Garn People need info....

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Tattooz

New Member
Hearth Supporter
Jun 27, 2008
138
Maine
I am being told this item "HAS" to be attached to a building that has some kind of occupancy. Yet I cant find any thing in the code books about it....
Can anyone shed some light...? This is in Maine
Thanks
 
My dealer is but as I said I can find nothing about it in the code books. And the building code guy in my town has never heard of such a thing..?
 
Thanks TOP.. Never thought of that..!
 
you are going to like your garn.
I am about to fire mine 2000 up this weekend for the start of it's second season.
 
Nice TOP....
I just need to figure this out... it could save me a lot of $$$$ to build its own building instead of retro fitting my barn.
I just spent the day with Martin Lunde at an installers school he put on with my dealer and this was the one question I never got to ask.....:(
Cant seem to get a hold of anyone today..... Post up some photos of your Garn and if you have an thing you think I might want to know before setting mine up, by all means, post it... Thanks again for your thoughts on this!
Chris
 
topofthehil said:
you are going to like your garn.
I am about to fire mine 2000 up this weekend for the start of it's second season.

Topofthehil, "whats your 20". I am also a cheese head. I got a homemade garn style boiler and I can't imagine life without it, also going on my second season.
 
OK I am getting to the bottom of this......
In Maine if this Garn unit goes in its own building then it's considered a OWB. With that it falls under stack height requirements. Thus requiring a stack that is too tall, (being located within 300 feet of another building) requires the stack to be taller than near building (who makes this crap up?)
Anyway this is my finding so far.
 
I'm putting tarm in an unattached garage. Nobody has mentioned that its considered an OWB. Granted its not as big as a garn, but everybody is ok with it. Ins co, code officer(oh yeah, we don't have one) etc... A garn is compliant with a horizontal flue. Don't need a vertical stack. Seems like you might be getting some bogus info? Or they don't understand what you've got. What town do you live in?
 
Tattooz said:
My dealer is but as I said I can find nothing about it in the code books. And the building code guy in my town has never heard of such a thing..?

There's your answer. If the code guys happy, run with it. If the insurance companies got questions, educate them. They've got alot of policies to write dealing with wood burning appliances, and they're going to be cautious. Send them the video that's on the garn website. This isn't an OWB! Take any comment like that as an insult! ;-) Educate the ignorant. :coolsmile:
 
Tattooz said:
I am being told this item "HAS" to be attached to a building that has some kind of occupancy. Yet I cant find any thing in the code books about it....
Can anyone shed some light...? This is in Maine
Thanks

Put an olive drab camo folding cot next to your Garn in your outbuilding: that's your "occupancy."

Put brackets with locks for a very HUGE capacity and/ or HUGE caliber firearm (the biggest that is legal and affordable in your locale and circumstances) and lock said firearm on the wall between your cot and your Garn, and have the appropriate firearm there, in maximum prominence, when the insurance and/ or code inspectors come to see if you pass muster, and then speak in elaborate, downright effusive detail, on the same occasion when anyone comes to inspect, as to how you feel most peaceful, and at ease, when "occupying" the cozy comforting place next to the comfortingly cozy Garn that you know keeps your loved ones warm (and your 100% legal but uber-firepower), and save the planet from global warming... even if it means that you are out there on the cot, and your family is inside the house.

Emphasize at the very same time that you are deeply in favor of Peace and Love. Wear tye dye for the occasion.

The longer you give a reallly mind-numbingly lengthy and weird but not totally terrifying rant, the more likely all the inspectors and insurers will get a rapid and intense gut feeling that they'd _much, much_ rather be doing something else, anything else, somewhere else... and give you the slack that you deserve, and already did deserve even before you resort to such measures.

Try very, very, very hard to be far, far, more dreadfully EARNEST and BORING than scary (talk in ridiculous excess about your desires to be carbon neutral, use locally- harvested fuels, and sleep next to your wondrous Garn that is helping you help save the planet from Carbon emissions), but with a strong and clear undercurrent that if anyone makes it really hard for you to be terribly BORING and EARNEST you have lots of innate flaky ability to become SCARY!

beware, the aforementioned advice comes from several weeks, indeed many months (truth be told, years), of dealing with idiotic bureaucracy, and may represent at least as much frustration as sound advice;

that said, I've used various not-too-dissimilar calculated displays of eccentric but basically legal and carefully-planned oddity to repel a lot of local, state, national, and border-patrol types who then rapidly decided that I was a harmless but hard-nosed person that they did not want to spend ANY time on/ with compared to people that they really needed to worry about (and, P.S., I really am harmless and peaceable, even though I both have a lot of hippie friends and simultaneously think that large caliber and high magazine capacity firearms are fun things to mess around with as long as it's done in peaceable ways)
 
Haha! I love it!!
 
