1250 SWITZER ON LINE

[loggie]

I finished my install about a 8 days ago and I did Everything myself and it was alot of work.I have had some smoke issues,my fault and learned the hard way that you cannot leave even the smallest piece of unburned wood inside or a putrid smell will wake you in the middle of the night{wife not happy}.I can bring my water temp up 100 deg in about 3 hrs but the boiler is tricky to operate,it likes to puff hard early and I am still adjusting the controls and learning how to burn it.I have been burning wood stoves all my life but I must admit this monster is a little intimidating.Gary Switzer has been great and even called me the other night to offer some advice.The bad news is with this string of single digit temps Ive found that my staple up radiant heat cannot keep my house above 62.Yesterday I lost 110deg in the boiler in 20 hours that is over a million btu.I an thinking of installing extruded plates and more insulation in the basement,or maybe a hot water coil in the central air plentum what do you guys think?Thanks again for every ones advise.

 

[Eric Johnson]

I don't know about a Switzer specifically, but most of these fancier gasification boilers take awhile to get the hang of operating. I found a huge improvement in my performance after one season. So don't get discouraged.

 

[EForest]

Loggie,
Do you have a draft door hanging open after your timers shut the beast down. And do you have natual draft in your chimney?
I have left several logs in the firebox after a burn with no odor in the house.

Ed

 

[loggie]

Hi Ed,Eric no I do not have a door hanging open although I am still adjusting the stack switches and door chains.My chimney does just meet the minimum for bends and height but I used double wall pipe the whole way to help with the draft.Most likely when the stack cools down I have little natural draft.I have only seen 340deg stack temp once so far often 325 which Gary thinks is a little low he says I may need a 1hp inducer from my 3/4.I wish Gary could come down to help me set up but its almost a 500 mile round trip.Ed what water temp do you fire yours and what do you take it up to and what is your average stack temp?

 

[EForest]

loggie,
stack temps vary depending on what I burn. Most times I burn @320* stack temp but my Switzer is a three pass so the temps are always lower than a two pass.
I can draw heat from the tanks and boiler down to 140* unless its below 0* outside then I need to fire at 160*. I always check wheatherchannel.com for the six day forecast before firing to plan how high to bring the tanks. Most times I fire to 220* in all three tanks because I like to go two days between fires (that will end next year when the barn is on line). I plan to change my baseboard heat to radiant for the first floor and euro rads for the second floor this summer. Then I can draw the tanks down a little more hopefully.

Ed

 

[cguida]

In the dumb question department...

Can you tell us what a Switzer boiler is, and how it is different from some of the other wood boilers we hear about? Or maybe point us to a website or page that explains it? I can't seem to find any information about it on the web.

Thanks
Smee

 

[EForest]

Smee,

A switzer is similar to a garn but pressurized.
Gary Switzer is the engineer/builder of each boiler he sells.
Do a search here and you should find a link to some photos I posted a while back.

 

[cguida]

I found the pictures -- very impresssive. But I don't understand what's going on inside the big black vessel.
As I understand it, the Garn is un-pressureized. What is the advantage of a pressureized vessel?

Also, What does the 2-pass vs 3 pass discussion refer to?

It would be helpful if Switzer had a webpage or two and maybe a diagram that would make it all clear. But I haven't been able to find it yet.

Is Switzer combustion similar to Tarm-type 2-stage gassification? Of is it some kind of blast furnace with all kinds of extra air? Or someting else entirely. Pictures looked like a pretty big firebox for chunk wood, i.e. not table-leg size as per the tarm types.

 

[loggie]

Ed,maybe I am not too far off as my boiler is a three pass also,first pass refractory then nine tube 2nd and third pass,We were shooting for a very clean burn and a 3 hour recovery time.It must take quite a pile of wood to bring up your storage.I am also thinking of the euro radiators for my 2nd floor.what water temp were you planning to run in them?For anyone wondering what the switzer is there is no web site they are built in a small shop in new york state,and are a little like a garn only pressurised

 

[Eric Johnson]

You can run hotter temps in a pressurized vessel for one thing, although the main advantage is that it's a closed system, so once the oxygen in the water is gone, the potential for corrosion goes down significantly. And with a pressurized boiler, you don't need a heat exchanger to get your hot water into a pressurized heating system, which is what most houses have. The disadvantage of a pressurized boiler is that it needs to be built to take the pressure and not blow up. And that's more expensive. The bigger the boiler, the harder it is to make it pressurized. In the case of the Garn, you've got 1,500 or 2,000 gallons of storage around the firebox and hx tubes, so making it pressurized would be prohibitive. Garn deals with the oxygen problem with chemical treatment. But you need a big (read: expensive) flat plate heat exchanger to recover the heat from a Garn.

