I wish to add a wood gasification boiler to my system,I have a log home on top of a mountain with about 2000' radiant tube in the basement floor,2400' under the first floor and will have panel radiators on the 2nd floor.I also installed 500' of tube in my garage.The house has high ceilings and alot of glass about 6000sq ft altogether.my 126,000 btu oil boiler will run almost constantly if I use the basement loop,which I dont any more.The garage I have not hooked up.I have enough woods to take 10cd a year out,burning about 7cd in a accucraft airtite fireplace.we are still burning over $2000 in oil.I want to run all the heat and hot water.Im looking at a tarm solo 60 with a storage tank.Any feedback is much appreciated.Can I heat this house with this unit,The eko looks like a nice unit also.There are not too many people who know much about these around here,I dont care to waste 10 or 12k on something that wont work.
new gasification boilers
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Nofossil
Moderator Emeritus
Welcome to the forum and to the boiler room.
It would be time well spent to do a heat load analysis. There are other threads that discuss this, and there is a tool that you can download from another site (heatinghelp.com, I think) that helps with the process.
A gasifier with storage will certainly work, and burn less wood in the process. There's some debate about sizing. I think that most wood boilers are rated somewhat optimistically. It's probably reasonable to assume that they will actually deliver a sustained average output somewhere around 75% of the advertised value. My 80,000 BTU EKO 25 produces an average of about 60,000 BTU/hr over the course of a burn, for instance.
If you're around to tend it, best results would be from a boiler that is just barely bigger than you need. That way, you can run it flat out for a long time, dumping any extra output into storage. Too large a boiler and you quickly run out of anyplace to put the heat. All boilers, but especially gasifiers, are more efficient and cleaner at full output.
You may have enough heat load to consider a Garn. Plenty of discussion about these units on the forum. They're quite large, both physically and in terms of output. Heat storage is built in.
It would be time well spent to do a heat load analysis. There are other threads that discuss this, and there is a tool that you can download from another site (heatinghelp.com, I think) that helps with the process.
A gasifier with storage will certainly work, and burn less wood in the process. There's some debate about sizing. I think that most wood boilers are rated somewhat optimistically. It's probably reasonable to assume that they will actually deliver a sustained average output somewhere around 75% of the advertised value. My 80,000 BTU EKO 25 produces an average of about 60,000 BTU/hr over the course of a burn, for instance.
If you're around to tend it, best results would be from a boiler that is just barely bigger than you need. That way, you can run it flat out for a long time, dumping any extra output into storage. Too large a boiler and you quickly run out of anyplace to put the heat. All boilers, but especially gasifiers, are more efficient and cleaner at full output.
You may have enough heat load to consider a Garn. Plenty of discussion about these units on the forum. They're quite large, both physically and in terms of output. Heat storage is built in.
Thank you for your reply,you are correct that I should get a heat load analysis,when I built the house a plumber installed the boiler and a salesman for a radiant heat supplier sized the system,and I installed all the tubing and manifolds I think he was way off.I just watched the movie on garns website,very interesting but a seperate barn for this unit is probably the way to go anybody know what they go for?I would need a boiler I could fire in the afternoons and hold 24hrs.I think a large unit and huge storage tank?I am just looking for feedback from people who have a large heat load and are happy with there systems,what kind of unit,size of storage,type of wood and how much a season,how often they clean.If I should be posting this in another place let me know as I am new here thanks. 
look into the wood gun gasification boiler from AHS that is the unit I would purchase if I was in the market for a gasifier.
danzig I have spoken to AHS and I liked the stainless firebox also avail in steel.The stainless is up there$$$ and when I asked If they could let me talk to someone who is running one they said they would get back to me,they never did.anyone out there running the AHS I would appreciate your feedback.thank you for your reply.
loggie, i burn a garn 1960 gal with 550 gal external storage, i have a combined heat loss of 75000 btu/hr 365 days a year. winter load house, shop, 750 gal hot tub ,dwh. summer dwh, 20000gal pool, basically i burn 1-1/2 loads twice per day,firing rate 425000 btu/hr
TC that is quite a heat load you have,You are saving a small fortune.You are happy with it I guess?You have it in a seperate building I guess. I may be able to fit one in my basement do you think it would be too noisey.thanks
it's rather large, and heavy , the blower motor would be a little noisy for the basement unless you accousticaly insulated a boiler room to accomodate , at least then you would save on piping headloss, smaller main circulator and not need a burried insulated pex trench.
