New to burning a Woodgun

[sbleiweiss]

I am looking for some advice on how others burn their Woodgun boilers. I have an E140 and am perplexed by what I need to do to get heat out of this thing. I started out leaving the air damper wide open and loading small to medium amounts of wood. It would burn the wood away very fast and not heat the boiler up all that much. I have found that closing the air damper nearly all the way allows the boiler to make heat more like I think it should, but I am can't see how this is the right way to burn this boiler. If it were, why is there a 1HP draft motor installed on this boiler? My chimney is about 35 feet, so perhaps an excessively strong draft is throwing things off.

I am also curious if it is OK to run the boiler without the loading door smoke flap. The thing really gets in the way, but if it is the only way to keep smoke out of my basement, it will have to stay.

Does the boiler give off any cues when it is burning the wood gasses or does it always sound pretty much the same?

Do you load wood the full length of the fire box, or keep the wood more towards the middle, front or back?

I am running this with 820 gallons of storage, so I am not burning this 24/7. I light it at night when I get home from work and usually shut it down while it is still burning rather than letting it burn out. I figure it is better to let the house scavenge those BTU's instead of letting the draft fan blow them up the chimney.

Any help would be greatly appreciated,
Scott B.

 

[chiefburritt]

I am looking for some advice on how others burn their Woodgun boilers. I have an E140 and am perplexed by what I need to do to get heat out of this thing. I started out leaving the air damper wide open and loading small to medium amounts of wood. It would burn the wood away very fast and not heat the boiler up all that much. I have found that closing the air damper nearly all the way allows the boiler to make heat more like I think it should, but I am can't see how this is the right way to burn this boiler. If it were, why is there a 1HP draft motor installed on this boiler? My chimney is about 35 feet, so perhaps an excessively strong draft is throwing things off.

I am also curious if it is OK to run the boiler without the loading door smoke flap. The thing really gets in the way, but if it is the only way to keep smoke out of my basement, it will have to stay.

Does the boiler give off any cues when it is burning the wood gasses or does it always sound pretty much the same?

Do you load wood the full length of the fire box, or keep the wood more towards the middle, front or back?

I am running this with 820 gallons of storage, so I am not burning this 24/7. I light it at night when I get home from work and usually shut it down while it is still burning rather than letting it burn out. I figure it is better to let the house scavenge those BTU's instead of letting the draft fan blow them up the chimney.

Any help would be greatly appreciated,
Scott B.

Is this a new unit? If not do you have the manual/operation book. A lot is explained in there.

My chimney is thirty feet vertical plus the flue to connect, with no issues.

The smoke flap is annoying, I removed mine because I have the smoke hood and fan.

Load the wood front to back and cover the nozzle bricks.

Do you have an aquastat on the unit that can shut it down and turn it on as you set it to your own needs?

This is a very nice unit from my own experience but there is a learning curve.

 

[muncybob]

I removed the smoke flap and normally I get little smoke out the door...sometimes it depends on the wood I'm burning. I find that the very dry pine I have tends to smoke more than the oak or other hardwoods. I have the air open at 100% with a 26' chimney but I guess go with whatever works. Not sure why you are not getting the heat you desire...we have no problem going from stone cold to 180 in about 40 minutes or so. I wonder about when it's gassing too as it seems to always sound the same once the fire takes off. I know that when I open the loading door during a good fire it has a really cool/impressive low "rumble" type of sound to it.

 

[sbleiweiss]

Thanks for the info. Yes this is a new unit, but I did not find any info in the manual on the specifics of how to control the burn. It seems that the only things I can control is the inlet air damper and how I load the wood (and wood quality and size). I feel like I am starving the unit for air. I wish it had a separate valve for secondary air, so I could slow down the burn while still allowing all the air needed to achieve secondary combustion. I am beginning to suspect I might have an air leak in the loading door, but have not yet had the time to check. It does shut down quite well, so the door is probably OK. It also seems to be burning pretty clean.

With the storage tank, the unit does not cycle on and off much. It does have the high limit and low temp shut-down aquastat on the top of the boiler as well as an operating point aquastat on the rear of the unit. I think I made the tank heat exchanger a little large as the boiler will only get 10-15 degrees hotter than the tank water temp and therefore will not allow the boiler to get to full temp until the tank is about done heating up.

Overall I am happy with the system, but I am always looking to optimize things... The oil boiler has not kicked in since I started running the wood boiler a week ago. With the cold (for MA) temps we have been getting over the last week, the tank (820 gallon) has only been drawn down 20 degrees (140,000 BTU) between firings. It has all been working better than I would have expected other than the Steca solar controller which shows quickly fluctuating temps which is clearly not the case. This is used to decide when to charge the storage tank.