The "passes" refer to the number of horizontal runs in the exhaust tubing, which is to say the internal heat exchanger. I believe a two-pass boiler has two horizontal runs while a 3-pass has three. They kind of snake around inside the water jacket like an intestinal tract, before exhausting out into the chimney. More passes equals greater heat exchange, which is why the three-pass boiler mentioned above has a lower stack temp than the two-pass model.

 

[EForest]

loggie
they tell me I can get heat from rads down to 110* but the rad must be over-sized to accomplish this.(broken link removed to http://www.hydronicalternatives.com/CorrectionFactorLowTempSystems.pdf) This link explains that. Modern panel radiators have a max temp of 230*.

here's something useful for those with cast iron steam radiators that would like to run hot water thru them
(broken link removed to http://www.hydronicalternatives.com/Steam-to-hot-water-conversion-valve.pdf)

Eric
My 3 pass is 25 tubes total.
first pass = one 9" refractory lined that dumps into a fire brick lined box off the rear of the boiler.
2nd pass = twelve 2" tubes from rear lined box to front box w/ steel plate (shield).
3rd pass = twelve 2" tubes back to the rear and out to flue pipe.
Heat transfer happens so fast that you can see the temp gage move at the beginning of a fire.

 

[cguida]

Eric Johnson, EForest, Loggie

Thanks for the synopsis. I think I get the picture now. They must have a terrific big fan pull the gasses through the 'intestinal tract.' (Great turn of phrase!)

 

[sdrobertson]

Heat transfer happens so fast that you can see the temp gage move at the beginning of a fire.

You're talking about the water temp gauge? Wow, that's impressive.

 

[smangold]

I finished my install about a 8 days ago and I did Everything myself and it was alot of work.I have had some smoke issues,my fault and learned the hard way that you cannot leave even the smallest piece of unburned wood inside or a putrid smell will wake you in the middle of the night{wife not happy}.I can bring my water temp up 100 deg in about 3 hrs but the boiler is tricky to operate,it likes to puff hard early and I am still adjusting the controls and learning how to burn it.I have been burning wood stoves all my life but I must admit this monster is a little intimidating.Gary Switzer has been great and even called me the other night to offer some advice.The bad news is with this string of single digit temps Ive found that my staple up radiant heat cannot keep my house above 62.Yesterday I lost 110deg in the boiler in 20 hours that is over a million btu.I an thinking of installing extruded plates and more insulation in the basement,or maybe a hot water coil in the central air plentum what do you guys think?Thanks again for every ones advise.

HI , I have a 1450 . with two passes. mine is in my shop,so I never cared about the small unburned chunks stinking up my home. I do have a fairly short chimney.I have noticed if you pay attention to the log size you wont end up with small chunks" five or six big chunks at once, on top of smaller stuff ". Also if you added a length on the top of your metal chimney it would have more natural draft. Although maybe it would be asthetcally unpleasing. Scott

 

[loggie]

Scott thanks for your reply,I am doing much better with the boiler,no more smoke problems.The chimney would need roof braces if I went any higher which I would not like to do.I have the low limit set to burn down to coals now and no more problems.It still puffs with very dry wood but much less with one year old wood.Do you heat your house and shop?what kind of heat do you use?how much wood do you burn a day,yesterday I was able to skip a day and still had 140 deg water after 48hrs that is great.

 

[smangold]

HI, yes I heat my barn and shop. My house has hot water base "2000Sq. ft. of semi drafty home built log home", and my barn is 700sq. ft heated only by losses off the tank. I too skipped a fire yesterday (thurs) and the boiler was at 140 on Fri .Load size varies.I think I'm around 8 cord (guessing) since april of last year. I haven't used any oil since for heat or long showers. My first three cords were good and dry . but the last only semi- seasoned.THe unit is phenomenal. I'm very happy with everything except perhaps the wait for hot water in the summer as the coil from the barn is 300' away.Perhaps this year I will do a recirc or some kind of a solar setup. I also want to palletize my firewood and move it into the barn with my skid forklift.To heck with #2 oil Scott