EKO 25, Pressurized Storage Suggestion Size?

[RDabate]

Hi guys,

I have an EKO 25 with out water storage. From what I understand, water storage makes this whole wood burning thing more efficient. That would be great because I'm not making it through the nights right now. Can anyone suggest a decent brand of water storage and how big do you think I should go for heating a 2800sq ft home?

 

[flyingcow]

Better efficiency, some yes, but a thermal storage tank will give you more convience, sized properly.

I have a square tank design, check out my signature. I've been very impressed with the hx coils, and the overall tank. It was easy to set up in my basement. The company was good to deal with. I was able to go about 5 days in the summer, on 1 fire, thats with 3 teens, etc. It has good holding power.
With baseboard heat, you might have to fire more than once every 24hrs. But I have 1800sq/ft 2 story house, on top of a hill on northern maine. Moderate insulation. With 3 kids taking showers in morning. Also, my house looses heat quicker than i would like. Yours is a 2003 it should be tighter than mine. It's been close to the single numbers in the am. 1 big fire a day seems to hold me. I build a fire about 4pmish, if it's needs more heat later, i refill boiler while it's still burning. I have baseboard heat in house, but i also have staple up radiant floor in my kitchen. This helps me a lot. Able to get better use of my tank with radiant. Eventually will do the rest of the downstairs with it. Maybe low temp radiators up stairs, when time/budget allow. That's going to be the key to this set up. Plus I would like to dump another foot of blown-in insulation in the attic. Do some other upgrades. I'm heating my house on about 7 cord of good seasoned hardwood. Thats year round, including my DHW.
This is the place for your questions. A lot of good people here, great experience and willing to share. BUT you need to do a heat load calc, if you haven't done it already. This will help enormously! I'm not sure which ones the best, but someone will suggest a few to use.
If you don't do it already, little things like setting back the thermostat at night helps. We turn the t-stat back to 62/64 at night. During day, house stays about 68ish, maybe a little warmer. If no ones going to be home all day, goes back to 64. With baseboard, I get a quick blast of heat when i fire up my wood boiler. Got home last night and tank was down a little more than usual. It was in the 102/105 range. It took me a load and a half to get the house and tank back to temp. But, wife was cold, t-stat in house was set at 74, plus all other zones were calling for a little heat. A lot of demand.
Do your heatload calc! Imprortant to figure what you need. How many times do you fill the unit during the day? Have you been burning since 2003?

 

[Nofossil]

I'll second the comment about marginal efficiency gains. For me storage is all about convenience - being able to build fires when I want, skip days this time of year, and so on.

First things first:

1) Make sure that the house is buttoned up. 2800 square feet of new construction in Connecticut shouldn't need a lot of heat to begin with. I heat 3500 square feet plus DHW and hot tub in Vermont with an EKO 25 with about 4.5 cords per year.

2) Make sure that the EKO is running at peak performance. Review the EKO tuning sticky at the top of the forum. Make sure that you have dry wood and good technique, so that you're getting a good clean efficient burn.

With those two things in place, I think you'll find that six or seven hours of burn time will take care of the heat needs for an average winter day. Storage allows you to do those hours in one flat-out burn at your convenience.

 

[RDabate]

I have not been burning since 2003, we bought the eko last year (2008), so this is the second year. I'm loading wood probably 3 to 4 times a day. I think I went through almost 7 cords last year.

Some things that I have not done (as far as tweaking), is adjusting those secondary fans. I have never been able to get the panel off because one of the screws is on so tight, that I'm not sure how to get it off. I might have to drill it out maybe? Would those adjustments even make a difference?

 

[Nofossil]

I have not been burning since 2003, we bought the eko last year (2008), so this is the second year. I'm loading wood probably 3 to 4 times a day. I think I went through almost 7 cords last year.

Some things that I have not done (as far as tweaking), is adjusting those secondary fans. I have never been able to get the panel off because one of the screws is on so tight, that I'm not sure how to get it off. I might have to drill it out maybe? Would those adjustments even make a difference?

The secondary adjustments are accessible from outside - they are the two little screws below the fan. The primary adjustments are behind the fan plate. I'd want to check them - mine were WAY off from the factory.

If you're adding wood 3 or 4 times per day then you're not getting the efficiency that you should, or your house needs a lot more heat than I'd expect. When it's running are you getting a clean blue flame in the secondary chamber?

Do you have any history of oil or gas consumption in the years before you got the EKO? That could provide an estimate of heat loss.

 

[RDabate]

Oh, OK, I see those screws. I don't really have a good history of this house, we bought in 2006, so we've only been here for 3.5 years.

Not seeing a blue flame...(That would indicate "Gasification" Right)?

I'm going to have to refresh my memory a bit on how all this is supposed to work. I have not made any adjustments to the Primary or Secondary at all. So to be honest, (like anything that your not familiar with), I'm not sure where to start just yet.



Thanks for the input, the people here in this forum have been really helpful and friendly.

 

[Nofossil]

I really wish I had the time to clean up and consolidate the Eko Fine Tuning thread, and perhaps add a 'where do I start' preface. Couple of things:

If there's anything more than coals on the firebox, you should get a visible flame in the secondary chamber along with the famous 'gasification rumble'. The flame might be blue, orange, yellow, or any combination. There should be no smoke at all in the secondary chamber and at most a barely noticeable odor that has been described as sweet or nutty.

