Week 2 of 20

[ISeeDeadBTUs]

Two weeks of the heating season down and going well so far. Of course, much of week 2 was actually a bit warm. I think our low last night was 45 hh:

Maintenace this week was adding 1 gal of water. I am still running without the flow switch, I am still running without power outage protection (The generac prolly needs to be disassembled to free it up by now :-S )

I still have not removed ashes. In the past I have always found that the fire falters for 24 hours after ash removal. Over scavenging I suppose. But I have been trying to make sure the fire burns way down on a regular basis during these past two weeks. An I have run a bit of summer-generated paper/cardboard/assorted 'burnables' through the green beast, so I'd expect ash production to be above average.

So far I've been able to hold to my 2 bucket loads a week. This has enable me to not use my 8-cord wood pile. And I've even been able to work on filling my boiler room. I know some here find it sacrilegious, but I've been burning what I go collect. I'll leave all the splitting, stacking, winding, sunning, moving, re-stacking etc, etc to you ;-) I just burn it.

With it this warm, I have the stat set at 170. I try to load appropriate, which is a bit of an art when it's this warm and no storage.

I suspect that many of the remaining 18 weeks will be tougher than the first two.

Steady as she goes.

 

[sparke]

Turned off the oil gun last week. Lighting 1 fire every 2-3 days. That runs storage down to 160*, I could probably get away with one more day but recovery is so much easier this way. So- 1 wheelbarrow every 2 or 3 days depending on night time temps... I expect to be 1 wheelbarrow every day soon...

 

[Deere10]

I have had mine up and burning since Oct 16. Just last weekend I took 2 shovel full of ash out.Same here load according to outside temps.I have scrounged all my old seasoned wood in my wood dumping area. So late last week I have started into the nicely stacked wood in the shed.I was hoping to burn all the scroungings thru Nov. Have plans of doing a mid season cleaning late Dec. or early Jan. Should be easier now with the side panel update.

 

[Trzebs13]

So far so good here. All mods seem to be holding up well. Other than the air curtain I installed in the door opening. This thing may cut down the smoke that it lets out but it is a knuckle bust-in SOB. I just hooked up my detached 34x36 shop infloor and I am still wondering how you guy's seem to get your units not to hit the dump zone. I have always ran my pretty cold, damper turned on at 150 and off at 170 or so. This thing did not come with adjustable aqua stats. But never the less. I can see that putting another 1200 sq feet of infloor in the mix, will require me to turn up the temps. With that being said I have it shutting down at 180 and now the only time that it really hits it is when there is nobody calling for heat. When that happens with even a half full fire box of oak. It is only a matter of a minute and that it sailing past 200. I would have to have it shut down at about 165 to not have it hit. And then it would be way to cold by the time it would fire back up. Thoughts?

 

[91220da]

A couple of days after I installed I was getting super heated conditions very quickly. Called the dealer at the time (This Warm House) Mansfield PA. They suggested a larger circulator pump. Changed from a 007 to an 011 and have never come close to a boil over since. Had to keep the water moving faster or higher volume to grab the heat out of the internal exchange tubes. Just my 4 cents. Damn inflation.

 

[2.beans]

So far so good here. All mods seem to be holding up well. Other than the air curtain I installed in the door opening. This thing may cut down the smoke that it lets out but it is a knuckle bust-in SOB. I just hooked up my detached 34x36 shop infloor and I am still wondering how you guy's seem to get your units not to hit the dump zone. I have always ran my pretty cold, damper turned on at 150 and off at 170 or so. This thing did not come with adjustable aqua stats. But never the less. I can see that putting another 1200 sq feet of infloor in the mix, will require me to turn up the temps. With that being said I have it shutting down at 180 and now the only time that it really hits it is when there is nobody calling for heat. When that happens with even a half full fire box of oak. It is only a matter of a minute and that it sailing past 200. I would have to have it shut down at about 165 to not have it hit. And then it would be way to cold by the time it would fire back up. Thoughts?

i cut the front door off and added a gasket, added a gasket to the draft door,sealed all around the panels except the bottoms, and installed a flap in the exhaust. no more temperature rise after the boiler shuts down even with the draft set at 195*

 

[2.beans]

Turned off the oil gun last week. Lighting 1 fire every 2-3 days. That runs storage down to 160*, I could probably get away with one more day but recovery is so much easier this way. So- 1 wheelbarrow every 2 or 3 days depending on night time temps... I expect to be 1 wheelbarrow every day soon...

how big is your house to go 2-3 days a fire. that would be nice!

