Extreme ROOKIE here!!

[Gilby]

Hey guys - like the title says, I am a complete and utter rookie with a boiler. I just purchased a new house on 10/14. It is a 4700 sq ft one story with a walk out basement. It has a gas furnace on the "new" side of the house - and an electric furnace on the original side of the house. It currently has a EKO 40 boiler (I believe) that i think I am having some problems with ( more than likely user error). The prior owner has told me that in winters past the house got so hot from this boiler that they had to open windows, etc. Good problem to have I suppose...but one I've yet to experience. I have read on here what a powerful boiler it is...so I wonder where I'm going wrong?

I have a couple questions that I havent been able to find the answers to specifically on this site - - now granted I don't have a clue about this boiler OR the terminology that goes along with them yet, so I may have read the answer, but couldn't translate it!!

When he was trying to teach me how to run the boiler, one of the things he mentioned was to let it burn and heat up to 170 degrees and at that point close both chambers and the damper. If I have been running it for awhile and there are some good coals, I can get it to maintain at the 165 level for long periods of time. I'll set the dial to 169 (seems like a solid number!) and the fan will kick on. Both furnaces tend to run non-stop just trying to heat the house up to 70 degrees. When one, or both, shut off, the boiler will start to heat back up and get above the 170 mark. Once a furnace turns on, it'll drop back down to 165ish. I'm not sure if that's normal or not...and I also don't feel like it should work that hard to keep my house at the 170 mark, but I'm not sure??

Another of the issues is the fact when I wake up at 5 in the morning, it says "fuel" and the temp is down to 140 or so. In the meantime, both of my furnaces have been blowing cold air. I've been up at 2:30 checking on it in the past and its regularly at 165 and holding. I suppose I should add more wood at that time...but its hard enough to get up to check it! More wood before bed?

So, how hot do I / can I let it get prior to closing the chambers and switching on my thermostats in the house?? Is 170 a safe number? It's worked...but then it tends to not warm the house very well. When I turn the furnaces on, I obviously am blowing cold air on the coils thus decreasing the temp on the boiler. I don't have a storage tank (although he left me a 500 gallon tank that I now realize he was going to use for hot water storage)...

Also, My pressure on the gage is 15 psi. He told me not to fill it with any more water unless/until it drops below 15 psi. On another post I saw, the guy had 190 degrees at 25 psi. Should I open the gates and let a little more water in and get that psi up??

Lastly, he said that when its running right, that bottom chamber sounds like a jet engine. I saw a youtube video that kind of backed that statement up - I don't have that going on. When a big fire is buring in the upper chamber, I get some good flames down below, but nothing real impressive.

Hopefully I did a fairly decent job of explaining my dilema...but again, I don't know what I don't know Its certainly not too warm in my house...and its not even cold outside yet. My firewood is good, although I feel like I'm using a lot. Random questions and simple I'm sure...but I'm just trying to learn how to heat my house efficiently. ANY help would be greatly appreciated!!

 

[711mhw]

Hang in there. I don't know about the operation of your (brand) of boiler, but some one will respond soon I'm sure. Kinda sounds like you have a gas and elec. furnace, + your wood boiler? Are you radiators, baseboard, radiant? With gas + elec. that are I think uaually hot air ductwork systems, does your bioler send hot water to a coil in one or both of the others. A little more explanation might help.

 

[mr.fixit]

I guess I'll give it a try.
Is the wood DRY? You shouldn't have to wait so long to close the damper.
Your water psi sounds ok
More details of the system may help-pictures also help especially if you're not sure if it's a EKO 40
There should be something in the control system to prevent the furnace fans from running when water temps drop to low,possibly an aquastat.

 

[Clarkbug]

I would say the first place to start would be here:

http://www.e-comfortusa.com/product...-gasification-boiler-91-137000btu/3125#MANUAL

Maybe you have gone through the manuals, but if not, this is a great place to start.

