Went from Tarm indoor boiler to G 200 outdoor boiler this year. So GREAT HEAT was using seasoned wood for first few weeks. Then fresh split. Noticed a lot of creosote build up on door, chimney, and tubes have a bunch of tar on them. Shacker tubes are very sticky and difficult to move. Big question is this due to fresh wood? Or is there something else going on?
Creosote
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If you're burning fresh split wood, it's going to cause all kinds of issues, among those is creosote. You might want to read a little bit in the wood shed section.
brenndatomu
Minister of Fire
maple1
Minister of Fire
You should have had these issues big time with your Tarm also, if you burned the same wet wood in it.
Hope you weren't expecting the G200 to handle wet wood with no issues? From all I have read it is a very good boiler. But they all need dry wood. Very much especially gasifiers. From your description of shaker tubes sounds like it is likely a big mess inside.
Hope you weren't expecting the G200 to handle wet wood with no issues? From all I have read it is a very good boiler. But they all need dry wood. Very much especially gasifiers. From your description of shaker tubes sounds like it is likely a big mess inside.
Eureka
Feeling the Heat
Burning wet wood in that thing is like putting diesel in a gas motor. You can expect similar results
JRHAWK9
Minister of Fire
It's just hydrogen and oxygen....both of which, by themselves, are highly combustible. Just need to find a way to separate them.
Curious what your determining factors were going from indoor TARM to outdoor G200?
Mojappa
Burning Hunk
Progress can be hard to keep up with. Hell, there’s still people that think oak can season in 5 months and pine will definitely burn your house down. Time in something doesn’t always equate to knowledge of it.
Tarm had some pin holes and wife was tired of mess in basement. It was a good boiler.
maple1
Minister of Fire
No I just got behind with getting wood in for the year this spring. Always burned season wood in Tarm except for first year buying house. That was ten years ago boiler was already installed and it wa fall with no wood on hand. So burned wet wood didn’t work well. Been burning seasoned wood again for past few days much better burn.
Thanks everyone for your input love my G200 and my dealer Ben was great to work with.
You need to understand that the creosote is not just creating a PITA clean up job. Creosote in the tubes is affecting your boiler's efficiency, and chimney build up can result in a chimney fire.
There are two things you can do right now to help yourself out for the remainder of this season. The first is to re-split your unseasoned wood smaller, and then completely protect it from rain/snow, but expose as much surface area to the elements as possible, via stacking cross-hatched. The smaller the splits the better. Yes, this is also a PITA, but right now it comes down to choosing which PITA you want to deal with. I've run without storage for 10 years, and I'll tell you for certain that splitting small is highly effective in creating seasoned firewood (even oak) well inside of a year. Not the best mouse trap by any means, but it still will catch lots of mice if it's all you have.
The other thing you can do, in any combination with the above, is to find some KD (or other very dry) pine, and mix that in with your less-than-great firewood. The idea behind this is to create an 'averaged seasoned' burn. How much dry pine would be required to accomplish that would depend on the actual moisture content of your unseasoned wood. The box stores usually have containers of free pine 'ends', and no one will likely care if you take a bunch of that (with the PT culled out of course). If you have a mill nearby that sells inexpensive scrap bulk loads, that might even be a much better option.
Just a couple of things for you to consider to help yourself out.
See if you can find a Roof/Floor truss building plant. They always have a big pile of KD scraps of wood.They are small and would work ok to mix with your green wood to help make an average seasoned load.
Yeah, they even believe it in sunny Fairbanks Alaska
http://www.newsminer.com/features/o...cle_0a570d48-6226-11e7-b490-6f8c6c511cdf.html
How long it takes to dry wood depends on the species of wood, when you harvest it, how you cut it and how you store it. CCHRC staff tested various methods of drying wood and found it is possible for wood to dry rapidly during a single summer — no matter when it’s harvested — but takes quite a bit longer during the shoulder seasons or winter. No matter what wood or method you use, firewood harvested in the fall won’t be fully cured by that winter.
maple1
Minister of Fire
The problem is that the line of thinking that mixing wet wood with dry wood to even things out is flawed when burning a gasser. The gasser prioritizes which piece it will burn. The idea is that the piece of wood must produce charcoal on it's surface at about the same rate as it is burning. A wet piece adjacent to a dry friend will not coal at the same rate, Therefore the dry piece will burn up leaving the wet piece in the firebox trying to burn while the cold homeowner is poking away at it. It's coaling but not at a fast enough rate to sustain a good fire.
Alternatively, wood that is too dry will coal up too fast for the gasser to digest leaving you with a pile of coals 10 inches deep in the chamber.
Alternatively, wood that is too dry will coal up too fast for the gasser to digest leaving you with a pile of coals 10 inches deep in the chamber.
the climate was sunny Alaska
Should be quicker in the lower 48.... unless you live in a Louisiana swamp, (then what do you care about dry wood anyways in a swamp
The longer story is a pdf detailing methods and measurements
See...Wood Storage Best Practices in Fairbanks, Alaska June 27, 2011 A project report prepared by CCHRC for: Sierra Research
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