Does anyone NOT like their Garn? How do you feel about your Garn?

[ThisWarmHouse]

Hi Everybody,

ThisWarmHouse became the Garn dealer for a good chunk of the Eastern USA earlier this year and we are continuing to expand. We have quite a few Garn customers already and so far every single one of them loves their Garn. What I want to know is if there is anyone who doesn't love their Garn. I'm being serious. There has to be someone out there who doesn't like their Garn right? It's just not possible that there is 100% customer satisfaction right? So please if any of you regret your Garn purchase please let me know. My goal from this is to find out what if any situations there are where I shouldn't recommend a Garn to someone as long as they have the money, space and desire to burn wood. We work with more than one manufacturer and my goal is to always provide the optimal system recommendations.

Thanks,

Derrick
(broken link removed)
800-333-4729

 

[brad068]

This thread is pure blasphemy! ;-P

Although mine is home grown I just love it! Its getting a workout right now. Last night was -5F with a WC @-25*F. Tonight, -10 to -15*F.
So far so good.

 

[flyingcow]

I only needed about 100,000btu's of heat, garn wasn't small enough. But I may build on just to use up btu's :coolsmile: They look like a nice unit.

 

[ThisWarmHouse]

I only needed about 100,000btu's of heat, garn wasn't small enough. But I may build on just to use up btu's :coolsmile: They look like a nice unit.

Was it not small enough regarding size of the unit or are you saying not small enough regarding btu's? Because the Garn uses integrated BTU storage you can't have a Garn that's too big. In the (house size / Garn size) ratio as your house gets smaller and the Garn gets bigger you don't get overheating or unused BTU's. Instead you get longer run time off of the thermal storage and between burns. A person using 25,000 btu's and using a Garn WHS2000 only has to batch burn once every other day.

 

[Jim K in PA]

Hey Derrick. Good to see you posting here at the Hearth.com forums.

The GARN is fantastic. It performs as well or better than advertised. We are less than two weeks into our life with the unit, but we can't imagine a better solution. The only "complaint" I have is the lack of any real guidance from Dectra on configuring the system. Of course, the Hearth.com crew here in The Boiler Room have provided countless hours to anyone willing to search, listen, learn, and ask questions.

 

[flyingcow]

I only needed about 100,000btu's of heat, garn wasn't small enough. But I may build on just to use up btu's :coolsmile: They look like a nice unit.

Was it not small enough regarding size of the unit or are you saying not small enough regarding btu's? Because the Garn uses integrated BTU storage you can't have a Garn that's too big. In the (house size / Garn size) ratio as your house gets smaller and the Garn gets bigger you don't get overheating or unused BTU's. Instead you get longer run time off of the thermal storage and between burns. A person using 25,000 btu's and using a Garn WHS2000 only has to batch burn once every other day.

kind of late now, but i was told that(by a dealer) that my house wasn't big enough. I was looking for about 100,000btu's. Just found a Innova and will be tying it with my storage. If i remember, i think the small garn was pretty close to my cost of what I'm getting.

 

[ThisWarmHouse]

I only needed about 100,000btu's of heat, garn wasn't small enough. But I may build on just to use up btu's :coolsmile: They look like a nice unit.

Was it not small enough regarding size of the unit or are you saying not small enough regarding btu's? Because the Garn uses integrated BTU storage you can't have a Garn that's too big. In the (house size / Garn size) ratio as your house gets smaller and the Garn gets bigger you don't get overheating or unused BTU's. Instead you get longer run time off of the thermal storage and between burns. A person using 25,000 btu's and using a Garn WHS2000 only has to batch burn once every other day.

kind of late now, but i was told that(by a dealer) that my house wasn't big enough. I was looking for about 100,000btu's. Just found a Innova and will be tying it with my storage. If i remember, i think the small garn was pretty close to my cost of what I'm getting.

That's too bad man. Sounds like you would have had a great situation for a Garn. Hopefully we can educate more people in regards to how the Garn's btu's relate to their home's btu requirements!

 

[ThisWarmHouse]

Hey Derrick. Good to see you posting here at the Hearth.com forums.

The GARN is fantastic. It performs as well or better than advertised. We are less than two weeks into our life with the unit, but we can't imagine a better solution. The only "complaint" I have is the lack of any real guidance from Dectra on configuring the system. Of course, the Hearth.com crew here in The Boiler Room have provided countless hours to anyone willing to search, listen, learn, and ask questions.

Hey Jim,

Glad to see you on this thread. I'm really looking forward to coming out eventually and shooting some professional footage at your place. I have really appreciated you documenting your Garn install process, it's been so helpful. Regarding Hearth.com you can expect to see me on here quite a bit now. I'm hoping to learn as much as I can from others and educate others in areas where I can.