Also, there is an "EKO Tuning" sticky at the top of the forum, but thats probably a little bit advanced for you until you get the basics figured out. There are lots of users with a Eko on here, but you may want to change the title of your post to get a few more responses. Something like "New User needs help using Eko 40" might get some good traffic in your thread.

Good luck!

 

[Hunderliggur]

A new house with a boiler already, and a nice one to boot! Step one, RTFM (read the fine manual, or something like that). Mine was written originally in Polish I believe ;-). The Fine tuning sticky is for a little later. For now, what you need is a bed of coals in the upper chamber before you can get gassification. If you are using wood of the same quality (dryness) as the previous owner the settings should all be fine. Boiler wood is split smaller than wood stove wood. I split mine so I can hold it easily by the end in one hand (3 or 4 inches, or smaller). The wetter the wood, the smaller the split. Here is what I do:

1. Open the lower door an inch or so to let air in. Push the bypass damper forward (open the damper in the back of the upper chamber). Make sure main control switch is ON but don't press run
2. Make a saddle of wood on the bottom of the upper chamber - 2 pieces on either side of the nozzle on the bottom.
3. Add one fire starter block (or you can use kindling instead).
4. Add some good easy to burn wood above (small dry splits, kindling, scrap 2x4 not pressure treated, etc.)
5. Fill about half full (or less) with dry splits
6. Light the starter or kindling. When the kindling is burning,
7. Close the upper door, wait about 15 minutes until it is burning good, hot coals on the bottom
8. Open the upper door, fill with wood, close the upper door
9. close the lower door
10. Close the bypass damper
11. Press run

I crank my temp knob all the way up to 195. My circulator is set to start at 170 and stop at 165.

Hope this helps. My thanks to nofossil for the original advice.

BTW - You can burn wetter wood, but you will need more over it and I found it is harder to keep a good burn going. I am getting better at getting my wood supply ready in advance.

 

[rkusek]

Gilby wow, sounds like you probably got a good deal but the guy didn't finish setting up everything correctly. I got to ask you, are you just turning the fan switch on your two furnace tstats to the ON position and letting them run continuously? Since it sounds like the previous guy opened the windows I'm guessing that is so. That would be a terrible way to use this baby. I don't have a good diagram on mine (yet) but others here do so take some time to read the manual as well as the sticky on top. You need to cover the basic operation and to make sure they guy has things installed correctly. Maybe snap a few pics. You would not want try to use the dial on the EKO to determine how hot or cold the house should be. Like Hudderliggur said his is set at 195(max). Last winter, I think I ran mine at 185 because without storage it would have to idle and if house was not calling for heat it would "creep" up into the 190's after the fan had stopped and I even circulated water 24/7 through in the shop through a homemade heater (with fan off) that pulled off a few BTUs that keep shop above 65 all winter. All the dial setting does is determine how hot the EKO tries to keep the water in the stove and you want to allow for some "creep" if you don't have storage. I will go up to 190 or so when I my storage is connected. The other two important settings are the Pump ON Temp and the how long it has to drop before it shuts off. Hunderliggur is using 170 and 5. I believe mine was similar at 165 and 5, so I only pump water when the boiler hits 165 and shut off if it drops below 160. The factory default I think was 15-20 less but the gassification works much better at higher temps based on my experience. Have you figured out how to toggle throught the settings on the controller? You might want to check your settings and report back. Also snap a few pics to post here. I assume you have two air handlers mounted with your furnaces and have 2 water to air heat exchangers mounted in them that transfer the heat from the boiler. Describe how the piping is ran to these HXs. Just the boiler circ or multiple circs? The folks here with forced air heat have aquastats that stop the water circulating through the HXs when it is too cold to produce enough heat. Then our gas or electric backups take over until we reload the wood. The fans should not be blowing cold air when your EKO is saying "FUEL" which is why I'm thinking it is not setup correctly. Most of us add a 2nd thermostat and set the wood one slightly higher (2-3 degrees) but I've seen where others have done it with only one. Take some time to research all this and you will be glad you did. It doesn't sound like it should take much to get it working properly and then you can set up the 500gal storage tank which will let you sleep 12 hours if you want.

