Hi there, first post but I've been reading for a while. Apologies for the length of this.
About 3.5 years ago I moved into a home in northwest Vermont with a Sequoyah Paradise E3400 OWB. For the first three heat seasons, I attempted to use it with nothing but repeated problems. The previous owner said he used it with no trouble but I very much doubt his word (and the number of Grainger receipts he left behind showing he bought replacement parts tend to indicate he had similar troubles). I've made a few very minor modifications, which I'll describe below, and now I'm in the middle of the first heating season where I've been able to use it continually for months, and I'm having a few issues that I'm hoping I can get advice on here and try to bring it back up to full service with an overhaul next summer.
My wood is dry and well-seasoned, I bought 12 cords a couple months after moving here and wasn't able to burn more than 3 the first few seasons. It was dry on purchase on stored in a covered woodshed.
First the problems I had that are resolved: my worst problem was the Love Controls TS2-010 temperature controller mounted to the upper right side of the shell. I went through about 8 of these controllers as they kept shorting out after anywhere from 2 hours of use to 2 weeks. I had all the wiring replaced so it didn't seem to be an electrical issue, but due to creosote/smoke and maybe moisture. These have been replaced with a remote mounted TSW-150 in a weatherproof enclosure that has withstood several months of use at this point, though the interior is still getting a bit gunky from smoke traveling through the electrical conduit. Nearly every time those shorted out I ended up having the copper pipes on the back burst from freezing, since repaired multiple times.
The next problem I've seen described here and elsewhere, the draft inducer fans fail, the damper flap gets creosote caked to the point it is difficult to operate, which shorts out the solenoid that opens and closes the damper. I'm treating the fans as consumable parts and simply disconnected the spring between the solenoid and the damper, leaving the damper open 24/7. My original damper got stuck closed and I got wildly lucky after contacting Royall and got someone at Ark Alloy to sell me the last old damper they had that fit this unit, so I at least have a functional air inlet now.
Now my various ongoing issues that I'm hoping to get some help with.
1) Very little ash is making it down into the ash cleanouts below the firebox. I suspect that the holes at the bottom of the firebox are plugged, partially or in full, so I have several inches of ash mixed in with the coals at the bottom of the firebox. The interior of the firebox is so filthy that even when empty I can't see where the ash falls through or even where the downdraft air pushes through into the heat exchange path. What can I do to clean out the base of the firebox to resolve this? I can't even tell if there is firebrick inside, for all I know the original owner never installed any. I think I need to climb inside next year and clear out the ash and air paths.
2) The exterior shell on the sides, which looks like some kind of corrugated steel, is breaking down or melting. It is soft and flexible to the touch, and when I touched it after noticing it I poked multiple holes through it with my fingers. Behind this shell is smoke, tons and tons of it that billows out now at almost all times. From reading about the unit it claims to have a sealed smoke path that prevents smoke from exiting anywhere except the stovepipe, and that's laughable given the giant cloud of smoke I see coming out of the front, back, and sides of mine. The smoke coming out of the sides is white and not particularly hot. This summer, what will be a good option to use to replace this siding? I don't even know if this is just excess smoke that needs to escape or if the holes in the side are causing it to lose smoke that would be participating in heat exchange. It may just be caked on creosote degassing and not combustion smoke, but I don't know. I've stuck some flex-seal tape on there to cover the holes I've created and I'm planning to stick some Nashua tape/flashing tape on there to try to cover up the rest soon. It doesn't billow out of these holes at all times, often in the mornings I'll look at it and see smoke only coming out the stovepipe, then a half hour later it is back to five smoke paths exiting the thing.
3) Unexpectedly low heat production. It heats the water inside, but the prior owner of the home claimed he ran on solely wood all winter and that's not possible here. My basement oil boiler backup is coming on frequently (my aquastat is set to disable the oil boiler when the Sequoyah is above 160F). I don't expect it to keep up when it is sub-zero outside, but it seems to have trouble servicing the entire home even at 20F. Maybe I just shouldn't believe the prior owner, but I rarely see it get up to the high limit on the temperature controller. It is providing a decent amount of heat, just not as much as I expected for a unit that's supposed to be able to handle a 8,000+sqft home.
4) Creosote and creosote and more creosote. Black tarry sludge all over the front of the unit, to the point I have to burn it hot and shovel/scrape away solid creosote just to get access to open the ash cleanout doors (which ends up a waste of time anyway as so little ash makes it down there - I try to clean it out and I get less than half a five gallon bucket worth after burning multiple cords). Creosote buildup in the damper. Thick tarry chunks of creosote inside the firebox that comes out in chunks if I hack at it and scoop it out during refills. Is there anything I can add to the burn, like lime, or a creosote sweeping log, to help try to break this tar up?
