Excellent article by Siggy

[heaterman]

If you subscribe (online) to Plumbing and Mechanical magazine you can access a very good article by John Sigenthaler in this months magazine. He gets into the why and wherefore's of wood gasification, why storage is sooo important and how to pipe and control it. Siggy has to be the king of storage. When he constructed his house he built it around a storage tank that as I remember is close to 25 or 30' tall and runs from the basement to the attic. Can you say stratification?

You can probably find it at www.PMmag.com

 

[chuck172]

Anyone have a link to the article?

 

[heaterman]

Anyone have a link to the article?

I'll see if I can find it and post it here. It's going to be a multi piece series for the next couple editions of the magazine. October is part 1. He really drives home the point of burning the whole fuel load without idling or throttling. You may have to go to the site listed and subscribe before it can be accessed. It's a free subscription. The magazine is written for contractors and engineers so some of the business type articles will be off topic for most here but the technical value would make it worth your while to subscribe.

 

[sdrobertson]

Thank You for the link...looks like a subscription is in order and this will be a good read...This hobby is getting time consuming

 

[heaterman]

Thank You for the link...looks like a subscription is in order and this will be a good read...This hobby is getting time consuming

We have definitely made things more complex. But in a lot of cases waaaaaaaay more efficient.
I look at some of the wood fired systems I've designed and installed and wonder what my old grandad would think. He heated his house and Grandma did all their cooking with wood until the early 50's. Just a simple gravity wood furnace and a wood cook stove.

 

[sdrobertson]

I think part of it is that I'm really spoiled and I want to have heat from wood, but I'm way to "busy" (i.e. maybe lazy) to want to get up in the middle of the night and refill the wood appliance. I want wood heat (cheap) with the convenience of fossil fuels and that's a hard combination to work with.

 

[Jeff S]

Do you remember the name of the article ?

 

[heaterman]

Do you remember the name of the article ?

It's in the October 2009 edition Volume 27 Number 9. The name of the article is "From wood to water, part 1" Sub heading is " Interfacing wood gasification boilers with modern hydronics."

I have been searching on PM's website myself and can't find it there.

 

[Jeff S]

Thanks Heaterman,I just subscribed to the magazine but it looks Like I'm will need to find someone in my area with the Oct issue .

 

[chuck172]

Try this:
(broken link removed)

Lets make this article a sticky

 

[pybyr]

Thanks Heaterman-- any chance someone like you or Webmaster Craig could talk with Siggy and PM and arrange a symbiotic relationship by which this article (and the upcoming one by Siggy) could be available here at the Hearth.com Boiler Room? Might get some good cross-traffic in each direction.

 

[leaddog]

They don't have oct up yet

 

[chuck172]

It's in the april 2009 issue of hpacmag.
(broken link removed)

 

[Jeff S]

Thanks Chuck that is most helpful,looks like an excellent magazine as well.

 

[heaterman]

Thanks Heaterman,I just subscribed to the magazine but it looks Like I'm will need to find someone in my area with the Oct issue .

The October issue will show up in the on line archives next month.

I'm going to give Siggy a call Monday and see if there's any way he could post that up here. There's no mention of that article in the index for the October online magazine.

 

[tom in maine]

Very cool square unpressurized tank is featured in that article!

 

[heaterman]

It's in the april 2009 issue of hpacmag.
(broken link removed)

Lot's of good reading there to and the illustrations are the same but it's not the same article.

 

[Gooserider]

There are a LOT of really good articles by Siggy, I've been collecting bookmarks like mad on them, but don't feel completely comfortable posting the links wholesale since I'm not sure just what copyright issues might be involved... However if you go to the PM mag website link posted earlier, they have a list of "most popular searches" - Siggy is number one on the hit parade, and hitting that link will get you several pages of good reading...

Gooserider

 

[jebatty]

If the articles are available on the web and don't require a paid subscription, etc., I don't see any problem with making the links available to everyone. Presumably anyone who searched long or smart enough could find them anyway. Now, copying the articles and distributing them electronically or in paper could be a copyright problem.

 

[in hot water]

Siggy is very generous with his materials. I always make it a point to ask before I use his articles, it's a courteous thing to do. Usually all he asks is you credit to material to him, in the post.

hr

 

[pybyr]

If the articles are available on the web and don't require a paid subscription, etc., I don't see any problem with making the links available to everyone. Presumably anyone who searched long or smart enough could find them anyway. Now, copying the articles and distributing them electronically or in paper could be a copyright problem.

Exactly-- one can find a lot of good Siggy articles on various topics in the searchable PM archives, but they vary a lot in terms of their pertinence to wood &/or storage.

I cannot see any copyright problems at all being likely to arise out of posting titles + links to distinct articles here (and as jebatty said- the issue would only be in distributing _copies_ of the bodies of the articles; PM should be glad for the traffic.

 

[Chris Hoskin]

I posted several links to some of Siggy's other articles in the "articles and resources for Central Heat" sticky at the top of the home page. Some very interesting stuff in there.

 

[chuck172]

The Oct. issue is available now, Siggy's article is there:
http://www.pmmag.com/Articles/Column/BNP_GUID_9-5-2006_A_10000000000000684181

 

[heaterman]

The Oct. issue is available now, Siggy's article is there:
http://www.pmmag.com/Articles/Column/BNP_GUID_9-5-2006_A_10000000000000684181

That's the one!!

 

[Gooserider]

Interesting article, but dare I say that we could possibly teach him a few ideas about improving performance of such a setup? (or at least treating the wood boiler as the primary heat source, with the dino-boiler as a backup to keep the pipes from freezing...)

The way Siggy has the wood boiler isolated from the rest of the system by the buffer tank, he limits the ability of the boiler to supply heat when the tank isn't up to full temperature. In addition his setup adds an extra coil, expansion tank, makeup water supply and (arguably) extra pumps...

I would have tied the boiler and heating loops together, with a mixing valve at the tank coil to either control the ratio of tank / load distribution while charging, or control the output temp when discharging, and made the DHW tank another zone.

Gooserider