First I want to give a huge shout out to all you Hearth guys. Don't know how I would have done this project without the info, research, and contacts here. I am SO pleased with my choice of the Biomass. I was committed to buying an EKO but seeing the design of the Biomass I decided to take a chance with a newer design with a much smaller customer base. Just as a review, our house is a 150 yr old, drafty, 4800 sqft that was costing me a fortune to keep at 62F with propane. We have all the wood on the property I'll need for the rest of my life (health not supply limited). After several days of debugging and underfeeding the boiler I saw it idling and auto cycling between the set point deadband for the first time Thanksgiving day!! Took some guests out to show off the project and there it was blower off with the water temp between the 176-184F range. Water heading to the house was at about 175F out of the boiler and arriving at the heat exchanger inlet at about 170F after travelling about 170-180ft in my "homemade" insulated 1 1/4" PEX. I agonized over buying the factory made foam filled lines but took a chance to save almost 2K and it seems to be working quite well. Will be posting and researching about my creosote problem since I'm idling a lot with cold nites and 60F days. Since all my spare time has been focused on building and installing the system I'm behind the curve for having properly dried fuel for this season.
How do you guys with gassers run without a window in your lower chamber.... I look at that probably 20 times a day to gage the health of the fire. I get a puff of smoke sometimes but the draft fan and the upper chamber design eliminates most of the smoke during refueling. That was the first thing I noticed about the EKO that the ceiling of the upper chamber was flush with the door opening. I'm not knocking the EKO but I'll bet anything there is an EKO design update right around the corner. Very happy guy here and now I'll start separate posts not with design questions but operational ones. At the moment concerned about the black goo accumulating on the inside of the upper chamber. Blessings on you all!
How do you guys with gassers run without a window in your lower chamber.... I look at that probably 20 times a day to gage the health of the fire. I get a puff of smoke sometimes but the draft fan and the upper chamber design eliminates most of the smoke during refueling. That was the first thing I noticed about the EKO that the ceiling of the upper chamber was flush with the door opening. I'm not knocking the EKO but I'll bet anything there is an EKO design update right around the corner. Very happy guy here and now I'll start separate posts not with design questions but operational ones. At the moment concerned about the black goo accumulating on the inside of the upper chamber. Blessings on you all!
!! as for the black goo it is from idling and not so great seasoned wood. When you get storage ans seasoned wood that will burn right off.
