New gasifier vs old "smoke dragon" efficiency

[maple1]

Wow - that was quite a read.

I have never heard of Netbundle - and I am posting this via my Seaside ISP. None of which I don't think has anything to do with OWBs, so not sure why he went in that direction. Almost seems like diversionary writing. I'll stop there on that stuff.

I am also not seeing how Wood Doctor advanced anything. They have a very bad rep around here, at least with anyone I have talked to who has had one or knows someone who did. IMO they negatively impacted.

 

[hondaracer2oo4]

Yes interesting reading for sure. I wonder how 2bits knows about some of the inner workings of all this. Wood Doctor might have been one of the first to try an owb gasser in North America, I'm not sure. Many many wood doctors failed and rusted out in short order. Turple looks to blame that on the company( now polar if I read his story right) that was building his boilers third party.

 

[2Bits]

Honda,

the comments and observations I am giving are very general and certainly not commenting on "inner workings" of what went on. I'm am just not in on what happened at WD. But I have been around the industry a while and have a general sense of how things developed. That's what I am sharing. It's just my view. Not gospel, just my opinions and general observations but it is based on a lot of info I have collected over the years about the industry. That's all I have to give you.

Regarding your P&M Polar comparision questions;
When you say "cover" I'm think you mean housing? Yes the housing is completely different to my eyes. I browsed over to the websites to look at the cutaway to make an honest effort at trying to understand what you are seeing. I have to agree with you, in the cutaway the housing does look similar in a general sense. I have looked at them in real life however and they are completely different in the details. The P&M gasser housing has chamfered corners which are not visible on the cutaway, It has a different latch, different front end finishing, P&M has one access panel in the back for example polar has two, etc,etc. Could the new P&M gasser housing have been influenced by the Polar gasser housing design? For sure that's possible and likely since the Polar units have been on the market for several years and I think made a statement with their non traditional look. But suggesting they are the same is nonsense. Honda you really do need to get away from your computer screen and look at these units in real life instead of studying cutaways on websites and relying on random, vague, unqualified posts mostly from strangers on online forums for info.

Also, you indicated noticing some holes that are similar between the units? It's not clear what holes your referring to but sounds like you are talking about the hole the cleaning system activating rod goes through? yes they both have a hole for this. Is this your point that they have holes for the cleaning rod? honda this is silly, you do realize your heatmaster also has a "hole" for a cleaning system action rod to activate a similar swivaling exchanger cleaning system?

One last little piece of info that you may find interesting. My info (I must admit I am not 100% certain on this, I tried verifying this morning just for you but was not entirely successful) is that Polar had this type of cleaning system first in the OWB industry. The following year Heatmaster had it. A few years later it shows up on the new P&M gasser also. Why? Because it's a great idea. Great ideas get copied. If you look at the three systems it's definitely the same idea but clearly had different designers. By the way, this type of swiveling heat exchanger cleaning system with a rod (and hole) has been used on indoor gassers for years and years. It's a great design and it's great the different OWB designers are incorporating it in their outdoor gassers. It works!

My last thoughts on what this thread has become: If you truly are a fan of the OWB industry including heatmaster I would suggest deleting the junk you posted above including the Polar misinformation and the WD stuff. There's a lot of crap people can spread around from the old days. Like I said the old days were pretty ugly but I really think Wood Doctor helped get the industry (including Heatmaster) on its way for the reason I have given earlier. For that reason I have respect for WD. Yes I know there are lot of reasons to sling mud at the name but I happen to think this one general service it did for the industry trumps all and even you as a consumer are benefiting from it today. Finally, I don't know this but I strongly suspect if you did a little asking and got honest reflective answers you would find Wood Doctor getting fedup with the Pacific Western days and moving its manufacturing away from ConveyAll planted the early seeds for the creation of Heatmaster in an employee of ConveyAlls mind.

Y'know honda, I've been poking around on different forums the last few days and I'm picking up a bit of a pattern of what seems to be Heatmaster dealers and product owners taking every opportunity to sling muck at other OWB companies. Some come across as just a bit overzealous in spreading negative info and news and misinformation about their competition, somehow this seems somewhat ingrained in the Heatmaster online culture and I'm curious as to where exactly its coming from. Nobody else in the OWB industry is doing this. It's very amateurish and trust me it looks bad to potential consumers. It looks really bad to people like myself who happen to know the Heatmaster "heritage" is not exactly the poster child you seem to think it is. What Heatmaster seems to be today and you are experiencing looks and feels a lot better and I really like what I am seeing. My point is that it's better to just let some sleeping dogs lie. Those are my last words on this topic on this thread. cya

 

[maple1]

Trying to stick more to the topic, but on something recently mentioned above.

And re. the rod-related tube cleaning system.

Whether it's Polar, or someone else - I would want to make sure that that whole mechanism is easy to get at & easy to remove. It is one thing to have such a system on an indoor boiler, tied to storage - that burns the whole load of fuel until the fuel runs out, so it's only fly ash that accumulates in the tubes. But having it in a boiler that doesn't do that, and spends some of its time idling (which all OWBs do, even gasifying ones - as far as I know), could be problematic in dealing with creosote deposits that would accumulate during idle times. And I would be leery about claims of little to no maintenance aside from periodically moving the handle back & forth.

 

[hondaracer2oo4]

The reason why I say good things about heatmaster when I get a chance is because they are a company in the owb industry that is actually standing behind their products and putting out quality. That can not be said for many in the owb industry. A lot of people buy owb and a lot of people are turned sour because or poor quality and poor warranties.

As far as the fly ash shaker in the exchanger tubes I think it's also a good idea but like maple said in a gasser with no storage you are going to get creosote. This was one of my few complaints with my heatmaster which I also passed along to my dealer to pass up the chain. They used to have a door on the top for easy access to the mechanism so you could remove it and manually clean the tubes. Now you have to remove the roof instead. I will see what my stack temps are this year but I may be pulling my roof to manually clean mine.

 

[wardk]

I am so glad I got a garn.

 

[S.Whiplash]

Can't really say the OWB industry came up with any revolutions in wood burning when they ignored all innovation that occurred in the previous 40 years (mostly in Europe) and fostered a customer base on inefficiency and wasteful burning practices that the EPA is just now cracking down on. Why it took 25 years to examine the evidence is beyond me.

 

[leon]

Can't really say the OWB industry came up with any revolutions in wood burning when they ignored all innovation that occurred in the previous 40 years (mostly in Europe) and fostered a customer base on inefficiency and wasteful burning practices that the EPA is just now cracking down on. Why it took 25 years to examine the evidence is beyond me.

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The reason is that the EPA had more issues to deal with than
the wood burners and until enough people that were sickened by
wood smoke and or have asthma which is aggravated by wood
burning to cause them to take notice.

Its hilarious when you hear the Europeans talk about Central Boiler
attempting to sell their boilers at trade shows and the people in the
business there cannot understand how a product like that can be sold
legally with so much wood smoke.

When I filled my boilers fire box volume half full of fire brick up to the
flue breech to make the fire hotter all time it was was the best thing
I ever did as I could not afford anything else.

 

[brenndatomu]

I have been around the industry a while

In what capacity? You work for Polar...if not who? Sure seems like you are in the industry...if so, why not own it?
Industry insiders are always welcome, but it is nice to know who your allegiances lie with...

 

[mlappin]

Old thread, but Wood Doctor was contracting the fab and welding out to other companies much like Nature Comfort has local welding shops to do their fab. Anyways, the units that were farmed out to Polar had very few issues compared to other units built by other contractors.