If you're not getting solid secondary combustion, the most common cause is wood that's not adequately seasoned. You can burn wood that's not completely dry, but it takes extra effort and dry wood to get it started, and requires more primary air.

The second likely cause of poor or nonexistent secondary combustion is switching to downdraft operation before there's enough of a coal bed. Those of us who are fanatics have gotten the 'match to gasification' time down to four minutes or so, but it's critical to make sure that when you switch over, you have a solid secondary flame within a minute or so.

If you have secondary combustion but the flame is mostly orange or yellow, then reducing the primary air will likely help. If you have wood that isn't really dry and have weak or inconsistent secondary combustion, then a bit more primary air might help. Mixing in some drier wood will also help.

 

[RDabate]

Oh, I just remember another symptom.

When I try to open the Bypass Damper Lever to access the loading door, it's virtually always stuck. I have to hit it once or twice with a rubber hammer to get it open. Is that normal?

Also, the lever on the left side (in the back) squeaks like heck when I move in up and down. Not sure if I should or if it's possible to lubricate.

 

[Hydronics]

Oh, I just remember another symptom.

When I try to open the Bypass Damper Lever to access the loading door, it's virtually always stuck. I have to hit it once or twice with a rubber hammer to get it open. Is that normal?

Also, the lever on the left side (in the back) squeaks like heck when I move in up and down. Not sure if I should or if it's possible to lubricate.

Rick,

The bypass will stick with prolonged idling especially with wet wood. With this cold weather & less idling it shouldn't be sticking much though.

The lever on the left cleans the heat exchangers by scraping the turbulators up & down, it does kinda squeak, I wouldn't be concerned though.

It sounds like as Nofo said your air settings are off and/or wet wood. How well is the house insulated?
I would read the operation manual if you haven't already, you can learn much about the unit that way.
Hang in there.

 

[RDabate]

Hi guys,

I know some people with solar are using Geothermal. Now that I'm trying to to educate myself here, is geothermal just a fancy way to store you water?

 

[Nofossil]

Hi guys,

I know some people with solar are using Geothermal. Now that I'm trying to to educate myself here, is geothermal just a fancy way to store you water?

No - geothermal (used in this context it means 'heat pump') is a technique for moving heat from outside to inside, using refrigeration technology. With your refrigerator, the refrigeration system moves heat from inside the refrigerator to your living space. That makes the inside of your refrigerator colder and warms your living space a bit. Geothermal does the same thing, making the outdoors colder and your living space warmer. Since it's already cold outside, it can be a bit of a challenge to make it colder. They work much better when you have warm air, water, or soil outside to work with. Often, the part of 'outdoors' that you're cooling is underground where it's not as cold as the surface.

These systems can deliver a lot more heat than the electricity that they consume. I read somewhere that the ratio can be 6X - that is, a kilowatt of electricity used by a heat pump can provide 6 kilowatts of heat.

They can be quite expensive to install due to the need for an outdoor heat source which often involves a lot of buried pipe. Availability of an artesian well or other source of water that's well above freezing can reduce the cost and improve performance. In warmer climates the outdoor air can be used as a heat source.

 

[Medman]

I have investigated commercially available heat pump technology here, and there is a 4 to 1 energy recovery ratio in our climate. However, installation is in the $30,000 range, with a forecasted payback of 13 years. In my opinion this is too new a technology to use now. In the future when the costs are lower it will be an excellent way to heat/cool indoor spaces.

 

[RDabate]

I should probably post this next question somewhere else, but here's quick on.

I finally got the screw off so I can access the primary adjustments.

I'm having a hard time finding a baseline on what I should start with for Primary and Secondary Air adjustments. It's set as factory default right now, I've never changed them. I can not seem to find a guideline on "If I turn them left what does it do"? and "If I turn them right what do they do"? Should I give more air or lest air?

Now, given the facts below, any basic suggestions?

My house was built in 2003 & and somewhat buttoned up pretty good,
No storage
My wood has only been seasoned for 1 year.
I'm loading wood 3 to 4 times a day.
No blue blame in Secondary chamber
Lots of ash and soot have accumulated

 

[verne]

First go to newhorizons website and open the manual for the EKO. on page 18 it has a chart for baseline adjustments. then scroll down and you will see pictures of the primaries and secondary screws. for the EKO 25 primary open 9mm secondary 3.5 turns out from closed.The manual states 70 percent open on fan but I would start with about 1" at wide part of pie. so back off the nuts on the secondary screws and turn clockwise till you feel bottom out then back out counting turns . When the boiler is down use a drill with a Philip's tip and back out all the self tapping screws around the front cover , the one behind the fan . there you will see a plate on each side with a nut. loosen nut and slide open or closed to get 9mm.definitely worth the time as they have been known to be off from the factory .also make sure to read the sticky on the top of the boiler room page for fine tuning eko .Good luck scott

 

[RDabate]

I finally made those adjustments.

Just started the EKO back up, so only time will tell.

Thanks again guys. I'll post back will results.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

 

[Como]

The trouble with Heat Pumps is they do not use wood.