 

[webbie]

This thread is close to the line...of being considered commercial advertising.
Please check the forum rules.....

Nothing wrong with education, but if someone does not like their Garn chances are there would be a thread about it here. Just search on Garn and start reading. A sampling of 4 people including some that that may have bought from the posting dealer does not represent an adequate sample.

And, yes, you are correct - 100% customer satisfaction is impossible unless the sales of an item are so low as for it to not show up.

 

[ThisWarmHouse]

This thread is close to the line...of being considered commercial advertising.
Please check the forum rules.....

Nothing wrong with education, but if someone does not like their Garn chances are there would be a thread about it here. Just search on Garn and start reading. A sampling of 4 people including some that that may have bought from the posting dealer does not represent an adequate sample.

And, yes, you are correct - 100% customer satisfaction is impossible unless the sales of an item are so low as for it to not show up.

Sorry, not trying to advertise. I just thought this forum would be a great place to gather data on what people think of their Garns. I'm new to the forum and wanted to get some quick feedback. Is there something you would like me to edit in the thread to make it more appropriate in your opinion?

Thanks man, just wanting to join the Hearth.com gang.

 

[webbie]

No problems...it is fine, as is.

I just try to keep the line somewhere, because before you know it we'll have 100 threads posted by the makers or dealers of each stove....

Speaking of that, I just found out that Hearth.com is more popular than the State Gov. of California site (which features Arnold).

In fact, our of 20 million sites monitored by Quantcast, we are now about 6,000. Take the porn sites out and we are probably in the top 3,000.

That makes us in to top 1/10th of 1%.........by far.

 

[jebatty]

By far, most buyers of expensive products "like" and are "satisfied" with their purchase, as to admit otherwise would be to admit they made a very expensive and serious mistake. An overt customer satisfaction survey of such a product sounds more like marketing than serious research to determine satisfaction.

Such a survey also is very self-selective, as most buyers of expensive products also have done quite a bit of research to determine in advance whether the product they bought will meet their needs. Assuming good research by buyers, a customer satisfaction survey will produce "satisfied" by definition.

Such a survey also does little to inform or educate non-product users of the objective merits or faults of the product.

Certainly, the Administrator's call on this post meeting the forum rules as to commercialization is to be respected, cause "he the man."

 

[ThisWarmHouse]

By far, most buyers of expensive products "like" and are "satisfied" with their purchase, as to admit otherwise would be to admit they made a very expensive and serious mistake. An overt customer satisfaction survey of such a product sounds more like marketing than serious research to determine satisfaction.

Such a survey also is very self-selective, as most buyers of expensive products also have done quite a bit of research to determine in advance whether the product they bought will meet their needs. Assuming good research by buyers, a customer satisfaction survey will produce "satisfied" by definition.

Such a survey also does little to inform or educate non-product users of the objective merits or faults of the product.

Certainly, the Administrator's call on this post meeting the forum rules as to commercialization is to be respected, cause "he the man."

It's funny that you say that this does little to educate non-product users of the the faults of the product when that is exactly what I asked for. I already know situations where the Garn has worked well. I am looking for situations where it DOESN"T work well. I don't believe there is any one size fits all product and want to better educate myself and others on situations where the Garn isn't a good fit. As far as people who purchased a system not saying anything bad about it because they would have to admit they made a mistake is pretty bogus. Take a look around the forum bud, you don't have to look very far to find people who aren't happy and looking for help...

I definitely want to respect all forum rules and don't want hearth.com to become a marketing/advertising swarm either. That would totally kill the community. I'm on your team when it comes to that issue.

 

[jebatty]

Take a look around the forum bud ...

That's not my name.

 

[topofthehil]

as far as the post of "The only “complaint” I have is the lack of any real guidance from Dectra on configuring the system.", martin also has a business that does just that.
for a price, he can design a system.
to do it right is time consuming.

 

[ThisWarmHouse]

as far as the post of "The only “complaint” I have is the lack of any real guidance from Dectra on configuring the system.", martin also has a business that does just that.
for a price, he can design a system.
to do it right is time consuming.

What type of configuration information? Is it the type of info that could be standardized or do you mean install specific info?

 

[Eric Johnson]

Whatever happened to the member earlier this year who got the Garn delivered, but then couldn't afford to install it? I felt bad for the guy, but was surprised that he got that far without checking into some real-world numbers for the install.

 

[sdrobertson]

Whatever happened to the member earlier this year who got the Garn delivered, but then couldn't afford to install it? I felt bad for the guy, but was surprised that he got that far without checking into some real-world numbers for the install.

