Fired another man's Vigas

[JP11]

I know the dad of a childhood friend. He met up with Patrick and Mark on the fair circuit, and ended up buying a Vigas.

He was a bit discouraged when I told him the lessons about dry wood vs. "seasoned" wood. He scrounged the tops of his piles and came up with some good stuff. He's already getting ahead for next year.

He called today and asked me to come fire it with him. He had plumbed and wired himself. No storage. I was curious how it would work. I went thru and make a few temp changes on the controller to match mine. I also set up his draft fan to run off the controller. Just a few quick things.

It was very cool to watch the big smile on his face when the temps hit 104 and the pump launched. With such a small volume of water, it got to temp fast.

We monkeyed with his controls a bit. He has a few issues with the set points on his oil boiler.. but we were able to come up with settings that let the wood take over as it should. I was impressed how the unit saw the temps rising and spun the fans down low.

He was excited to crank the heat and let his wife be comfy.

JP

 

[nrcrash]

I was curious how well one would operate without storage...

Is he planning on adding storage later?

 

[JP11]

I don't think he plans to. It's in a low ceiling basement with not a lot of room. You could maybe build a enclosure. I think it just rules it out to run in any but cold weather.

He did have this arrangement with his oil boiler that would send excess heat to a back bedroom. He said it was a workaround for a oil boiler that would occasionally over fire. I think if he monkeys with that, it would work pretty good.

DRAFTY old farmhouse. He wanted the Vigas due to desire to keep the flue temps down in a very old chimney. Right out the gate the flue temp was running in the high 200s.

I'm curious as well how it runs. But I'll stick with my tight house with storage.

JP