Check into 20ft shipping containers.They would make a really nice Boiler room and you can side them to make them look nice. You should be able to get one for under $2000, $1300 in Detroit. They are fire proof,moveable if you want, you can build your storage in the back have room for the boiler and some wood. A garn would fit nice and be easy to insulate.
leaddog
leaddog
I got a quote in Nov. from the Garn dealer in RI $9500 for the 1500 gal $11200 for the 2000 gal plus probably $1200 for shipping to Ct. plus enclosure plumbing and installation.
Nofossil
Moderator Emeritus
Pook said:
Someone's paying attention!
Yes - my system efficiency is about 56%. That means that I'm getting 56% of the theoretical heat out of the wood that I put into it. That's a different issue than the BTU/hr output. I could be getting 90,000 BTU/hr out of it, but if I had to put in 50 lbs per hour to get that, it would work out to something like 30% efficiency.
For this thread, I'm more concerned with providing helpful sizing advice. The efficiency details are for after he gets hooked ;-)
I guess I never saw where efficiency was an issue on this thread . . . ;-)
Anyway . . . you say 6k[], lots of glass, and two slabs? You also say that you gave up trying to run the basement slab, and have never run the garage slab? I would go back to the guy who did the heat loss calc and demand to see it (I bet ya he can't produce it
) If you are as far North as I or even farther, the size of your boiler makes no sense to me. I am heating less space than you, and sounds like you have more glass. Do you have some sort of great Southern exposure or something??
Anyway, you now can't shop for a wood boiler based on your fossil boiler size, since, if you can't run all your zones, it obviously is not sized correctly. And size is a big issue with a wood boiler, especially without storage. As NoFo said, you want the smallest wood boiler you can get away with. But you are going to need an actual heat loss calculation, not the half-assed one that the salesman sold you for the fossil boiler :-/
Anyway . . . you say 6k[], lots of glass, and two slabs? You also say that you gave up trying to run the basement slab, and have never run the garage slab? I would go back to the guy who did the heat loss calc and demand to see it (I bet ya he can't produce it
) If you are as far North as I or even farther, the size of your boiler makes no sense to me. I am heating less space than you, and sounds like you have more glass. Do you have some sort of great Southern exposure or something??Anyway, you now can't shop for a wood boiler based on your fossil boiler size, since, if you can't run all your zones, it obviously is not sized correctly. And size is a big issue with a wood boiler, especially without storage. As NoFo said, you want the smallest wood boiler you can get away with. But you are going to need an actual heat loss calculation, not the half-assed one that the salesman sold you for the fossil boiler :-/
I doubt I could find the guy who sized the boiler anymore and Im sure he guessed.I started building in 01 and moved in in 05 so I cant even say what year we put in the boiler,I think Im suffering from building burn out but it is easy to say it should be bigger.It doesent matter anyway much at this point whats done is done.[It takes a long time to build a log cabin on nights and weekends] but oil was 1$somthing a gal then it was'nt a big deal If it ran alot but today at 3$somthing I could see a 3yr return on my gasifier investment and be warmer.Who knows what next year will bring 4$something now that we are used to 3$.Back to the house it has some glass on the south side but most is east and west,the ceiling in the great room is 26'and thats alot of cubic feet for heat to go up.I had a conversation with fred seton,interesting fellow he dosent buy into the storage tank which seems standard equip here,he said in my application I would need an enormus storage tank and all the loss with it,he said there is too much water in a radiant system to be practical.he touted his boiler without a storage tank saying the 100k btu would be enough,and of course to buy his boiler.To me exact btu load is important if you wish to have your boiler fired constantly never going out completly and how long will any boiler last like that?or have a huge storage tank and a boiler that can bring it up to temp in 4hrs,In my case I think thats best as I am not home to feed a fire all day,and if the weather get warmer and the tank stays warm for 2 days instead of 1 all the better.what do you guys think?
Nofossil
Moderator Emeritus
In my case I have an 80,000 BTU boiler heating an 880 gallon tank. I build a fire every day unless it's warm enough or sunny enough to let me skip a day - I've skipped one day this week already, and I'll skip today as well.
I don't try to keep the boiler going continuously. I build a fire and run it flat out until everything is warm. There's a little finesse involved if I want to get the storage 'topped off', but usually it's pretty straightforward. I average about 7 hours of burn time per day over the course of the winter.
I don't try to keep the boiler going continuously. I build a fire and run it flat out until everything is warm. There's a little finesse involved if I want to get the storage 'topped off', but usually it's pretty straightforward. I average about 7 hours of burn time per day over the course of the winter.
The Garn unit is a great boiler, my brother-in-law has one. Should have listened to him. You definitely need storage and with the Garn its all in one and engineered well. But DO NOT put it in your house, IMO no wood boiler belong in your house unless you want a divorce. Some time I hope to get my Adobe working correctly.
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