solely on the wood boiler. I have a propane boiler but it is hooked into the chimney that I will use for the wood boiler. Can i hook them both into the chimney?
Does the chimney need to be completely vertical or can the section running from the stove to the chimney run horizontal or slanted up?
And finally can I run pex lines off of this to heat a small pool with a heat exchanger?

Sorry for all the questions but just trying to gain some knowledge

 

[Piker]

You can run the boiler like a regular wood stove... it will still gasify.

Storage works be running the boiler full tilt until the tanks are up to temp (190-200*) at which point, the boiler and pumps shut down which stratifies the water in the tanks. When a zone calls for heat, the hottest water is drawn from the top of the tank, and then returned to the bottom. The storage must be insulated very well, especially if it is outside.

I do not rely on any sytem other than the Econoburn.

Most municipalities will not allow two different types of fuel vented into the same chimney... although there are some that will allow it if you can prove that both heating appliances cannot run at the same time.

Your chimney should be vertical, but you can run horizontal or angled from the boiler to the thimble for short distances.

yes, you can heat your pool

cheers

 

[Piker]

Just a note on ease of use. I think it's appropriate to ask the question of which would you rather do... split half the wood for a gasser, or burn maybe twice as much in a conventional boiler. It's true the wood has to be pretty dry to work well in a gasser... but that's true for any wood stove or boiler. At least 15% of the energy in wood is wasted if you burn it green... probably more like 25% in real world applications, regardless of what you burn it in. The gassers will have a little harder time burning the greener stuff than most OWB's.

The boilers are not difficult to operate... just different. They do take a little more "finesse" than conventional OWB's. By that I mean, it's best to keep the ashed cleaned out, take care to place the wood in the firebox so that it doesn't bridge during the course of a burn, etc... simple stuff.

Cheers

 

[maplewoodshelby]

My flue size is 6 inch. Some of the models including the Econoburn have 8 inch flue collar. Can the flue be sized down at the chimney to 6 inch and still work

 

[Fred61]

My flue size is 6 inch. Some of the models including the Econoburn have 8 inch flue collar. Can the flue be sized down at the chimney to 6 inch and still work

Depends on the drought of your particular flue. My EKO 25 has an 8" collar and is reduced to 6" and works fine. After checking the drought with my old crude manometer I purchased a barometric damper but have not installed it yet. Drought varies with different circumstances. Height of flue, amount of pipe above ridge of roof, trees side hill, etc. The trouble with depending upon your wood boiler solely for DHW when you don't have storage is that there will be occasions when the boiler is not hot enough. At least that is the fact in my case because my house has such a low heat load that the boiler is off all day. That is why I depend on my oil for back-up. This situation will change for me next season since I am now in the process of installing 500 gallons of unpressurized storage. Don't put the LP unit and wood unit on the same flue even if it is within regulations. You are then likely to have two units with inadequate drought.

 

[crs7200]

I have a forced air oil furnace but I DO NOT use it. I use the boiler for all my heating need and the hot water tank is off all winter as well.

 

[sdrobertson]

Well I have been looking at the wood gasification boilers as well but here are my drawbacks from going that route.
It seems very efficient but it seems like way too much work! The reasons are below, please feel free to tell me where I am mislead.
You have to use small split wood that is very dry (Very labor intensive and headache if your wood is not bone dry)
You have to relight the fire every day to fire it. (doesn't burn all day long)
Requires a lot of attention with adjusting flaps for primaries/secondaries
Requires water holding of at least 500 gallons to be effective
Is it actually safe to be in a basement with those kind of burning temps?

This web site is wonderful and its full of very enthusiastic users who are very helpful and I only see one bad side of this...If your reading these posts and have not seen and observed first hand the boilers listed in the posts - it sounds pretty hard to run them. The problem with just reading is that most of us have the boiler burning well (allot better than OWBs) and for some reason we can't help but try and "tweek"them some to get the most efficient use out of them. I really can't explain it but when I had my Central Boiler 6048 I just filled it up allot and let it work. At the time I was happy with this and it worked well but I used allot of wood and I always worried about the smoke issue being in a village. The smoke bothered me as I may be bothering the neighbors. The switch from OWB to gasification was amazing. I guess the volume of wood usage going down spurred me to try and get it to the most efficient I could have the boiler. I loved the fact with the CB that I didn't have to split the wood down and could just chuck it in the stove. Now I do have to split it smaller, but its much easier to handle smaller pieces and it dries out allot faster. Also I hurt my shoulder a couple years ago, and I had to worry if the miss's could pick up some of the big unsplit pieces. I'm using less than 1/2 of the wood before, just having to split it more which is easier than cutting and hauling twice as much. I was also hesitant on relighting the fire all the time, but once you get the hang of it - not hard at all. The water storage buys you time to when you want to build a fire and recharge. The CB 6048 holds 493 gallons so its really not much more water, just a much better use of it.

I've used both - and would not hesitate on which I would recommend - any of the indoor gasification boilers.

 

[jebatty]

The Tarm Solo 40 will take a 6" flue.

 

[Piker]

My flue size is 6 inch. Some of the models including the Econoburn have 8 inch flue collar. Can the flue be sized down at the chimney to 6 inch and still work

All the econoburn boilers have an 8" flu up to the ebw 300, but this is only to keep mfg. costs low. The 100 and 150 can be reduced down to a 6" flu.

Draft specs on the econoburn are .02 to .05... this is not very much draft. At all.

cheers