New Horizon Biomass lifespan

[Aranyic]

I have this in the fine tuning Biomass thread but figured it may get a little more attention out here in it's own thread.

Biomass users what's the life expectancy on these things? I've been planning to work on a setup with a Vedolux v37 setup probably in my basement with 3 210-250 gallon tanks. I had a used Biomass 80 pop up online near me though. Would you touch one 9 years old on the used market? I can get it with 1000 gallons of storage (2x 500 gallon repurposed propane tanks) that's been in use since 2010. Outside looks good; inside looks like it has a fair amount of creosote on the upper chamber but maybe that's normal for them? Said it's been used about 2 months per year for heating a greenhouse so I'm sure it was run hard during that time period.

It would allow me to build a boiler shed next to the house for all the equipment instead of taking it into the basement through a 32" doorway. (up 3 steps to the house, through 2 rooms of hardwood floors and down a flight of stairs, 3 doorways and 2 degree turns involved). It may be a much more economical way to get going then in 5-7 years depending on how long those things should last if I want to go to a different boiler with more bells and whistles I could. I'm only 34 and plan on living here for a very long time so I've got time to get the life out of equipment.

I honestly think I would prefer it in my basement for convenience; but it would take up a fair amount of real estate for wood, boiler, storage, etc. There's pro's and con's to both locations for the setup.

That's a whole other rabbit hole though, the first step what do you all think of the boiler from a few initial pictures?

 

[Aranyic]

As a note this would be oversized for my house but dumping it into 1000 gallons of storage I could run loads ~3/4 full to bring it up 40 degrees? Rough calculations the 80 has a firebox around 10 cubic feet?

Looks like worst case all the refractory and nozzles could be got for ~400 from the website still; I may put in a phone call to see how much the boilers have changed over the past 10 years. I think there's quite a few running around here since 2010 though correct?

 

[salecker]

I have a dedicated boiler building 125 ft from my house.If i were to build again...
I would never build a system that was in my house.
No mess,no smoke,no fire, no danger no carbon monoxide,just can't find a down side to having it in a dedicated building.Anytime i want to state a new project i have a heated building to work in 24/7
And even though i live in the Great White North i have never thought"O phug i have to go stoke the boiler"
I have never minded the walk,and i have a warm place to hang out with my buddies where we don't have to worry about what we say or do.

 

[Fred61]

Refractory looks good. Typical creosote coating on firebox walls (OK). Looks like they left an ash bed in the box over the humid summer. Get in there with a good heavy screwdriver and do some aggressive scraping on that rusty area on the lower back wall to get a feel for the depth of the corrosion.

 

[Woodman1]

I did exactly what you are thinking about here, except it was a 6 year old eko 60 at the time. Also oversized for my house but with a 1000 gallons of storage sitting right next to it, I am very happy. The boiler never idles during a burn and I can recharge storage while heating the house within a 5 hour burn which is huge for me.

 

[MikeT2]

I have owned my Biomass 40 for over ten years. Bought used so it was a year or two older than that.
Replaced the bottom refractory pieces (seems like a piece goes every other year for the past few years) and replaced the main nozzle in 2018. Nothing expensive to do.
Still going strong. Did have an issue with the mixing valve, buts its not the boiler. And that was a cheap fix too.

I would buy another if that helps.

 

[Hydronics]

The upper chamber creosote is normal. If the rusty area near the refractory is only surface and you can get it at a good price i'd pull the trigger. I don't think the biomass has changed, it's made and imported for New Horizon - check out his website.

 

[hoyt144]

I hope I'm not hijacking this thread but I feel it's related. I have a Biomass 40 that is on its second season burning. Overall very happy with it but I have had what I feel is premature failure of some of the refractory. The piece on the burn chamber door has a big crack and won't last much longer. The nozzle has started to erode as well. I'm not sure how long these should last but I'm not really impressed to think I have to replace all the refractory in less than 2 seasons of burning.

 

[Woodman1]

I hope I'm not hijacking this thread but I feel it's related. I have a Biomass 40 that is on its second season burning. Overall very happy with it but I have had what I feel is premature failure of some of the refractory. The piece on the burn chamber door has a big crack and won't last much longer. The nozzle has started to erode as well. I'm not sure how long these should last but I'm not really impressed to think I have to replace all the refractory in less than 2 seasons of burning.

You probably will get more responses to this if you start a new thread. In my opinion 2 seasons seems very early to have refractory issues. I think 8-10 years use before nozzle replacement should be the norm. If the average amount of wood that people use per year is 5-7 cord, a nozzle life of 40-70 cord. How much wood are you burning a season?

 

[hoyt144]

I'm at about 5-6 cord this year and last year maybe 3 tops as the install wasn't completed until the second week of February. Like I said I'm overall happy but wanted the OP to have this bit of info on my experience.

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