Sophisticated vs Simple for Mild Climate

[Tennman]

Guys, I always look at the part of the country you contributors are from and we Southerners are pretty scarce here. I pretty much had my mind made up to get the EKO 60 for our old big house... AND then started asking questions again of the locals. Sometimes a guy should just stop (hard for an engineer). Where we live near the Tenn/Ala line the following is our mean temps from Oct to March: 58, 48, 40, 36, 40, 48. Usually much of Oct and March doesn't require much heat if you enjoy cool nites. The local Hardy wood boiler distributer installed 70 units this winter in our area with his personal boiler being in service for 29 years essentially trouble free. All the local references so far are glowing recommendations for this free standing stainless device. I keep debating whether for our climate I want to go the elegent, efficient approach (EKO gasser) or the brute force simple. We own all the timber we will ever need for energy and are very remote. Cost differential is not a big deal, but tending time is. I'm 56 so my brain says.... this will last until I'm 86 but before then the quantity of wood I haul out the woods will be a issue (hopefully I'll still care)!! I love a nail gun, but if I absolutely must get something done I take the hammer. There's a verse in the Bible that says "there's safety in a multitude of counselors" so fire away. I can't help myself.

 

[WoodNotOil]

Even though your house may be big, your heat demand at those temps will not be. If you go the gasifier route, then probably an Eko 25 would do you just fine. Put in a storage device that allows off season DHW and you will be in business. With enough storage you may even be able to skip days for firing in the winter with low heat loads like that. I don't think your climate changes the decision all that much, just the size of the boiler you need. You will burn less wood, when you want to, have almost no smoke, and reduce the carbon in the air. If cost is not the issue, it is a no brainer to me.

 

[Chris Hoskin]

I agree with WNO and would add that as things move into VA, WV, etc. we start talking to potential customers about how important storage is. Up here in northern New England, you can get away without storage if you are willing to limit your burn season, however, down where you are even the smaller 25 or 30kW boilers are likely to be oversized and storage becomes all but critical for getting the best use out of your boiler and wood.

Given your reasonable concerns about hauling wood as you get older, storage becomes even more valuable. As WNO says, there will be many days during the heating season - and certainly during cooler days of Spring and Fall - where you will only have to fire your boiler once every day or two (with storage).

Chris

 

[Rory]

I'm appreciating the storage even more as the weather moderates, and it will supply me with domestic hot water for days on end this summer.

 

[Piker]

No matter what size boiler any of us buy, at some point in the season it will be oversized. IE, the day you turn the air conditioning on. There are 2 ways to deal with this. The first is knowing to keep small fires in the upper chamber when heat load is low, and to let the fire go out once in a while. The biggest mistake people make with their wood boilers is to load them up during the shoulder seasons to get 24 and 36 hour burns out of a load of wood.

The other, more obvious way to deal with low output scenarios is thermal storage, which I recommend highly to all my customers. In your case a small boiler with a few hundred gallons of pressurized storage would suffice, althout many hundreds of gallons, or even a thousand gallons, and you could be living the dream. Remember, the first place to start is with a heat load calc... from there, you can size your storage and boiler based on your lifestyle.

good luck

cheers

 

[heaterman]

Guys, I always look at the part of the country you contributors are from and we Southerners are pretty scarce here. I pretty much had my mind made up to get the EKO 60 for our old big house... AND then started asking questions again of the locals. Sometimes a guy should just stop (hard for an engineer). Where we live near the Tenn/Ala line the following is our mean temps from Oct to March: 58, 48, 40, 36, 40, 48. Usually much of Oct and March doesn't require much heat if you enjoy cool nites. The local Hardy wood boiler distributer installed 70 units this winter in our area with his personal boiler being in service for 29 years essentially trouble free. All the local references so far are glowing recommendations for this free standing stainless device. I keep debating whether for our climate I want to go the elegent, efficient approach (EKO gasser) or the brute force simple. We own all the timber we will ever need for energy and are very remote. Cost differential is not a big deal, but tending time is. I'm 56 so my brain says.... this will last until I'm 86 but before then the quantity of wood I haul out the woods will be a issue (hopefully I'll still care)!! I love a nail gun, but if I absolutely must get something done I take the hammer. There's a verse in the Bible that says "there's safety in a multitude of counselors" so fire away. I can't help myself.

If I were to install an OWB for myself (and that would be a cold day in you know where) it would likely be a Hardy. My customers probably have the best service with that brand as any other. They seem to hold up pretty well unless they are over fired or the user is feeding it green wood. (I recall going to a customer with a "poor burn" complaint, opening the ash door and watching about 2 gallons of condensation drain out on my boots.)

I would be a little cautious at this point with any OWB company that doesn't have an EPA compliant unit. They may be headed for oblivion in short order.

 

[WRVERMONT]

Go sophisticated!.......If cost differential is not a big deal. There is nothing like a gasifier with thermal storage, set up well, especially with moderate seasonal temps like in (Tenn.)