5) This one isn't the boiler's fault. The underground lines run from the boiler to enter my home through a penetration in the basement concrete wall. This is the pre-fab corrugated black plastic conduit line with closed-cell wrapped pex inside. The boiler is at a greater elevation than the basement. You can guess where this is going - when we get excessive rain or a huge snowmelt before the ground is frozen, like we did this November, I get water leaking into the basement through the conduit. I've just endured 20 days of it, with a flow rate that started at a gallon every ten minutes and just finally yesterday trailed off to zero. The water is cold; this is not water leaking out of the pex lines or the boiler itself, but surface water entering the conduit whether directly below the boiler or somewhere along the ~75' pex run. I have a water sensor placed on the basement floor to alert me when this happens, of course my basement was built with no drain so I have been swapping buckets for half a month.
6) Given the creosote all over the exterior of the unit and inside the firebox, I suspect my heat exchange path is similarly caked and probably the source of my low heat transfer issues. How can I access this area to clean it? And if I can get to it, how do I get all this crap off? I have not removed the side panels to inspect (they will fall off on their own soon anyway), but where is the access? The only openings I see besides the loading door, ash pans, and rear damper, is a large bolted on plate at the rear above the water outlets and damper/fan area. If I remove that once the unit is shut down, will that give me access to anything useful? The manuals that came with this unit have a diagram of the heat exchange area but none of the entire unit, so I'm not sure if there's anything that can be done.
I've heated with wood in fireplaces and indoor woodstoves most of my life, so I'm not unfamiliar with this stuff, but I've never seen anything get this caked or give me this many problems. It's my first wood boiler so perhaps they are fundamentally different enough I'm just out of my element, I don't know.
Are these things just fatally flawed? If I'm beating a dead horse here I don't want to spend more money replacing the siding or firebrick, or spend the time fully cleaning it up, if there's no hope for the unit. I'll just save the cash for heating oil and propane and consider selling it as a "you come pick it up" deal and replace with a more recent boiler that hopefully isn't trash or a pellet burner or something else.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions any of you can provide, or even if you just let me know this thing is doomed.
About 3.5 years ago I moved into a home in northwest Vermont with a Sequoyah Paradise E3400 OWB. For the first three heat seasons, I attempted to use it with nothing but repeated problems. The previous owner said he used it with no trouble but I very much doubt his word (and the number of Grainger receipts he left behind showing he bought replacement parts tend to indicate he had similar troubles). I've made a few very minor modifications, which I'll describe below, and now I'm in the middle of the first heating season where I've been able to use it continually for months, and I'm having a few issues that I'm hoping I can get advice on here and try to bring it back up to full service with an overhaul next summer.
My wood is dry and well-seasoned, I bought 12 cords a couple months after moving here and wasn't able to burn more than 3 the first few seasons. It was dry on purchase on stored in a covered woodshed.
First the problems I had that are resolved: my worst problem was the Love Controls TS2-010 temperature controller mounted to the upper right side of the shell. I went through about 8 of these controllers as they kept shorting out after anywhere from 2 hours of use to 2 weeks. I had all the wiring replaced so it didn't seem to be an electrical issue, but due to creosote/smoke and maybe moisture. These have been replaced with a remote mounted TSW-150 in a weatherproof enclosure that has withstood several months of use at this point, though the interior is still getting a bit gunky from smoke traveling through the electrical conduit. Nearly every time those shorted out I ended up having the copper pipes on the back burst from freezing, since repaired multiple times.
The next problem I've seen described here and elsewhere, the draft inducer fans fail, the damper flap gets creosote caked to the point it is difficult to operate, which shorts out the solenoid that opens and closes the damper. I'm treating the fans as consumable parts and simply disconnected the spring between the solenoid and the damper, leaving the damper open 24/7. My original damper got stuck closed and I got wildly lucky after contacting Royall and got someone at Ark Alloy to sell me the last old damper they had that fit this unit, so I at least have a functional air inlet now.
Now my various ongoing issues that I'm hoping to get some help with.
1) Very little ash is making it down into the ash cleanouts below the firebox. I suspect that the holes at the bottom of the firebox are plugged, partially or in full, so I have several inches of ash mixed in with the coals at the bottom of the firebox. The interior of the firebox is so filthy that even when empty I can't see where the ash falls through or even where the downdraft air pushes through into the heat exchange path. What can I do to clean out the base of the firebox to resolve this? I can't even tell if there is firebrick inside, for all I know the original owner never installed any. I think I need to climb inside next year and clear out the ash and air paths.
