i need some sort of wood boiler

[akhilljack]

so i live in fairbanks ak. it gets 50 below and stays 25 or 30 below all winter. my home is about 2300 sqft. i have a wood stove for the upstairs of my home. it would be impractical to put another one in my basment living space. i have plenty of wood to heat with, mostly birch and spruce. i want an indoor wood boiler to hook on to my boiler system i already have. the dhw goes through the same system so hooking a wood boiler up to my exhisting boiler would be perfect. my question i guess is i will be heating roughly 900 sqft of my downstairs and my demestic hot water since the upstairs wood stove takes care of the upstairs, i want something i can put wood or maybe coal in that will be fairly efficient. i know of a lot of outdoor boiler dealers in the area but i have asked all of them and they can not even special order me an indoor unit. the outdoors seem like they take much more wood and look like they are realy just thrown together in some guys welding shop and fancied up on the outside. i want something reliable that i dont have to worry about for at least 5 or 6 years. i dont mind feeding it wood i have plenty of trees. i dont know where to look to get one shipping on out door boilers is around 1500 dollars or more and they weigh roughly the same as the indoor ones give or take. i would like to have heat storage as well and i dont know how much would be good enough, keep in mind this is not a stand alone unit and my goal is to only cut down my fuel bill. i dont mind burning a little #2 fuel but the less is better. a 600 gallon tank that costs thousands of dollars would be pointless to me i would rather just feed it more wood. so where can i find a good reliable gasification indoor wood boiler and what does the heat storage sytem consist of and how can i get one. its a lot i know but we have higher fuel prices than any state by like 70 cents a gallon which doesnt seem like that big of a deal but when you burn 150-170 gallons of heat oil a month in winter for 6-7 months it sort of adds up. it takes a lot to heat houses up here and every one here is going to suffer bad this winter. the power plant that we use burns of all things heat oil as well so needless to say our electric bills have doubled this year as well. it would not be to much of a strectch to say most people are paying more for utilities each month than thier mortgages. we need a good indoor wood boiler dealer up here no one will step up. becuase the out door ones are too easy to make profit on being sold for 10,000+ and the cost of shipping here. metal does not cost that much and there are no guarantees more or less. i found a decent small outdoor i will have to fall back on until i find the right indoor one it is a shaver for like 5000 dollars. i will pay 8000 dollars for an indoor boiler i just want to know i am getting what i am paying for first. any help would be much appriciated by most people up here.

 

[deerefanatic]

Sounds like an EKO or Econoburn are what you need... Both will work ok without heat storage (I.e. the boiler is programmed to cope with "idling" that happens with no heat storage........ Not that it will be efficient during those times, but it's designed to recognize and deal with it...) Then you can add storage later to get the efficiency benefits...... Though with your weather conditions, you can probably size it close enough to where it runs full-tilt most of the day......

 

[DenaliChuck]

I just had a Tarm delivered for $600 from Tacoma to Healy with Carlile. From my research, and advice from this site, its a good boiler but they may be back-ordered now. Though I haven't used mine yet, I understand they will idle as well, but adding storage is the way to go.

Don't underestimate the volume of wood you might be handling, even with lots of your own "free" trees. I burned 800 gallons of heating oil and four cords last winter in a 2,400 sq ft, energy efficient house and hope that 8-9 cords will get me through this next year (12 months heat and DHW). Cutting and splitting 8-9 cords is a bit of work, and I have lots of other things I'd like to do instead. Also, with everyone switching to wood, we might end up clear cutting all our forests in short order!

You might be better off burning the wood in a new gasification boiler for your second floor instead of the wood stove, since wood stoves (except catalytic converter models) are likely 40% efficient and I'm betting the Tarm (with storage) would be around 70% efficient (its rated at 80%+). I think these are conservative guesses on my part.

I know a guy in Talkeetna that used a Tarm all last winter and loved it. He burned 6 cord in a decent wood stove the previous year and the house was chilly. He burned 6 cord in the Tarm and had a hot house and all the DHW they could use...the benefits of burning the same volume of wood more efficiently.

 

[akhilljack]

thanks for the input. i was wondering if any one had tried one up here becuase i know the winter here is much more brutle than most places i didnt know if a wood boiler would even be practicle. if i could heat half my house with 7 cords of wood i would be happy. i have many acres to cut and all the time in the world to split it. the winter gets a little boring unless you have something to do. splitting next years fire wood would give me something to do. a few guys in the shop i work in and i get together for about 3 weeks in the spring and do a mass wood splitting session from one house to the other. with 4 or 5 guys all day for 3 weekends a lot of wood gets split. so a good estimate would be 7 or 8 cords of wood. i keep the downstairs at 65 anyway and the waterheater would be turned down pretty good too.

are there any specific things i should look for or watch out for when getting a boiler and a storage tank. i will probably build a boiler house out side to keep it all in thats maybe connected to my house or right behind it so a can get to it from the back of my garage. any other suggestions?

 

[DenaliChuck]

I'm building an arctic entry to house my boiler in, and I'll be building a 5' x 5' x 6' EDPM lined tank in the basement to store the heat (using a flat-plate heat exchanger to load/unload the heat).

As far as advice, I'd suggest buying a gasifier from a reputable company, and adding storage as soon as you can. I chose a Tarm since they have been in business for a long time, and the US supplier has been around for 10+ years. I don't know much about the other brands.

Search this site, these folks are quite smart (and innovative!).