Excellent article by Siggy

[heaterman]

Lot's of ways to skin a cat Goose. I would imagine that in this particular layout, Siggy was approaching it from the standpoint of integrating wood with a modern boiler system already in place. I haven't studied the schematic that closely as I usually just glean an idea or two from any of them. Every job presents a different set of circumstances and I've yet to do two jobs the same.

Here's the part that lit me up and it's the most important thing you can do for efficiency.............."Most wood-gasification boilers have variable-speed combustion air blowers that can partially throttle the combustion process when the water in the boiler reaches a set high-temperature limit. However, the highest overall combustion efficiency is achieved when a full load of wood is burned at the maximum combustion rate possible, as determined by the blower’s capacity. This results in a “burst” of heat output that lasts as long as it takes to burn off a firebox full of wood (usually two to four hours). "

 

[Gooserider]

Lot's of ways to skin a cat Goose. I would imagine that in this particular layout, Siggy was approaching it from the standpoint of integrating wood with a modern boiler system already in place. I haven't studied the schematic that closely as I usually just glean an idea or two from any of them. Every job presents a different set of circumstances and I've yet to do two jobs the same.

Here's the part that lit me up and it's the most important thing you can do for efficiency.............."Most wood-gasification boilers have variable-speed combustion air blowers that can partially throttle the combustion process when the water in the boiler reaches a set high-temperature limit. However, the highest overall combustion efficiency is achieved when a full load of wood is burned at the maximum combustion rate possible, as determined by the blower’s capacity. This results in a “burst” of heat output that lasts as long as it takes to burn off a firebox full of wood (usually two to four hours). "

True, there are lots of ways to do things, and there isn't anything "wrong" in what Siggy did with that setup, it just could IMVHO have been done better... I do agree with you on the quote being excellent, though in some ways he is preaching to the choir from where we are sitting in the choir loft.... (Haven't we been saying this for ages?)

The other thing that I always seem to feel very mixed about when I look at Siggy's articles is that while he talks a lot about operating energy costs, he seems really big on using pumps and close spaced tees all over... His design in the article uses five pumps, of which two or three look like they'd be running most of the time. The block diagram I came up with for my "systemic dreaming" thread (which has become a more distant dream for the moment as the GF is now out of work) uses two pumps (and NO close spaced tees) for the heat and DHW loops, only one of which would be running at any time - add one more if I had a backup boiler... I do have a bunch of zone valves and am planning for using a NoFo style controller, but I'd bet that my setup would likely have a lower operating cost... Maybe I'm missing something big in it, but it still looks to me like it would work better.

Gooserider