A pellet plant is opening up about 1 1/2 hrs from my house!

[GVA]

http://harmanstoves.com/features.asp?id=48


only sold one, and they arent cheap. Have another in the showroom. Its a new unit, out less than a year, so it should be interesting to see what shakes out. Remind me later and I'll try to keep you updated on how its working, and any technical issues we've been notified about.

If my memory serves me correctly "jimkelt" has this pellet boiler installed... maybe we could pick his brain?

 

[HarryBack]

GVA, I havent heard back from the customer as well, other than them buying about 10 tons pf pellets or so....generally, no news is good news. Interesting footnote here though is that they are replaceing an OWB with this.....the wife says that OWB uses immense amounts of wood (like 10 cord or so), and the thing is just a few years old......

 

[Eric Johnson]

Goose is right about the baffle--I forgot about that. I still think you could get around that, but his point about low temp corrosion of the heat exchanger is probably the deal killer. Bad enough with a conventional boiler, but when you're introducing cold city or well water into the vessel on a regular basis, you might have a real problem. Of course, you don't have that problem with oil- and gas-fired water heaters, so maybe not.

 

[Gooserider]

Goose is right about the baffle--I forgot about that. I still think you could get around that, but his point about low temp corrosion of the heat exchanger is probably the deal killer. Bad enough with a conventional boiler, but when you're introducing cold city or well water into the vessel on a regular basis, you might have a real problem. Of course, you don't have that problem with oil- and gas-fired water heaters, so maybe not.

I think you missed my point Eric, though corrosion can be a problem with regular heaters (I think it's the reason most of them die every so often...) What I was more thinking in terms of is CREOSOTE production, ala OWB style... Everything I've seen about wood fired boilers says that there is an issue with increased creosote formation due to excess cooling of the smoke whenever the water jacket is directly in contact with the firebox. The gassification units get around the problem by burning the combustion gasses and putting the water jacket just on the exhaust path, but a standard DHW tank setup you'd be running the flames and smoke right through the water tank, which is MUCH cooler than the typical OWB boiler - I know pellets are supposed to burn fairly clean, but I'd expect that any creosote remaining in them would certainly be condensed in the tank...

Gooserider

 

[Eric Johnson]

Most gasifiers run the exhaust gasses through firetubes that pass through the water jacket, so in that sense it would be no different with a wood-fired water heater. As I understand it, you run into creosote problems when you idle a gasifier, not when it's running full out. To avoid that problem with the water heater, the tank would have to be big enough to hold a day's worth of hot water generated by one firing. Then I don't think you'd have a problem with creosote, though you would still have to clean out the heat exchanger periodically, I believe. You would also have to size the tank to your particular needs and set it up to fire on a schedule.

In my experience with water heaters, the tanks rot out at the connectors, not in the combustion chamber or heat exchanger.