2) The exterior shell on the sides, which looks like some kind of corrugated steel, is breaking down or melting. It is soft and flexible to the touch, and when I touched it after noticing it I poked multiple holes through it with my fingers. Behind this shell is smoke, tons and tons of it that billows out now at almost all times. From reading about the unit it claims to have a sealed smoke path that prevents smoke from exiting anywhere except the stovepipe, and that's laughable given the giant cloud of smoke I see coming out of the front, back, and sides of mine. The smoke coming out of the sides is white and not particularly hot. This summer, what will be a good option to use to replace this siding? I don't even know if this is just excess smoke that needs to escape or if the holes in the side are causing it to lose smoke that would be participating in heat exchange. It may just be caked on creosote degassing and not combustion smoke, but I don't know. I've stuck some flex-seal tape on there to cover the holes I've created and I'm planning to stick some Nashua tape/flashing tape on there to try to cover up the rest soon. It doesn't billow out of these holes at all times, often in the mornings I'll look at it and see smoke only coming out the stovepipe, then a half hour later it is back to five smoke paths exiting the thing.
3) Unexpectedly low heat production. It heats the water inside, but the prior owner of the home claimed he ran on solely wood all winter and that's not possible here. My basement oil boiler backup is coming on frequently (my aquastat is set to disable the oil boiler when the Sequoyah is above 160F). I don't expect it to keep up when it is sub-zero outside, but it seems to have trouble servicing the entire home even at 20F. Maybe I just shouldn't believe the prior owner, but I rarely see it get up to the high limit on the temperature controller. It is providing a decent amount of heat, just not as much as I expected for a unit that's supposed to be able to handle a 8,000+sqft home.
4) Creosote and creosote and more creosote. Black tarry sludge all over the front of the unit, to the point I have to burn it hot and shovel/scrape away solid creosote just to get access to open the ash cleanout doors (which ends up a waste of time anyway as so little ash makes it down there - I try to clean it out and I get less than half a five gallon bucket worth after burning multiple cords). Creosote buildup in the damper. Thick tarry chunks of creosote inside the firebox that comes out in chunks if I hack at it and scoop it out during refills. Is there anything I can add to the burn, like lime, or a creosote sweeping log, to help try to break this tar up?
5) This one isn't the boiler's fault. The underground lines run from the boiler to enter my home through a penetration in the basement concrete wall. This is the pre-fab corrugated black plastic conduit line with closed-cell wrapped pex inside. The boiler is at a greater elevation than the basement. You can guess where this is going - when we get excessive rain or a huge snowmelt before the ground is frozen, like we did this November, I get water leaking into the basement through the conduit. I've just endured 20 days of it, with a flow rate that started at a gallon every ten minutes and just finally yesterday trailed off to zero. The water is cold; this is not water leaking out of the pex lines or the boiler itself, but surface water entering the conduit whether directly below the boiler or somewhere along the ~75' pex run. I have a water sensor placed on the basement floor to alert me when this happens, of course my basement was built with no drain so I have been swapping buckets for half a month.
6) Given the creosote all over the exterior of the unit and inside the firebox, I suspect my heat exchange path is similarly caked and probably the source of my low heat transfer issues. How can I access this area to clean it? And if I can get to it, how do I get all this crap off? I have not removed the side panels to inspect (they will fall off on their own soon anyway), but where is the access? The only openings I see besides the loading door, ash pans, and rear damper, is a large bolted on plate at the rear above the water outlets and damper/fan area. If I remove that once the unit is shut down, will that give me access to anything useful? The manuals that came with this unit have a diagram of the heat exchange area but none of the entire unit, so I'm not sure if there's anything that can be done.
I've heated with wood in fireplaces and indoor woodstoves most of my life, so I'm not unfamiliar with this stuff, but I've never seen anything get this caked or give me this many problems. It's my first wood boiler so perhaps they are fundamentally different enough I'm just out of my element, I don't know.
Are these things just fatally flawed? If I'm beating a dead horse here I don't want to spend more money replacing the siding or firebrick, or spend the time fully cleaning it up, if there's no hope for the unit. I'll just save the cash for heating oil and propane and consider selling it as a "you come pick it up" deal and replace with a more recent boiler that hopefully isn't trash or a pellet burner or something else.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions any of you can provide, or even if you just let me know this thing is doomed.
