My gas boiler is old and I was thinking about switching over to wood. Simple right? I thought so and in researching the topic I am now completely overwhelmed with the information I have found. I understand the work that goes into maintaining the wood but not sure my piping is adequate and if I should get a gasification or old style boiler. My house is about 1600 sq ft. and I have 7 cast iron radiators in the house. I have a chimney that most likely would need a liner and i have no water storage. Also my house was built in 1890. Any guides to get me pointed in the right direction to some basic do's and dont's would be much appreciated. Also is a catalyst the same as a gasification boiler?
Overwhelmed
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A catalyst is like a catalyst on a car. I don't think any gassifiers have them. The gassification in the gassifier takes it's place and uses the heat. I don't think you have to be overwhelmed. Most gassifers are much the same, they get so hot the gasses on the smoke burn up too instead of go up the chimney. They really are the neatest invention. I got my EKO 25 for 3500 after the feds rebate. You should be able to hook it up much like your old one. The guy who installed mine looked at the scamatics and said" not much different than any other boiler." In the house it might get smokey though. If I am wrong on any of my comments I will stand corrected because I am somewhat new to boilers too.
I guess my concern lies in spending a lot of money and the system is inefficient and I'm not really saving any money. I have little faith in most of the local heating guys since most of them fell out of there truck one day and were heating experts.
I'm not sure what you mean by inefficient. Do you need to buy your wood? Do you have a tile lined chimney? A gasser normally does not send as much heat up the chimney. You are in the right place to get educated. If you can afford it the gasser is the way to go, just the lack of creosote is worth the extra cost. RandyLunchbox said:
What size piping do you have to your rads? Water storage is easily handled with a used propane tank. Your chimney should be looked at by a sweep. Think gasification over old style. Take one thing at a time & keep reading the threads here & you should have it, RandyLunchbox said:
If you have an old gas boiler, by all means upgrade that to one of the new condensing models if you have cast iron radiators and the house is that old especially if you're unsure of using the wood.
Most of them were sized for 140 degree water to do the heating (at zero degrees) instead of the 180 you're probably sending out there now, and were probably originally a gravity system (very large diameter and sloped going to and from the boiler but may have been replaced at some point with smaller piping) so you should be more than fine for either type of wood boiler.
You don't have to do one or the other, and can easily add the second one. The condensing gas boiler would free up your chimey to be used for the wood. I'd just hate to see you put wood only in and decide later it's too much hassle.
Most of them were sized for 140 degree water to do the heating (at zero degrees) instead of the 180 you're probably sending out there now, and were probably originally a gravity system (very large diameter and sloped going to and from the boiler but may have been replaced at some point with smaller piping) so you should be more than fine for either type of wood boiler.
You don't have to do one or the other, and can easily add the second one. The condensing gas boiler would free up your chimey to be used for the wood. I'd just hate to see you put wood only in and decide later it's too much hassle.
heating8 said:
Tend to agree here. 6 days 'till November in the NE is prolly not the best time to try to figure out what new boiler to buy, switching fuel to an intensive hands-on type. I highly doubt anything about your situation would be a problem for many of the Gasification wood-fired hydronics bantered around here. Deciding you don't like all the accoutrements that go with wood after you're heavily invested . . now THAT WOULD be a problem!
The mains are quite large im guessing 2 or 2.5 and the branch lines are 1 or 1.25, i would like to leave the gas in as backup since it still works. A couple of the lines are pitched noticeably the rest appear level but may not be. I do not know if I can get a propane tank in my basement and cannot have it outside due to the city(no outdoor boilers are allowed either). I was planning on getting the boiler and some wood this year and allowing dry time and start burning next year.
Is the existing system steam or hot water? I think steam systems will have one larger pipe to each radiator, and hot water systems will have two smaller pipes to each. Hot water systems will also have a circulator. This is important because as far as I know, there are no steam wood boilers. In that case, there would be a lot of extra plumbing required.
Anybody who knows about this and would care to comment?
Anybody who knows about this and would care to comment?
Not steam it has a supply and return. I think I'm going to draw up the current system and post it I was thinking about putting the wood boiler in the attached garage and possibly running a new class A chimey up the side of the house if need be. Tying in to the system would be quite easy.