EDIT -- I see now I misread something. Your tsats appear to shut off the fans when room temp is satisfied and boiler is still hot but blow cold air when it runs out of wood. Does the house get cold? It sounds like you are still missing an aquatstat that would prevent the cold air blowing.

 

[rkusek]

As far as the loading process, I agree with what Hunderliggur posted but I don't fill mine half full. I only use about 3 dry small splits with some kindling. I let it burn 10-15" with lower door open and the spits will be hot coals plus it warms the chimney. With only these few splits, there seems to be much less smoke in my face while filling to the top with wood. With the hot coals on the bottom and a load of wood on top you should get instant gassification with the bypass back and the blower started. I am not sure why the previous owner would tell you to wait until it got up to 170 to close the damper and start the fan, that is just not correct. I was able to use some less than ideally seasoned wood late last winter by putting it the top 1/3 of the load. The higher temps on the pump settings seemed make all the difference in the world. Like many have mentioned you get less energy out of it though (the wetter wood, that is).

 

[Hunderliggur]

Less energy from the wetter wood, not the higher pump (circulator) temps.

 

[rkusek]

Thanks for the clarification Hunderliggur! I edited my post to make that clear.

 

[Medman]

Also, depending on outside temp and airflow speed through the forced air furnaces, 165 degree water may not be providing enough heat to get the house up to temp. I know with one water to air exchanger that 140 degrees is the lowest temp I can use to heat the house when the outside temp drops below freezing. If the air speed is set to high on the furnace, I would need 160 degree water.

 

[Gilby]

Wow....THANK YOU guys for all the replies. I'll try to answer what I can.

Yesterday, I had turned my furnaces off in the morning to avoid blowing cold air. My big mistake was I left the damper OPEN. Ugh. I got home last night and my garage was literally 98 degrees...my digital said 240 or something stupid like that...I had water everywhere on my garage floor. What a mess. In a nutshell, every one of my hose connections was leaking and I had no more water pressure. I reclamped the three worst leaks, got two of them stopped, and put buckets under the rest. A plumber friend and 4 hours this morning...and I think I'm making progress.

My stove actually says Orlan 60 on the front...so I might have been wrong with the number. Like most of you, the owners manual is written in 5 different languages and broken english. I had printed off a better manual from the forum here. That has helped, but like I said in my original post, its jibberish when you don't know what its referring to.

Like I said yesterday, I have two furnaces and a water heater hooked to this boiler. They all have hot water coils in them. I have four thermostats in my house - one for each furnace that runs via the boiler - and one for each that runs them on their own sans the boiler. I could set them so they work together, I'm sure, but I don't have much interest in trying to heat my house with propane and electricity when the boiler isn't running or running right. My kids can put on a sweatshirt So yes, when the boiler runs out of fuel, the fans are blowing because the house is at 68 and trying to get to 73...blowing cold air.

The plumber today shed a lot of light on what I have. It was installed by a do it yourselfer so there are some flaws in the system, but for the most part I think its done well. The plumber adjusted some valves today to "balance" the system (I'm mechanically uninclined by the way!) and it was amazing how almost immediately the coils in my furnaces were both very warm as were the hoses leading into them. I hadn't got that yet...so basically closing off some of the water that was just circulating and getting it to the two pumps did wonders. My house was warming up almost instantly.

What I'm struggling with is how the boiler regulates itself. When my house is calling for heat, the cold air from the fan is blowing on the coils, thus cooling off that water. When my house gets to its desired temperature, the furnaces shut off. When they shut off, what keeps my boiler from steadily increasing in temp to a dangerous level??? I haven't tinkered with the settings too much...as I'm not sure what they do. If I set the dial at 169...and the temp drops below that...and the "blower" turns on...it seems to maintain the temp a bit better. Why? Like I said...I'm not good at stuff like this. I have my specialties!!

Thanks again for everything!!

