increase efficiency in a Tarm OT-50

[Carl Webber]

Last November I installed a Tarm OT-50 in my house and so far so good. All winter I have burned roughly 5 1/2 cords of wood and about 1/2 ton of coal. I am very pleased with how well the boiler performed. I had no problem keeping my house at 75 on nights when it was -10F outside. Currently I have no thermal storage because I could not afford it with the cost of the original install. That will be coming in a year or two. For now I am stuck burning solid fuel from November to March, and then running oil the rest of the year. Right now it is at the point where I am running on oil as it is too warm to burn solid fuel. I find that if it gets to between 25 and 30 outside I can not burn without getting a lot of creosote buildup.

According to the manual my boiler is only 70% efficient on oil. My old boiler, A weil mclain was supposedly 85% efficient. To help with efficiency I had a Superstor installed with the boiler so I would get more consistent hot water from the wood and better efficiency from the oil. Is there anything more I can do to increase the efficiency of the the oil side of my boiler?

 

[Chris Hoskin]

if you are seeing short-cycling when burning oil, then down-sizing the oil burner nozzle might help a bit.

 

[Carl Webber]

if you are seeing short-cycling when burning oil, then down-sizing the oil burner nozzle might help a bit.

If anything I think the oil nozzle might be a little small. Supposedly the oil side should put out 200k btu/ hr but if it gets cold out the oil side seems to have a hard time keeping up. The wood side supposedly can only produce 140k btu/hr and the wood side can keep up fine.

 

[Carl Webber]

I was thinking of trying to make a baffle system for the inside of the firebox that is removable so I can remove it when I want to burn solid fuels. The way the boiler works, a baffle in the top of the boiler blocks off the heat tubes in the center of the boiler and forces the exhaust from the burner through the firebox before going up the chimney so that more of the heat gets absorbed therefore making the boiler more efficient. I've heard about baffles that you can install in the heat tubes of other boilers to make them more efficient and I was thinking i might be able to adapt that Idea to this boiler. I was thinking that I could take some plate steel and create a baffle system that I could install in the firebox that would give more surface area for heat to get absorbed. I just don't know if it'll work, or if its even safe. I was hoping maybe there would be someone on here that has had some experience modifying multifuel boilers to make them more efficient.