 

[Trzebs13]

i cut the front door off and added a gasket, added a gasket to the draft door,sealed all around the panels except the bottoms, and installed a flap in the exhaust. no more temperature rise after the boiler shuts down even with the draft set at 195*

Beans, what kind of boiler do you have? The Greenfire actually has a pretty good door system compaired to the Greenwood or Steaton. And as for the draft door, has a pretty good gasket on it. So I'm thinking that air leaks is not a problem but what I am wondering is how that flue damper works? Did you have a noticeable difference when you installed it? I thought that Jesse dosen't really use his much.

And I'm wondering on the larger pump idea. I do understand where moving the fluid may keep that temp in check. But where does the heat go??? If it takes it out of the boiler it has to go somewhere. Inefficiency? So if your boiler shuts down at 195 and there is no load how long normally would you say it would be untill your boiler fires again?

The reason I think that air leaks isn't a problem is that on warm or sunny days if I load in the morning and there is no call all day, the logs will still have the bark on them. Granted there black but it wouldn't have fired in 8+ hrs some times.

 

[sparke]

sparke - 15 November 2010 04:30 PM
Turned off the oil gun last week. Lighting 1 fire every 2-3 days. That runs storage down to 160*, I could probably get away with one more day but recovery is so much easier this way. So- 1 wheelbarrow every 2 or 3 days depending on night time temps… I expect to be 1 wheelbarrow every day soon…

how big is your house to go 2-3 days a fire. that would be nice!

About 2400 sq ft but I have only one heat zone running right now. Most of the usage right now is domestic. About 6 showers a day, laundry, dishwasher, etc...

 

[sparke]

.

 

[2.beans]

i cut the front door off and added a gasket, added a gasket to the draft door,sealed all around the panels except the bottoms, and installed a flap in the exhaust. no more temperature rise after the boiler shuts down even with the draft set at 195*

Beans, what kind of boiler do you have? The Greenfire actually has a pretty good door system compaired to the Greenwood or Steaton. And as for the draft door, has a pretty good gasket on it. So I'm thinking that air leaks is not a problem but what I am wondering is how that flue damper works? Did you have a noticeable difference when you installed it? I thought that Jesse dosen't really use his much.

And I'm wondering on the larger pump idea. I do understand where moving the fluid may keep that temp in check. But where does the heat go??? If it takes it out of the boiler it has to go somewhere. Inefficiency? So if your boiler shuts down at 195 and there is no load how long normally would you say it would be untill your boiler fires again?

The reason I think that air leaks isn't a problem is that on warm or sunny days if I load in the morning and there is no call all day, the logs will still have the bark on them. Granted there black but it wouldn't have fired in 8+ hrs some times.

i have a seton w200 or w130 or whatever the size is today. i run a 1000 gallons of storage so i wanted my boiler real tight because it shuts down for long periods of time once the storage is up to temp. my boiler will sit so long sometimes ill have to restart it. i usually let it burn out and start a fire when the storage is real low that way i get a real long hot burn to keep it cleaned out. when i know im going to be late getting home ill keep it full and it may sit for 8 to 10 hours before it fires again. the boiler will cool down to 160* or lower as long as the storage isnt calling. the draft flap helped considerably when the boiler shuts down it cools alot faster. my exhaust temps will drop to under 200* where they 350*plus before with the draft shut. i made this one day just to see if would work and was going to build a better one but just havent got to it. i did this before seton started to so i didnt really know how it would be. it smoked like hell out the door after i installed it,thats one reason i added a gasket and sealed things up.