I brought my Econoburn 150 online in mid-September of 2011. It's setup 100' from my house in an insulated, sheetrocked boiler room in my barn. It's configured in series with my oil boiler, without thermal storage. We're using a 50 plate HX to heat domestic hot water off of the wood boiler loop. Previous heating seasons I've generally used 1100-1200 gallons of heating oil to heat the house to only 64 degrees which I've supplemented with about 4 cord (12 face cord) of wood burned in a Vermont Castings Vigilant, fired most of the time when we're home from work, and about half of the night, then re-started each morning.
Things I've learned about using my Econoburn 150 so far this heating season:
1. The EB 150 works nicely--the house stays between 68-70 all day, our comfort zone. We have unlimited domestic hot water. At night we turn the main parts of the house back to 66 degrees and we find we sleep better with our bedroom at 62 degrees. The thermostat turnbacks add an hour or so to our burn times.
2. I started using the EB 150 back around the middle of September which was too early. I should have waited 'til about mid-October, but I was impatient and wanted to get it working. Next year I'll wait so I can avoid all the "idling" in the shoulder months.
3. I used it for a week and I found it smoked too much for comfort when I opened the door to load it, and I felt I needed to put ventilation in the boiler room. I debated about fan hoods etc, but found that a $60 louvered, powered vent works nicely. I still get smoke, but the fan draws it out fine. (My triple wall Metalbestos chimney draws fine, but when installed the boiler was placed slightly uphill from the smoke pipe, hence the smoking when I go to load it. I'll fix that this summer)
In regard to filling the boiler with wood, I don't like the idea of completely shutting it down, but too often when I open the door to fill it and the temp is near to kicking the fan on, the fan would go to high and smoke me out. For a while I just shut the main boiler power switch off every time I loaded it. (There are a number of reasons not to do this including overheating if you still have a sizeable fire in there while you're loading.) It seems best to me to keep that circ pump going all the time. Now I've settled into a routine to where I just turn the digital set point down to 50 degrees before I open the door and if the fan comes on, it's on low and it's not a big deal. I also find that if i go to load it and the fan is already on, if i open the damper for about 30 seconds before opening the loading door it helps get the draft going up the chimney. You just have to be sure you're not blasting the smoke pipe if you still have a lot of wood in there. I've never had creosote in my smoke pipe or chimney , but did once get a mighty (scary) roar going in there. When to load is a bit of an art, but i've found it can be a bit scary if i have a half or more of the wood box full. There is just so much heat and gas in there that it really billows out of the loading door, or it tries to start a fire with the creosote in the upper burn chamber (more about that creosote later).
4. I had hoped to get away with the same amount of wood I was burning in the woodstove in the house, but that was naieve. This heating season we will have burned about 5.5 cord and it looks like we'd go through about 6.5 in a normal winter.
5. I initially had the loop temp in the boiler set for 185 degrees, but my burn times on 3/4 load of wood were only about 6-7 hours. This was depressing for a few weeks. When we got a warm-up to the low 30's I dialed the loop temp back to 170 and except for two very cold days I haven't had to dial it back up. Everything maintains fine.
6. One of the questions I still have is about the functional relationship between the aquastat and the digital temp set point. It's not clear to me how these do or don't interact. I noticed that if I set the digital temp the same as the aquastat (170), then the fan comes on when the water temps drops to about 165. The fan comes on high and the water temp drops 3-4 degrees more until the fire comes up, and then fan goes off and the temp climbs up to about 174. I found that if I set the digital target temp at 160, or when it's colder, around 165, that the fan only comes on low, I don't get the initial additional temp drop that i got with the fan on high, and it takes about 5-7 minutes to come back up to full temp with the low fan shutting off about 168 and the temp glides up to the target 170. I think I gained about an hour in burn times doing this.
7. At first I was afraid to fully load the boiler, especially on windy days (we're exposed on the top of a hill--great views, but strong winds). After several late nights sitting in the boiler room and monitoring the loop temps for fear of overfire caused by excessive draw through the chimney on windy days, I've concluded that overdraw is minimal--about 4 degrees at the worst in a steady 30 mph wind with 60 mph gusts. I'm glad I put in the barometric damper as instructed and I don't know what the boiler might do without it. Anyway, I fully load the boiler now at 6:00 Am, come home from work around 5:00 PM and throw in 3-4 logs to carry it to 9:00 Pm when I full load it before I go to bed. On windy days i get a little "puffing" of smoke out the damper, but it's not a big deal. it might be if the boiler was in my basement though.
