Help us choose a pellet boiler to replace central boiler woodstove.

[bethandscott]

Hello all!
Our woodstove has sprung a leak, which means there will be more in the near future. It's 20 years old and served it's purpose, but we are tired of cutting wood & stacking the stove twice a day! If we have to replace it(which we do) we'd rather have a pellet boiler with a hopper and just buy pellets.
Central boiler offers a pellet stove but it's near $9000. No thanks.
We're looking at(and have even chatted with a rep on line) a MBTEK Pellet Duo 20
((here's a bit of info from their site))
Pellet Duo is optimized for burning pellets. The boiler includes a self-igniter burner. You can burn pellets, corn, flax, sunflower husks, grains, cherry pits or manual feed biomass.

Heat: 2'500 ft²
Weight 970 lb, Width 43'', Depth 24'', Height 50''
Manual Firebox: 18 gal, maximum logs length 15"
Automatic Hopper: 93 gal - 442 lb of pellets
Made in Europe


Apart from this, and the Central Boiler one, we aren't finding much else in the way of pellet boilers. It seems google is determined to get us to switch to a non-renewable energy source. (eyeroll)

I'm hoping someone here can offer some advice, recommend a brand/product or even a dealer!

**Other info- the pellet stove will be outside as we cannot physically get it into our basement. MBTek says that's not an issue as long as we put a little shed around the stove to help maintain 32f temps when possible.
MBTek also said that corn burns cleaner than wood, so there would be less mess/creosot to clean up(That'd be an awesome.)

We have an old 6 bedroom(about 2000 sq ft) insulated farm house in Wisconsin. Windchills often get to -30 at the coldest time of the year.

Thanks for your time! :D

 

[maple1]

You might not find much direct feedback - don't recall any outdoor pellet boiler talk here. Or enough to remember.

But generally - how is your pellet supply? Hope it is cheap. There will be some heat lost to the outdoors, with any outdoor burner. If going ahead with this, I would build an outbuilding for it, likely not just a little shed. Well insulated & big enough you can use it for other things too where you might be able to use a space like that in the winter that has a bit of heat in it. If you will be buying by the bag, you could make it big enough to hold a few pallets worth of pellets, a winters worth. But the most important thing I can think of, is to make very sure you have good underground piping that has no heat loss. I would suspect an install as old as yours would have issues with the underground & you are losing some heat to the ground. That might not be noticeable with cheap/free wood, but could be very painful burning pellets. The 'good stuff' for underground budgets at between $10 & $20 per foot - I would assume you will need all new in penciling things out.

EDIT: Looked at the specs for that unit. Only rated at 20kw. That's kind of low-ish.

 

[bethandscott]

You might not find much direct feedback - don't recall any outdoor pellet boiler talk here. Or enough to remember.

But generally - how is your pellet supply? Hope it is cheap. There will be some heat lost to the outdoors, with any outdoor burner. If going ahead with this, I would build an outbuilding for it, likely not just a little shed. Well insulated & big enough you can use it for other things too where you might be able to use a space like that in the winter that has a bit of heat in it. If you will be buying by the bag, you could make it big enough to hold a few pallets worth of pellets, a winters worth. But the most important thing I can think of, is to make very sure you have good underground piping that has no heat loss. I would suspect an install as old as yours would have issues with the underground & you are losing some heat to the ground. That might not be noticeable with cheap/free wood, but could be very painful burning pellets. The 'good stuff' for underground budgets at between $10 & $20 per foot - I would assume you will need all new in penciling things out.

Thanks for the swift reply! :D Appreciated.
Pellets are about $250 (USD) a ton, often cheaper in the fall. Last winter we had to buy logs, that was between $4-500 a semi and we needed over 2 semi's to get through the winter.
We do lose a bit of heat from our current pipes, but even so, we can easily heat the house to 76f on a cold day if the stove temp is over 130(It goes up to 180 but we don't need it that hot to heat the house). Our plan is to put the pellet stove much closer to the house than the woodstove, which will help reduce heat loss.
Hubby says the 'shed' will be insulated and yes, will be big enough to store the pellets right in it.

 

[maple1]

Someone just posted a used Tarm pellet boiler in the classified section. Tarm is a well known long standing brand. MBTEK not quite so much.

 

[hwater85]

Heatmaster has a pellet/biomass burner. I believe Crown Royal is also working on one.

 

[Bad LP]

Someone just posted a used Tarm pellet boiler in the classified section. Tarm is a well known long standing brand. MBTEK not quite so much.

That sounded like a good deal as well.

 

[bdud]

I have had a Windhager pellet boiler since 2013 works great, very pleased with it. Fed from a 3.5 ton silo which we fill ~once a year and clean the boiler after 770 hours of run time, I empty the ash tray about twice a year. Not sure it can burn other than pellets. A few owners post their usage in this forum, there are other pellet boilers out there.

 

[Mr._Graybeard]

I'm on my eighth season heating my home with a Harman PB105 pellet boiler. The model has been discontinued, but parts remain readily available. Moreover, there's one on Craigslist in the Madison area for $4500. I bet you could get it for $1000 less, maybe do even better. It's been for sale for quite awhile. (broken link removed to https://madison.craigslist.org/for/d/mineral-point-wood-pellet-boiler/7023770018.html)

Harman's pressure igniter on this model is excellent -- ignition occurs in about 2 minutes after startup. The Windhager is certainly a more technically advanced design, but the Harman is tried and true.

It generates 100K BTU, which may not be enough if it's outside. Obviously it would need an insulated building.

 

[Karl_northwind]

Don't know if you saw it, but I replied to your inquiry on my website. feel free to contact me again and I can talk you thru options. 2 truckloads is a whole lot of wood.
karl

 

[Highbeam]

Holy smokes! Reading about pellet boilers again and these things can be like 20,000$!

 

[Medic21]

For the amount of pellets needed and the cost propane is cheaper.

 

[Chris Hoskin]

Hello all!
Our woodstove has sprung a leak, which means there will be more in the near future. It's 20 years old and served it's purpose, but we are tired of cutting wood & stacking the stove twice a day! If we have to replace it(which we do) we'd rather have a pellet boiler with a hopper and just buy pellets.
Central boiler offers a pellet stove but it's near $9000. No thanks.
We're looking at(and have even chatted with a rep on line) a MBTEK Pellet Duo 20
((here's a bit of info from their site))
Pellet Duo is optimized for burning pellets. The boiler includes a self-igniter burner. You can burn pellets, corn, flax, sunflower husks, grains, cherry pits or manual feed biomass.

Heat: 2'500 ft²
Weight 970 lb, Width 43'', Depth 24'', Height 50''
Manual Firebox: 18 gal, maximum logs length 15"
Automatic Hopper: 93 gal - 442 lb of pellets
Made in Europe


Apart from this, and the Central Boiler one, we aren't finding much else in the way of pellet boilers. It seems google is determined to get us to switch to a non-renewable energy source. (eyeroll)

I'm hoping someone here can offer some advice, recommend a brand/product or even a dealer!

**Other info- the pellet stove will be outside as we cannot physically get it into our basement. MBTek says that's not an issue as long as we put a little shed around the stove to help maintain 32f temps when possible.
MBTek also said that corn burns cleaner than wood, so there would be less mess/creosot to clean up(That'd be an awesome.)

We have an old 6 bedroom(about 2000 sq ft) insulated farm house in Wisconsin. Windchills often get to -30 at the coldest time of the year.

Thanks for your time! :D

If you are hoping to spend significantly less than $10k, you'll probably be best served by a reputable brand, professionally installed pellet stove instead of a boiler.