I burn wood to heat my home, from my land, on my schedule, cheap and smokeless(pretty much). Pine, hemlock, spruce, and all assorted hardies.
Current setup - Hydronic BB and HT radiant in bathrooms and tiled areas. Half finished basement. 3000 sq. ft heated total. 1000 gallon basement pressurized storage. 140 woodgun behind garage in a separate room, underground pexy right to the tank. Woodgun installed in 2018, a 12 year old model at the time and was not run with storage..
Pro's - lets start with the gun - huge firebox, auto close damper, integrated thermal storage(no need for a dump zone when CMP sheets the bed), burns anything(bigger is better) cut and split today and burn tomorrow. Cut, don't split today and burn next year. No o2 sensor, PCB or microprocessor. Exhaust hood sucks out all the smoke whilst starting it up. Mechanical time switch - runs for predetermined time and shuts off based on how much wood is loaded. The woodgun is sized perfectly to add about 4-500k btus to my tank with 1 load of wood. The box is 32", but I load 24" wood. I start at 5pm when I get home, load fully, light and set timer to 7 hours. My tank goes from 150 to 190 in that time. I don't touch it again until I get home from work the following day.
Cons = GUN - does smoke on start. Heat lost from boiler jacket is lost to the garage, not the house. Center brick replacement after 12-15 cord of wood burned with storage in a batch. Approx 200 bucks every 2 or 3 years. The fan does draw some amperage, I'd not want to run it on a solar system. I know it's not as efficient as a lambda unit, however, either is its supplying hand. I may have a handful of hemlock splits followed by a 16 inch pine round. It does not care what you throw at it, it will eat it and make my wife warm. Massive - they are not fun to move around. Refractory - alike other gassers, they have an abundance of refractory. When I installed this used unit, it needed all new refractory - it cost me 1200 bucks plus center bricks. So 1400 total. With storage, I don't see ever needing to replace the lower refractory again. I've run 8 cord x 4 years through it and the lower end brick looks like new.
Although I've found the best overall bulk wood heating combination, I would like to try a lambda unit to see how fussy the actually are. For some reason I feel like the lambda guys are successful retirees that've spent more in name and efficiency than they'll ever end up using. They pride themselves in burning 42 lbs of kiln dried CSD firewood and receiving 500,000 btu's from that batch. Someone tell me I'm wrong. The OEM that fires me up is Varmebaronen, the simplistic design and robustness has attracted me for years. Unfortunately I'm here to save money and haven't pulled that trigger. I hope I see one on craigslist to help prove myself right that the Gun is the best overall solid fuel burner ever.
Thanks again for Hearth.com community, I built my wood burning dream from this forum board. Maple1 is an inspiration and he would make any miller product taste good.
Current setup - Hydronic BB and HT radiant in bathrooms and tiled areas. Half finished basement. 3000 sq. ft heated total. 1000 gallon basement pressurized storage. 140 woodgun behind garage in a separate room, underground pexy right to the tank. Woodgun installed in 2018, a 12 year old model at the time and was not run with storage..
Pro's - lets start with the gun - huge firebox, auto close damper, integrated thermal storage(no need for a dump zone when CMP sheets the bed), burns anything(bigger is better) cut and split today and burn tomorrow. Cut, don't split today and burn next year. No o2 sensor, PCB or microprocessor. Exhaust hood sucks out all the smoke whilst starting it up. Mechanical time switch - runs for predetermined time and shuts off based on how much wood is loaded. The woodgun is sized perfectly to add about 4-500k btus to my tank with 1 load of wood. The box is 32", but I load 24" wood. I start at 5pm when I get home, load fully, light and set timer to 7 hours. My tank goes from 150 to 190 in that time. I don't touch it again until I get home from work the following day.
Cons = GUN - does smoke on start. Heat lost from boiler jacket is lost to the garage, not the house. Center brick replacement after 12-15 cord of wood burned with storage in a batch. Approx 200 bucks every 2 or 3 years. The fan does draw some amperage, I'd not want to run it on a solar system. I know it's not as efficient as a lambda unit, however, either is its supplying hand. I may have a handful of hemlock splits followed by a 16 inch pine round. It does not care what you throw at it, it will eat it and make my wife warm. Massive - they are not fun to move around. Refractory - alike other gassers, they have an abundance of refractory. When I installed this used unit, it needed all new refractory - it cost me 1200 bucks plus center bricks. So 1400 total. With storage, I don't see ever needing to replace the lower refractory again. I've run 8 cord x 4 years through it and the lower end brick looks like new.
Although I've found the best overall bulk wood heating combination, I would like to try a lambda unit to see how fussy the actually are. For some reason I feel like the lambda guys are successful retirees that've spent more in name and efficiency than they'll ever end up using. They pride themselves in burning 42 lbs of kiln dried CSD firewood and receiving 500,000 btu's from that batch. Someone tell me I'm wrong. The OEM that fires me up is Varmebaronen, the simplistic design and robustness has attracted me for years. Unfortunately I'm here to save money and haven't pulled that trigger. I hope I see one on craigslist to help prove myself right that the Gun is the best overall solid fuel burner ever.
Thanks again for Hearth.com community, I built my wood burning dream from this forum board. Maple1 is an inspiration and he would make any miller product taste good.