Lunchbox said:
Yes, you would have what's known as a gravity type system (at least originally). The mains are sloped a bit and the branches probably come off at a 45 degree angle or so. Before the invention of this new fangled thing called electricity, they had coal boilers without circulators. The hotter water rises and the colder water falls. The pipes were much larger than what we're used to seeing because they were sized to have very little pressure drop. The radiators are much larger than you'd put in today because they only had 140 degree water maximum being delivered to them. They kept the design temp lower because they didn't have the sophisticated controls of today to just shut it down (again think before electricity) and didn't want to run anywhere near boiling temperature, and weren't running near that 180 degree mark that's typical of the newer systems (although we're backing that down now again). Believe it or not, back in the day a lot of boilers blew up. You could "fairly easily" add a wood boiler onto the system, but the chimney needs to be addressed as you can't put anything else into the same chimney as the woodstove (no, you can't tie in the gas boiler even if you're only using it for backup)
I have a "hydroheater" which is nothing more than a woodstove with some coils in it that i play around with tied into the same piping circuit as a gas boiler. The biggest issue is that without storage you have a safe dump zone that you can get rid of the heat when you can't just stop the wood from burning. Other than that it's up to you how much you spend on your wood boiler whether gasification or not.
Wood Gun makes a steam boiler & we have a member on Hearth with one, seems very happy with it. I believe he is running 1 pipe steam as you mention Nofossil, Randynofossil said:
As Heating8 says you can't put gas & solid fuel into a chimney at the same time. You can have your gas boiler all ready to go & just slip the pipe in if needing to change over. If you have a decent tile lined chimney you will be fine there, needs to be looked at though. It sounds like the piping isn't going to be a problem & you might even want to gravity feed your heating loop as I do. Your piping is sized for this better than mine & I still have strong thermosiphen, Randy
Your first point of call is heat loss. 1890 usually equals no insulation in attics and not much in the walls.
Your best bet would be to tighten up as much as you can here before looking further. That does not mean ripping out the windows, they might need work however.
Next is available fuel sources and cost. Natural Gas is still cheap and if you are looking at that as a comparison it may be hard to justify wood. If it is Propane then the numbers look more attractive long term especially if you can get free/cheap wood.
I would second that now may not be a good time, also if you are going wood a back up system to stop the place freezing at least when you are not there is a good idea.
Your best bet would be to tighten up as much as you can here before looking further. That does not mean ripping out the windows, they might need work however.
Next is available fuel sources and cost. Natural Gas is still cheap and if you are looking at that as a comparison it may be hard to justify wood. If it is Propane then the numbers look more attractive long term especially if you can get free/cheap wood.
I would second that now may not be a good time, also if you are going wood a back up system to stop the place freezing at least when you are not there is a good idea.
Thanks for all the good info! It would be primary next heating season but would be buying this year to grab the tax credit and start drying wood. I would leave the old boiler as backup. Wood is cheap in this area, around $100 loggers cord delivered. We did remodel a few rooms in the house they were gutted and surprisingly well insulated i have over a foot in my attic, most of the windows need to be replaced but we plastic in the winter to help. I spend around 3k a year in gas(hot water heater is gas). I would also be adding in a indirect fired water heater no matter which way i go.
If you've got natural gas that's a tough sell, and even harder when you have to buy wood. I know in my area a cord of wood doubled in price right along with the cost of heating oil in 2008. How's your building envelope? Figure out your heat loss, and that will tell you how much wood you'll be dragging into your basement. A new condensing boiler would play very nicely with your old-school radiators. I looked at it my first year after 7 grand of heating oil. I came to the conclusion I don't have the time to burn 12-14 cords of wood @ 200-300/cord, and no one is going to help me. At the end of the day 1 cord of wood is about 100 gallons of heating oil, 140 therms of natural gas, 1.5 gallons of propane, and a whole lot of sunshine.
My first year in my house was also my worst year at 1600 gallons of oil. I'm down to 1100, but that's still too much wood for me to scrounge/harvest. Maybe in a couple years after a little solar upgrade I could quit the habbit, but I'm not there yet.
My first year in my house was also my worst year at 1600 gallons of oil. I'm down to 1100, but that's still too much wood for me to scrounge/harvest. Maybe in a couple years after a little solar upgrade I could quit the habbit, but I'm not there yet.
Lunchbox, if you live close to me you can come over and see my EKO. It's outside though. I live in Allenton, Wis.
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