Help with venting pipe selection

[Chainsaw]

I am installing an Econoburn 150 in a garage addition. Since we added a second floor to the 2 car garage, we added a wood chimney enclosure about 2 feet square to install the chimney pipe in. The installer is telling me to use triple wall/zero clearance within the enclosure and out the top, but below the 8' ceiling of the garage to the boiler to use regular old single wall with a couple of T's for a cleanout and a draft regulator. I am working with the nice people at Ventingpipe.com, and they advise staying with the same manufacturer for both pipes to ensure proper connections, but do not know what a draft regulator even is. I am looking at around 24 feet of Simpson triple wall from the ceiling up through the roof, with a cap, seals, transition pieces and brackets to the tune of a little over $2k. It would be nice to save a little and use single wall from the unit up to the ceiling.

So will Simpson Duravent triple wall accept any ol brand of single wall? If I do use Simpson single wall to connect to their triple wall, will any ol draft regulator connect to the Simpson T? Am I doing this the "right way"?

The Econoburn will be tied to an existing (newer) gas boiler with a new sidearm hot water heater. The(old) baseboard heat was all torn out and the house got ductwork for central air, so we will use that for heat as well. No heat storage on the initial install, but provisions to add later will be made.

Any help is appreciated

 

[stee6043]

$2000 for 24 feet of pipe? No way. I installed 25' vertical and 8' at a 30 degree angle, with t's, cap, locking bands, brackets etc for half that. I used the good old Supervent (Selkirk) insulated SS pipe (6") that you can buy at Menards. 2" clearance to combustibles should be more than adequate for the size chase you built. If you have 2" available on all sides I don't see why you would spend the money for "zero clearance"...

As for the regulator - not sure on that one but I would suspect most would be easily interfaced with single wall pipe. I may be wrong but after installing my system I came to the conclusion that "single wall is single wall". Nothing too fancy or brand specific about it. The expensive stuff is unique, though...

 

[humpin iron]

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS ZERO CLEARANCE, IT'S A NICK NAME. You should be using "class A", not triple wall, NO chimney has zero clearance, if anyone is telling you that, find someone else to get advise from.

Remember: Good stuff ain't cheap and cheap stuff ain't good!

 

[jebatty]

Draft regulator probably = barometric damper. Lots of posts on the pros and cons of these in this forum. If recommended by the mfr, then install one; if not, I would skip it. Single wall (black) stove pipe from boiler to ceiling, with a ceiling adapter to the Class A, is a very normal installation. BTW, you should be able to add a barometric damper to the single wall easily later if you really need it.

 

[altheating]

Use metalbestos and reduce it down to 6" pipe at the boiler. (AFB says it is ok to reduce it down to 6") You can get the Metalbestos brand at any True Value store. Using black is fine to connect to your insulated pipe. The draft regulator can be installed into the black pipe or for ease of installation put in a tee and place it into the side of the tee.

 

[pybyr]

Draft regulator probably = barometric damper. If recommended by the mfr, then install one; if not, I would skip it.

The O.P. was mentioning a plan to install an Econoburn; Econoburn's manual specifically says to install a barometric damper, and when I called them to discuss (after hearing the debates about barometric dampers on solid fuel appliances) they said that:

(a) draft regulation is important to maximize efficiency for a modern fire-tube boiler, by making sure the hot gases don't travel through too quickly; and

(b) the usual bugaboo about barometric dampers on wood-burning appliances would be the risk of the damper admitting extra air into the flue if a build-up of creosote in the flue begins to combust-- but, with a gasifier, run anywhere nearly properly, one should not have creosote building up in the flue in any event.

(P.S.- Hansson in Sweden has mentioned to us that draft regulators are the norm on gasifier installations over there- and presumably the Scandanavians don't enjoy chimney fires any more than we do, and wouldn't be putting barometric dampers in if they caused problems)

Also- footnote- for those who do in fact install a barometric damper, do make sure to adjust it properly to your boiler manufacturer's recommended draft figure-- eyeball/ instinct adjustments just don't cut it. Search for some prior discussions here in the boiler room about peoples' ways of measuring/ adjusting.