Wood boiler purchase

[FXRrider]

Hi I am new to the site and am looking to purchase a wood boiler to heat my home, garage and new pole barn. My home is 3400 sq ft, the garage is 900 sq ft and the pole barn is going to be around 1500 to 2000. House and garage are well insulated. I am in Central Illinois and most winters aren't too bad teens at night and 30 to 40 during the day. This winter on the other hand has been -10 to about 10 above at night and teens to 20s during the day. Currently just heating my house with forced air propane and use 600 to 800 gallons a year, also DHW and cooking.

Was thinking of an outside wood boiler, but am not pleased with the durability and wood consumption. The Portage and Main BL2840 is probably the only standard OWB I would consider, but I am still leery of it. The gasifiers worry me based upon the fact that the wood needs to be so dry. I want to burn dry wood, but worry about running out of dry wood, access to hundreds of acres of timber to cut.

I am leaning toward putting a boiler room in my pole barn and running lines to the house and garage, I don't want to put it in my basement. I have done a ton research on the Tarm, Garn, Econoburn, EKO and BioMas, they are all appealing. Have also been looking at Glenwood boilers, but can't find much info on them, they claim to be able to burn about anything. But due to the lack of info available I am leery. I think I will need a decent sized water tank for storage, to make a gaser work efficiently, since most years I won't have a lot of load on the system.

Would appreciate any help, I prefer real world experiences to dealers sales pitch.

 

[hobbyheater]

Have you considered Garn?

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I have over 30 years of experience using Gasification with storage. IMO you would be very happy with either the 1,500 or 2,000 gal units.
Garn has been in business for 30+ years with a good parts and service support.
Plan on burning dry wood. If you are burning wet wood, you are really trying to burn water!

Welcome to hearth!

Have you considered the Garn Junior?

 

[GENECOP]

I would go Garn, also check out TURBO BURN, I just started reading about them, similar to Garn...

 

[maple1]

A niced size Garn in the barn would work good for you. And there is no need to be worried about gassers because of dry wood - that's sort of looking at it backwards. With a gasser & dry wood, you'll be burning way less wood so will be way ahead of the game once you get a couple years worth of wood ahead. And I don't burn wood that's any drier in mine that I used to with my old smoker - you just can't burn wet or green stuff. A year or two (depending on species) after it's split & stacked & it's good. I'm burning right now white birch that was still alive & growing well 8 months ago - I split it pretty small though to get it there.

 

[mike van]

1 year split, stacked, covered on top looks like this in a Garn -

 

[hobbyheater]

I would go Garn, also check out TURBO BURN, I just started reading about them, similar to Garn...

This is a thread on the turbo burn from a few years back.

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/turbo-burn-inc.29089/

 

[heaterman]

Be very skeptical about anyone who claims their unit will "burn anything". Very skeptical.

 

[GENECOP]

This is a thread on the turbo burn from a few years back.

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/turbo-burn-inc.29089/

Thanks....

 

[FXRrider]

Ok I will look into the Garn more, everybody says they are really expensive, but I have not seen any current prices. Don't really want to spent 20k, the ROI would just be too long.

 

[flyingcow]

When i bought my gasser(6+ yrs ago) , pellet boilers weren't anything I really heard of. At least i didn't think they were the best option. But now???? kinda envious of the new units i see. Might be worth looking into. Also, i live in northern Maine and have 2 air sourced heat pumps. Impressed with those units. Very efficient, and would work well in your climate, i think.

 

[FXRrider]

Pellets are not readily available in my area, so a pellet boiler is out. I have been looking real hard at the EKO 60 and the Econoburn 200. There is a large price difference, Econoburn appears to be built like a tank, haven't seen any real good details on the EKO, but seems well built. Wondering if there is any major problems with these units? I know there is a large learning curve with the gasers and many of the problems are caused by not being tuned properly or wet wood.

 

[henfruit]

Take a look at the Vigas 60.If you are looking at the other two.

 

[maple1]

The only bit of a learning curve, is using dry wood. That is easily overcome by letting your wood sit in a pile for a couple years after splitting - and it just sits there, doesn't get much easier than that. And it should be done anyway, gassifier or not. If you are totally new to burning wood, that might be where your learning curve will be.

How far apart are your buildings? Can you do storage? If it can't be in the house, I would put a gasser in the pole barn along with my whole winters wood, insulate it, and put some storage in my house if possible. But with what should be a decent sized heating load, you could try it without storage first although some boilers do require storage. The Garn is very much tried & tested in apps like this - but it is unpressurized, which may or may not be an issue of consideration for you. My preference is for pressurized. Give henfruits suggestion an eye too - there are lots of choices out there. If you'll have a fairly tall chimney and natural draft intrigues you, check mine out too - it comes in a 50kw model as well.

 

[goosegunner]

I sent you a message with phone number, I would be happy to talk to you about my experience with and without storage.

gg

 

[FXRrider]

I am planning on putting the boiler in the back of the pole barn, in a separate room and covered area on the back for wood storage. It will be about 100 ft from the house. The storage could be in the basement as I have a 240 sqft storage/utility room in a 1400 sqft walkout basement. My house doesn't take much to heat, filled my propane tank in July 800 gallon and have about 200 left, just heating my house, DHW and cooking. The unknown is heating my 900 soft attached garage, r13 walls and r13 ceiling, getting ready to add another 6 inches to the garage. It hasn't been below 29 all winter with just a heat lamp for the dog and heat from a car, its usually around 40. Also the pole barn 32x48 with 12ft ceilings plus the boiler room, the boiler room will be insulated and the rest of the pole barn will be later on. It will have heat in the floor, also later on.

Nobody around here has an inside wood boiler that I know of. There is a lot old indoor wood stoves and smokey OWB's not wanting to feed one or deal with the smoke. I have a wood burning fire place that we burn occasionally or when the power is out, don't keep a great deal of wood around for it though.

Don't think a natural draft would be good to have, kind of live in a low area and have issues with draft on my fireplace if it is real windy.

 

[goosegunner]

Sounds like my setup, here is a example.



Storage in covered lean to

 

[Tennman]

Welcome fellow Superglide rider! For the price I've been impressed with our BioMass. Certainly many happy EKO users here and Boilerman has good experience with Attack. Three excellent, cost effective east European manufactured gassers. A visit to New Horizon will let you see them all in one place. I love our boiler in our barn. We lose some efficiency, but gain in the laziness of dealing with my messiness. You're first cut list looks pretty good. My barn's not as nice as GG's but looks like it belongs in the hills of Tennessee. You can see how close our wood storage is to where the boiler is set in the corner. Enjoy the research and take your time, you'll spend a bunch of time with your decision.