Wasn't he the gentlemen from way up in the mountains in Colorado? You right and I had forgotten about him, Hopefully he got it hooked up by himself.

 

[Jim K in PA]

as far as the post of "The only “complaint” I have is the lack of any real guidance from Dectra on configuring the system.", martin also has a business that does just that.
for a price, he can design a system.
to do it right is time consuming.

toth - I am aware of and respect the fact that Dectra is also an engineering consulting firm. I also own and manage an engineering consulting firm, and deal daily with potential "clients" fishing for freebie input. However, with respect to the GARN 1500 and 2000 models, they could offer the "average" or "typical" buyer some more input as part of the $13,000-15,000+ cost of the units. Given that the two units I mention are the ones that are most appropriate for, and primarily marketed to, single family homeowners, this offers the opportunity develop baseline system configurations that could then be adapted or modified to accomodate particular issues with each system. That design adaptation or modifcation can be developed by the buyer or bought from Dectra (assuming you can get in touch with them). how time consuming that effort is obviously depends on the scope of deviation from the "tpyical" application. Having designed and implemented my system, I do not see how much more time would be necessary to implement something similar for another system, excepting mechanical constraints. The very simple line schematics included in the August 2008 edition of the install manual I have are of no real use to a buyer that does not have experience in hydronics or access to such experience. I also am fairly confident that very few P&H;contractors will have the level of experience in a heat and store system like the GARN to design an appropriate system.

Obviously this is just one perspective from one individual who has gone through the process of research, selection, purchase, design and installation of a GARN WHS2000 over the last 6 months. I am not "faulting" Dectra over this issue, just offering a suggestion to the original poster and anyone else who may come across this post while doing their research into a GARN. I have no regrets.

 

[Eric Johnson]

Whatever happened to the member earlier this year who got the Garn delivered, but then couldn't afford to install it? I felt bad for the guy, but was surprised that he got that far without checking into some real-world numbers for the install.

Wasn't he the gentlemen from way up in the mountains in Colorado? You right and I had forgotten about him, Hopefully he got it hooked up by himself.

That's the guy. Nice guy, too, as I recall. I hope he got it hooked up, but if he did, I doubt he did it himself, otherwise he would have been on here with all sorts of questions.

 

[topofthehil]

Jim k in PA,
you are correct in respect to Garn not being as helpful as they could be with simple questions on installation and set up.
I knew/know little about install and design of a system and found that getting this information from Garn was very slow.
I think they need more tech people. hopefully they monitor their web site and step in to help answer questions.
however, to give martin credit where credit is due, when I had a fan problem, he was very fast to correct the problem.

 

[Eric Johnson]

Derrick,

What sort of technical assistance do you guys provide, if any, when somebody buys a boiler from you? Do you do system design and engineering for a fee? Do you give estimates of what a customer can expect to spend on installation? If so, do you provide that information if the customer doesn't ask for it?

Those last two questions are getting back to the guy who had his boiler delivered and then balked at the installation cost. I'm mystified at how far he got into the process without that rather important information.

 

[ThisWarmHouse]

Derrick,

What sort of technical assistance do you guys provide, if any, when somebody buys a boiler from you? Do you do system design and engineering for a fee? Do you give estimates of what a customer can expect to spend on installation? If so, do you provide that information if the customer doesn't ask for it?

Those last two questions are getting back to the guy who had his boiler delivered and then balked at the installation cost. I'm mystified at how far he got into the process without that rather important information.

I want to be careful not do any type of advertising so I don't want to talk about our company specifically except if you want to PM me.

I think that when you buy a boiler basic system design regarding pump and pipe sizing for proper system flow and protection and pricing on all of the major components should be part of the selling process. What are you doing as a dealer if all you do is take money from the person? The manufacturer could do that themselves just as well. Someone buying a boiler system needs to be able to see all of the costs before they pull the trigger on the boiler itself. I feel bad for the guy with the Garn and no money to install. Don't know who dropped the ball on that one.

Thanks for this type of feedback guys.

Could some of you guys looking for Garn to give better setup and design info give some specifics of what you are looking for so that maybe we can push Dectra to step up their game in that department?

 

[Eric Johnson]

Fair enough. Good response. Thanks.

When we started the Boiler Room about one year ago, we only had one actual Garn owner, Tom Caldwell, and a bunch of wannaGarns. Now they're gottaGarns, and their information and observations have really been a good addition to the site.

 

[Sawyer]

This thread is pure blasphemy! ;-P

Although mine is home grown I just love it! Its getting a workout right now. Last night was -5F with a WC @-25*F. Tonight, -10 to -15*F.
So far so good.

Oh, so the heat wave is south of us!