WoodNotOil said:
Singed Eyebrows said:
Wood gun is an excellent boiler. The center bricks(nozzles are about $100.00) From everything I have read the Garn is a superb boiler with about a $14,000 boiler only price. Heaven only knows what refractory prices are on the Froling as the controller is $1000.00 as of about 1 year ago. The quote you see from Fred61 was an older Eschland Wood Gun & they had trouble with air leaks. Air leaks in a carbon steel WG will destroy it. There are many good boilers including the Tarm Froling etc. Right now the most bang for the buck is on Ebay with the Econoburn. You can get a 150,000 btu new USA made boiler for $4995.00. Thats a tough act to follow. As mentioned though you still need to determine size required. There are other sizes of Econoburn available if it turns out 150,000 btu isn't correct, Randy
I am glad to hear that they seem to have fixed this problem Fred referred to. Otherwise I have heard good things about WoodGun. I had heard they were pretty expensive though...
Bill if you are looking for USA made then Garn & Econoburn are two great options. If you run without storage at first, then the Econoburn (especially being on sale right now), would likely be the more economical option. You could always add some propane tanks for storage later. Sounds like you are already used to loading several times a day, so that would not be an issue. People who are away from the house all day really like the flexibility storage gives them to burn when they are home, but have heat all the time. For those situations it is important to size the boiler and storage on the large size, so that one or two fires produces and stores enough heat for the entire day.
How many contributors to this forum have 10 years experience operating a Wood Gun? I'm not a guy that's running on autopilot, not aware of what's going on around me. I do analyze problems and make corrections when I'm able to do so.
As far a I can see, there have been no appreciable design changes in the Wood Gun since I bought mine. The air leaks came from the door gaskets which were continually eroding and were almost impossible to keep up with.
It's interesting that when I was replacing center bricks, they were $200.00. It was reported recently that they are now selling for $134.00 and now I see above that they are $100.00. Pretty soon they'll be giving them away.
When I started shopping for boilers a couple years ago, the first unit I looked at was the Econoburn. I liked the unit and thought it was very well made. The reason I didn't buy it was that I misinterpreted the way it operated. The working unit I observed had creosote leaking from the flue pipe. What I understood at the time which I guess was wrong, was that the combustion fan didn't completely shut down but continued to run at a very low speed. I concluded that this was the cause of the creosote by having a slow smoldering fire. I now realize that these units will make creosote if not run hot with a minimum of idling.