How long?

[hobbyheater]

How long have you been using gasification or gasification with storage?
For myself storage before gasification and storage with gasification over 30 years! The exact date is rather fuzzy!

 

[bmblank]

I grew up with gasification without storage. I'm almost 31. Then maybe 10 or 15 years ago we (my dad, and I helped a little) put in a tarm with storage. Then we put one in my brothers new house (with storage). I lived with him for 2 or so years. Then we built my house and put a solo innova with storage in.

 

[hobbyheater]

I grew up with gasification without storage. I'm almost 31. Then maybe 10 or 15 years ago we (my dad, and I helped a little) put in a tarm with storage. Then we put one in my brothers new house (with storage). I lived with him for 2 or so years. Then we built my house and put a solo innova with storage in.

I grew up in rural and small isolated communities with no fire protection or fire department, and in homes heating and cooking done with wood, a chimney fire was your worst nightmare. In the case of a house fire, it was just a race to see how much of the belongings could be rescued from the building before it was consumed by the fire. So when gasification arrived, we could not make the change over quick enough!

 

[Fred61]

First experience with wood for heat was in the late fifties at our hunting camp. It was a cast iron monitor box stove with gothic panels on the sides and took two foot wood. These units were usually used to heat churches. It was nice though and the wisp of smoke coming from the chimney would tell me from afar that someone in our group was back to camp from a day of hunting and perhaps the coffee was on the New Perfection range and hopefully the dishes were getting done.
Burned wood in my 1970 built ranch for 10 or so years.

 

[Fred61]

Sorry, must have posted accidently

Next house was a 3000 sq ft colonial with an E 140 wood Gun in the early 80's. Ran that for 8 years and by that time it had caused me enough problems and started leaking so I sent it to the scrap yard. With all the bad luck I had with the Wood Gun I was still convinced that if you were going to burn wood, gasification was the way to go.
In 2000 I bought my little retirement home and intended to burn oil only. Rented it out for he first year while I sold the big place and the tenants burned very little oil. As it turns out the couple were both website designers and had enough computers running in the house to keep the place warm. It didn't long for the oil route to get old and I decided to go with wood again so after looking around a bit I settled on the EKO 25 and will be starting my seventh season this fall.

 

[arbutus]

Grew up with a Kent insert in Dad's house. It put out a lot of heat, but was non gasifying as I recall.
Bought a place with a giant smoke dragon and burned 12 cords of wood and 1500 gallons of propane in a winter. House would be 90F then 50 F three hours later because of poor insulation and that terrible stove.
Bought a Pacific Energy stove in 2007 and dropped to 5 cords of wood and 500 gallons of propane.
Bought a new place and an Empyre Elite 100, but did not get it installed before things froze solid last winter. Burned an extra 1500kwh of electrons a month and 900 gallons of propane. Will be gasifying this winter.

 

[TCaldwell]

I got tired of hearing the ob come on constantly, installed a harmon sf260 [non gasifying boiler] in series in the basement. This was in 1995, had no clue about gasification then, I actually thought the more smoke out of the chimney meant that boiler was operating well. Never thought there was anything wrong with brushing the flue once a month and getting 2 five gallon pails of creasote, never mind the ice covered roof. That was a 13 cord habit and the oil boiler still would fire frequently. I was entertaining a owb that I saw in mother earth news, you probably know the one. About that same time I think I googled gasification boiler and the smoke cleared! In 2006 I installed a garn 1900 and cut the wood to 8 cord/year. Got tired again with the puffing and by 2008 modified the garn to be o2 controlled. In 2010 we moved across town, i took the garn and built a barn for it and am still tinkering. The new house has a slightly larger heat load, but still burn about 8 cords with dwh all year.

 

[AroostookDave]

In 1979 installed a Kerr stainless steel wood boiler in our new home. Used it for 31 years, got good use out of it but was tired of needing to clean the tubes and flue regularly before the creosote plugged things up. I gave the still working Kerr away and had a Tarm Innova 50 installed for the 2011 heating season with an American Solartechnics 820 gallon water tank for storage. For three years have had no creosote, clean flue and clean chimney. I dust the tubes and flue out from time to time, only see some creosote on the firebox wall which takes care of itself. We have an oil furnace for times when I am away a couple days.

 

[hobbyheater]

About that same time I think I googled gasification boiler and the smoke cleared! In 2006 I installed a garn 1900.

The Garn appeared on the scene 2 years after the Jetstream or I'm sure there would be a 30 year old Garn in our basement.

 

[hobbyheater]

had a Tarm Innova 50 installed for the 2011 heating season with an American Solartechnics 820 gallon water tank for storage. For three years have had no creosote, clean flue and clean chimney. .

Like yourself and many on this Forum who have lived on the dark side of heating with wood . Would never want to go back!

 

[cityboy172]

I'm in the process of ripping a Central boiler out and dropping a EKO60 and 2,000 gallons in. So time frame... -2.5 months.

 

[heaterman]

In the late 70's I heated my house with a Russell wood furnace which was a gasification design, although back then I had never heard of the term and nobody called it gasification. They worked extremely well for a wood fired forced air system and we sold tons of them (literally) in the family hardware store. The fire box was firebrick lined with a small grate in the bottom but that's where the similarities to a traditional wood furnace ended.
At the top of the fire box was a rectangular shaped box about 1" thick, 6" wide and it ran the length from front to back. The rear of this box connected to a duct which was welded on the outside of the fire box and open to the ambient air. A row of holes about 3/8" in diameter ran the full length of each side of this box which introduced preheated air into the flue gas as it entered the doughnut configuration heat exchanger in top of the furnace.
You could open a viewing port on the front of the stove and see the secondary air intake working. It was COOL! Little blue jets of flame coming out of that row of holes as the flue gas lit up showed you that you were getting more heat from your fuel and less junk in your chimney. I think I sold the last one in the late 80's.

The name of the company was Decton iron works and if I remember right the owners name was Jeff Gulleckson (sp) They also made some very serious sized commercial units that all worked on the secondary air principle for gasification. Way ahead of their time. Some of the things on the Kuuma remind me of the old Russell Wood Furnace.

 

[hobbyheater]

Never heard of the Russell Wood Furnace until now and yes, way ahead of its time! I learned about the Jetstream through HarrowSmith Magazine.