Tattooz said:
OK I am getting to the bottom of this......
In Maine if this Garn unit goes in its own building then it's considered a OWB. With that it falls under stack height requirements. Thus requiring a stack that is too tall, (being located within 300 feet of another building) requires the stack to be taller than near building (who makes this crap up?)
Anyway this is my finding so far.

Neither the Garn manual or the factory make that requirement. No codes, either boiler or mechanical have anything in them that stipulates such a thing. Therefore by process of elimination, and the fact that most rules that make no sense come from this group, the answer has to be politicians. I suspect that in their ignorance the lawmakers that came up with that were trying to address the question of what exactly constitutes an OWB. Obviously they overlooked the Garn which is indeed a horse of a different color. It will be a long uphill battle but I suggest that you start by finding out what legislator sponsored or wrote that particular statute and begin with him/her. Sad to say I would call this a typical screwup. The alternative would be to throw an old bed and a coffeepot in your woodshed and tell the inspector that it is indeed habitable space. ;)
 
pybyr said:
Tattooz said:
I am being told this item "HAS" to be attached to a building that has some kind of occupancy. Yet I cant find any thing in the code books about it....
Can anyone shed some light...? This is in Maine
Thanks

Put an olive drab camo folding cot next to your Garn in your outbuilding: that's your "occupancy."

Put brackets with locks for a very HUGE capacity and/ or HUGE caliber firearm (the biggest that is legal and affordable in your locale and circumstances) and lock said firearm on the wall between your cot and your Garn, and have the appropriate firearm there, in maximum prominence, when the insurance and/ or code inspectors come to see if you pass muster, and then speak in elaborate, downright effusive detail, on the same occasion when anyone comes to inspect, as to how you feel most peaceful, and at ease, when "occupying" the cozy comforting place next to the comfortingly cozy Garn that you know keeps your loved ones warm (and your 100% legal but uber-firepower), and save the planet from global warming... even if it means that you are out there on the cot, and your family is inside the house.

Emphasize at the very same time that you are deeply in favor of Peace and Love. Wear tye dye for the occasion.

The longer you give a reallly mind-numbingly lengthy and weird but not totally terrifying rant, the more likely all the inspectors and insurers will get a rapid and intense gut feeling that they'd _much, much_ rather be doing something else, anything else, somewhere else... and give you the slack that you deserve, and already did deserve even before you resort to such measures.

Try very, very, very hard to be far, far, more dreadfully EARNEST and BORING than scary (talk in ridiculous excess about your desires to be carbon neutral, use locally- harvested fuels, and sleep next to your wondrous Garn that is helping you help save the planet from Carbon emissions), but with a strong and clear undercurrent that if anyone makes it really hard for you to be terribly BORING and EARNEST you have lots of innate flaky ability to become SCARY!

beware, the aforementioned advice comes from several weeks, indeed many months (truth be told, years), of dealing with idiotic bureaucracy, and may represent at least as much frustration as sound advice;

that said, I've used various not-too-dissimilar calculated displays of eccentric but basically legal and carefully-planned oddity to repel a lot of local, state, national, and border-patrol types who then rapidly decided that I was a harmless but hard-nosed person that they did not want to spend ANY time on/ with compared to people that they really needed to worry about (and, P.S., I really am harmless and peaceable, even though I both have a lot of hippie friends and simultaneously think that large caliber and high magazine capacity firearms are fun things to mess around with as long as it's done in peaceable ways)



WOW... PYBYR...... Back away from the coffee pot..... :)

From what Chris Holley ( MY Rep) is telling me it has to do with EPA. In a building by itself it is considered a OWB and thus falls under Maine State laws of such. The stack laws are foolish that go along with the OWB laws.
Because the EPA has not tested this Closed non pressurized system they just lump it in with the Smolder shacks
 
to answer a couple of questions: sorry I did not have time to get any pics posted of my Garn set up. hopefully soon.
I own a farm in rural WI. about 50 miles each way from Lacrosse, EauClaire and Rochester, MN.
up in the hills over looking the Mississippi river.
I don't always get to the computer each day, so replies may take a day or two.
 
I would install it myself and now worry about it. But......... :) Seriously though, have you read the regulation/law yourself? I'm sure your dealer has, but i'd look at it myself. He must have a copy or reference to it. As stated above talk to your local rep, they might have something in the works to address this problem. There is an election coming up soon. :-)
 
Flying,
More important we are only a few short months away from the EPA testing this unit...... Then we will no longer be seen as a smolder shack... (OWB)...... :)
 
I was at the Common Ground Fair in Unity Maine this weekend and saw a GARN, actually got to touch it. Very cool rig though way to much for my wallet.
 
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