I always fall in love with my system in the spring and fall when heating requirements are down. If you want a system with relatively low tending time you can oversize the boiler and then size the storage to the boiler chosen. I run an oversized system, relative to our house and am very happy about efficiency. There is a learning curve with these systems. A customer of mine stated it well, after I installed his Econoburn 150 with 950 gallons of storage..."It,s DYNAMIC" After the learning curve, be patient, you get used to running your particular system. Good luck Tennman.

 

[Tennman]

Got it guys, the gasser takes less wood for whatever my home's energy needs. BTW its a 150 yr old drafty 4800 sf I'm working on to tighten up, but will never be like new construction with these old wavy windows. I'm away from home 12 hrs a day and reading the posts here about restarting fires, tuning flame color, adjusting flue and inlet fans/vents, and today throat erosion.... jeez will these modern boilers overall reduce my minutes/BTUs. Since the fuel is free, it boils down to time/BTU. I would much rather spend time with my chain saw than tuning, tinkering, and fixing. Since I have no point of reference of any wood heating, I value and trust y'alls experience. BTW, I think it was you Heaterman mentioning about doing the heat calcs. Where do you recommend I go to download the program? I read about it mentioned in posts here at some radiator vendors website. Can't express how much I appreciate you guys helping me make a wise decision that will impact my life for many years. Thanks

 

[sdrobertson]

Got it guys, the gasser takes less wood for whatever my home's energy needs. BTW its a 150 yr old drafty 4800 sf I'm working on to tighten up, but will never be like new construction with these old wavy windows. I'm away from home 12 hrs a day and reading the posts here about restarting fires, tuning flame color, adjusting flue and inlet fans/vents, and today throat erosion.... jeez will these modern boilers overall reduce my minutes/BTUs. Since the fuel is free, it boils down to time/BTU. I would much rather spend time with my chain saw than tuning, tinkering, and fixing. Since I have no point of reference of any wood heating, I value and trust y'alls experience. BTW, I think it was you Heaterman mentioning about doing the heat calcs. Where do you recommend I go to download the program? I read about it mentioned in posts here at some radiator vendors website. Can't express how much I appreciate you guys helping me make a wise decision that will impact my life for many years. Thanks

I'll pass on the Heat Calculations as I really don't know much about that. I will comment on your other comments. I went from a CB to a Eko 60 with allot of storage. With the Central Boiler I just cut and pitched in wood (allot of wood) and heated the house. I'm in West Michigan so my heat load is pretty high and I work 12 hour shifts so I'm gone 14 hours on the days I have to work. On the tuning, adjusting flue and inlet fans/vents and throat erosion...You have to remember that most of the posters on this forum that are doing all this tuning were getting "good" burns but we like to tinker with the boilers. These boilers become a rather fun "hobby" and tuning and tinkering really gets fun. I'm not sure how I became so anal about burning wood, but I know I have. I'm trying to achieve Nofossils efficiencies and heating my house for the winter on 2 medium sized bushes. These boilers take some time to get used to using them and most of the posts are in reference to the first year of burning. The starting of the fires is not really a issue after you get the hang of it, it just takes learning the best way for you to get it done. Burning wood takes some time out of your day, but in the end, I find it extremely rewarding not having the gas bills and I can set the house temps at whatever the wife wants it at. If you just want to fill the boiler and let it run, they will defiantly work this way and you certainly don't have to dedicate the time to the boiler that some of us do. I spend my time with the family and boiler instead of going out to the bars and other like activities.

One of my fears with others reading these posts that haven't yet deciding to go with gasifiers is that they will conclude that burning them is allot harder than any other wood burning appliance. They certainly don't have to be...but the fine tuning can be fun also.

 

[Tennman]

Thanks Piker, SD, WR and all..... Great insight from all. SD, you making the move from the CB to the gasser and glad of it is really helpful. I've picked that comment up from other posters I've been reading here for the last 2-3 months trying to get smart. It hadn't really occurred to me how thermal storage in our climate can really simplify things. One more thing... what is the shoulder season you guys mention? I think you guys have this Boiler PFC back on track.

 

[sdrobertson]

Shoulder season is the early fall and late spring when the heat load is really small. During these times of the year, every wood appliance is over-sized so its hard to regulate the wood load to the amount of heat the house needs. When its 50 or 60 degrees out, the house needs just a little bit of heat and by the time you get a fire going, it's almost to much heat. This is where storage really comes into effect as you can burn the boiler full tilt and put all the heat into the storage and slowly draw it from the storage when the house needs it.

 

[Gooserider]

The heatloss calculator program I used was a free download from the SlantFin boiler site, but they have taken the program down recently, supposedly it's being upgraded and will be back "soon" However there are other sites both online and as downloads that you can use for the same thing.

Gooserider