 

[rkusek]

That is something I've had nightmares about doing. I've walked all the way from the house back to the shed to make sure I closed the bypass and turned the fan on many times. Hopefully, the overheat didn't damage anything, I would keep an close eye on it for a day or two. I vaguely remember someone here had to replace the temp sensor after an overheat. Kind of tough since it's all new to you already. First thing I would do is have your plumber (or somebody familiar with this stuff) check to see if there is an aquastat somewhere that shuts off the circulators that feeds the furnace HX coils when the water is below usable temp (around 125 degrees). Most people say 130 is the minimum but I actually got 1-2 more hours through the night last year on a load by having my aquastat set much lower than that. The Johnson Controls A419 is around $55, has a digital readout, and can shut off the circulator and the blower van to prevent the cold air blowing when the furnace has burned out. Someday you may change your mind about using the propane and electric, and with a relay you would be able to have a warm house with wood heat and maintain a lower temperature with the gas and electric when you were out of town, etc. The nice thing is that this can all be seemless and and you don't have to worry about did I switch over the tsats to keep the pipes from freezing. You can have the wood set at 70 and the backup at 60 and as long as you are there to feed the boiler it will be a cozy 70 but you are still covered otherwise. I actually run mine about 2-3 degrees apart but my heat pump runs more than a typical furnace and puts out lukewarm air. When set at 70 degrees it turn on at 69 and shuts off at 70. Each system is a little different I guess.

The boiler regulates itself slowing down or shutting off the fan once the temp dial setting is met. You must have the newer controller if your temp is in Fahrenheit. If it is set at 170 it should start to slow down around 168 or so and stop completely at 170. If your furnaces are satified and not calling for heat it may actually "creep" up 3-4 degrees. The fan may actually not start again until it drops to 165. All these settings are adjustable using the buttons and it is a little awkward the first time you do it. You must have an EKO 60, that is a bigger unit, around a 1/3 larger than mine. It should have no problem heating your home. Check out that new manual you printed off. There is a table there explaining those settings. See what your Pump start and hysterisis (pump off) setting are.

 

[Gilby]

it doesn't have a aquastat...so the plumber says. It will be something I will look into for sure.

I do have the relay to be able to use all four thermostats at once. I'm trying to avoid it due to cost of propane AND the electric furnace. Hopefully I can heat the house solely with the boiler. I will set them at 65 or so to kick on when we're not around. My gas furnace actually has a bad motor, but i chose not to replace it because as long as the fan works and the boiler is functioning, i won't need it.

i had a good night with it last night thanks to the plumber tuning it up so the water flows more evenly. like i said in my last post, i'm always nervous about the boiler too hot. the previous owner said they had to open windows cause the house was too hot...and the only logical explanation i can think of for that is because the only way to control that boiler from getting too hot is to make sure the furnaces are blowing air on those coils. the plumber agreed and said he wants to come up with a way to release some of that heat when the house isn't calling for it. i'm assuming the best way would be to utilize the additional 500 gallon old propane tank as a storage tank. but if i can control that from creeping up with those settings, i'll study the manual tonight and see if i can't get it dialed in.

what temp can it be at? what's the 'right' temp to heat my house? i've been letting it get up to 170 or so and then closing the chambers and the damper and turning on the furnaces. it'll hover around 165-167 when the furnaces are running. when the house gets to its desired temp, and the furnaces shut down, the boiler will get to 176 or so. i have the fan set at 169 or so.

 

[Hunderliggur]

I have my dial set to the max - 195. When the storage is full and there is no where else for the heat to go (idling), the boiler blower motor shuts down and the fire just smolders. You get a little smoke out of the chimney during that time. In my situation, the circulator still runs to the storage tank but that is no big deal. Every few minutes, the fans blows for a little while to keep the coal alive. When the temp drop to 5 below the setpoint (195), the boiler blowers start again making heat and the cycle repeats. This should work for you in the winter too. Even if you circulator is pushing heat to the heat exchangers, since your house fan is not running you house should not get appreciably warmers.

Good luck!