Looking for suggestions on combo boilers.

[NE WOOD BURNER]

http://catskills.craigslist.org/for/4190549195.html

economical way to have both with storage.

 

[maple1]

That's an interesting find.

 

[Bad Wolf]

Damn I wish I had found that 6 years ago when I did my system. Thats about $13-14,000 worth of boiler and tank
At that price it would be a no brainer to buy and install it.

Nuker, you should jump on that baby. At $3,000 you can't go wrong, looks like the whole sysem is already set up. The guys at woodboiler.com (where he got the TARM) are great and can walk you through the installation. No big deal to switch it back to oil, just a different Burnham burner head.
Looks identical to my system.

 

[Nuker]

I was told to expect $30K or more also, which is why I have started to look at wood boilers. The Geo would be a good selling point, but I have a ton of other places I could spend the extra 20K and see better return.
I am still thinking that a wood/oil combo boiler would be a better option than what I have, since I would be adding the wood option to the mix and keeping the oil which is already there. All for a relatively low investment when compared to a Geo retrofit.

 

[Nuker]

Damn I wish I had found that 6 years ago when I did my system. Thats about $13-14,000 worth of boiler and tank
At that price it would be a no brainer to buy and install it.

Nuker, you should jump on that baby. At $3,000 you can't go wrong, looks like the whole sysem is already set up. The guys at woodboiler.com (where he got the TARM) are great and can walk you through the installation. No big deal to switch it back to oil, just a different Burnham burner head.
Looks identical to my system.

That is an excellent deal, unfortunately I couldn't do it right now. Maybe I will get in touch with them in case they have it in a few months.

As it stands right now, I might not have a job after Dec. 2014, so even the $3K is something I wouldn't spend right now. I still need to finish the inside of the garage I just built & finish the siding and roof on my house in the spring since I might be selling the place at the end of next year. If I get another permanent position I just applied for (won't know for a month or two), then I would jump on that.

Thanks for the find!

 

[avc8130]

That is an excellent deal, unfortunately I couldn't do it right now. Maybe I will get in touch with them in case they have it in a few months.

As it stands right now, I might not have a job after Dec. 2014, so even the $3K is something I wouldn't spend right now. I still need to finish the inside of the garage I just built & finish the siding and roof on my house in the spring since I might be selling the place at the end of next year. If I get another permanent position I just applied for (won't know for a month or two), then I would jump on that.

Thanks for the find!

Long sold...

ac

 

[George Webster]

Some of the better combo boilers mentioned in this thread are not bad, but none of them perform as well as multiple boilers, in my opinion. I added an Attack DP35 to my existing oil boiler along with 800 gals of storage and I am very happy. I had a similar situation to you and decided that there was no point to having the wood stove if I could use the flue for a wood fired boiler instead. Far more efficient and being tied into my central heating system, far easier to manage. I used the wood stove to heat the walk out portion of my basement, so I simply added hydronic baseboards and an additional zone. Storage is definitely the key. If properly designed to maintain good stratification, the more capacity, the better - within reason of course. My tank is 800 gals and has 4 temp sensors at 12" intervals and I see a 50+ degree delta T from the top of the tank to the bottom until I've reached 70-80% capacity. If I heat this to around 180F it will last me 36 hours to the next fire, heating 3,200SF + DHW in normal winter weather. 24 hrs in subzero overnights. Geo is cool, but retrofit is very tough to justify from a cost perspective.

 

[Nuker]

Some of the better combo boilers mentioned in this thread are not bad, but none of them perform as well as multiple boilers, in my opinion. I added an Attack DP35 to my existing oil boiler along with 800 gals of storage and I am very happy. I had a similar situation to you and decided that there was no point to having the wood stove if I could use the flue for a wood fired boiler instead. Far more efficient and being tied into my central heating system, far easier to manage. I used the wood stove to heat the walk out portion of my basement, so I simply added hydronic baseboards and an additional zone. Storage is definitely the key. If properly designed to maintain good stratification, the more capacity, the better - within reason of course. My tank is 800 gals and has 4 temp sensors at 12" intervals and I see a 50+ degree delta T from the top of the tank to the bottom until I've reached 70-80% capacity. If I heat this to around 180F it will last me 36 hours to the next fire, heating 3,200SF + DHW in normal winter weather. 24 hrs in subzero overnights. Geo is cool, but retrofit is very tough to justify from a cost perspective.

I actually have a dedicated chimney on one end of the house for the oil boiler, and on the far end of the house, a large brick & stone fireplace and second chimney. The small flue in the fireplace end goes down into the basement, and the fireplace has its own chimney that is separate in the same brick/mortar. So in all, I have 3 flues, in 2 chimneys, on opposite ends of the house.

I would not replace the wood stove with a boiler because my basement, even though completely open now, has a "utility end", and the rest. If I put a boiler in place of the wood stove, I would have to run the water lines 40 feet (probably more like 50-60 on the walls) over to where the boiler and manifolds are now.
Down on the end with the boiler is the oil tank, hot water tank, main power panel, and house water softener system. I also already have a second basement zone with in-slab radiant hydronic heat.

My other thought is that even though combo units are not optimized for the secondary burner, my current oil boiler is 14 or 15 years old, so a combo unit at least wouldn't be any worse when using oil. I would use wood exclusively except when on vacation, and I like the NextGen Biomass unit because it seems to be made for wood first, but still has a separate chamber for the oil burner.