I'm running out of space in this topic window and will have to split this to a second post.
Things I've learned about using my Econoburn 150 so far this heating season:
1. The EB 150 works nicely--the house stays between 68-70 all day, our comfort zone. We have unlimited domestic hot water. At night we turn the main parts of the house back to 66 degrees and we find we sleep better with our bedroom at 62 degrees. The thermostat turnbacks add an hour or so to our burn times.
2. I started using the EB 150 back around the middle of September which was too early. I should have waited 'til about mid-October, but I was impatient and wanted to get it working. Next year I'll wait so I can avoid all the "idling" in the shoulder months.
3. I used it for a week and I found it smoked too much for comfort when I opened the door to load it, and I felt I needed to put ventilation in the boiler room. I debated about fan hoods etc, but found that a $60 louvered, powered vent works nicely. I still get smoke, but the fan draws it out fine. (My triple wall Metalbestos chimney draws fine, but when installed the boiler was placed slightly uphill from the smoke pipe, hence the smoking when I go to load it. I'll fix that this summer)
In regard to filling the boiler with wood, I don't like the idea of completely shutting it down, but too often when I open the door to fill it and the temp is near to kicking the fan on, the fan would go to high and smoke me out. For a while I just shut the main boiler power switch off every time I loaded it. (There are a number of reasons not to do this including overheating if you still have a sizeable fire in there while you're loading.) It seems best to me to keep that circ pump going all the time. Now I've settled into a routine to where I just turn the digital set point down to 50 degrees before I open the door and if the fan comes on, it's on low and it's not a big deal. I also find that if i go to load it and the fan is already on, if i open the damper for about 30 seconds before opening the loading door it helps get the draft going up the chimney. You just have to be sure you're not blasting the smoke pipe if you still have a lot of wood in there. I've never had creosote in my smoke pipe or chimney , but did once get a mighty (scary) roar going in there. When to load is a bit of an art, but i've found it can be a bit scary if i have a half or more of the wood box full. There is just so much heat and gas in there that it really billows out of the loading door, or it tries to start a fire with the creosote in the upper burn chamber (more about that creosote later).
4. I had hoped to get away with the same amount of wood I was burning in the woodstove in the house, but that was naieve. This heating season we will have burned about 5.5 cord and it looks like we'd go through about 6.5 in a normal winter.
5. I initially had the loop temp in the boiler set for 185 degrees, but my burn times on 3/4 load of wood were only about 6-7 hours. This was depressing for a few weeks. When we got a warm-up to the low 30's I dialed the loop temp back to 170 and except for two very cold days I haven't had to dial it back up. Everything maintains fine.
6. One of the questions I still have is about the functional relationship between the aquastat and the digital temp set point. It's not clear to me how these do or don't interact. I noticed that if I set the digital temp the same as the aquastat (170), then the fan comes on when the water temps drops to about 165. The fan comes on high and the water temp drops 3-4 degrees more until the fire comes up, and then fan goes off and the temp climbs up to about 174. I found that if I set the digital target temp at 160, or when it's colder, around 165, that the fan only comes on low, I don't get the initial additional temp drop that i got with the fan on high, and it takes about 5-7 minutes to come back up to full temp with the low fan shutting off about 168 and the temp glides up to the target 170. I think I gained about an hour in burn times doing this.
7. At first I was afraid to fully load the boiler, especially on windy days (we're exposed on the top of a hill--great views, but strong winds). After several late nights sitting in the boiler room and monitoring the loop temps for fear of overfire caused by excessive draw through the chimney on windy days, I've concluded that overdraw is minimal--about 4 degrees at the worst in a steady 30 mph wind with 60 mph gusts. I'm glad I put in the barometric damper as instructed and I don't know what the boiler might do without it. Anyway, I fully load the boiler now at 6:00 Am, come home from work around 5:00 PM and throw in 3-4 logs to carry it to 9:00 Pm when I full load it before I go to bed. On windy days i get a little "puffing" of smoke out the damper, but it's not a big deal. it might be if the boiler was in my basement though.
I'm running out of space in this topic window and will have to split this to a second post.
