Wood gasification boilers
user-774310
| Posted in General Questions on
I have a friend in town who is thinking of installing a wood gasification boiler to run his hydronic heating system and domestic hot water. As I haven’t come across many of these before I am hoping some of you guys can give some advice that I can pass on. I believe he is considering one of the following units; Econoburn, Empyre Elite or a Woodgun.
Many thanks
Ray
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Replies
hearth.com That is what they do over there. The Garn is quite the unit, and includes the water tank. Were I going to use one, that was going to be my choice. They just don't make one small enough for me, so I am looking at a Tarm, perhaps. Good luck over there; tons of info!
Ray,
Back in the 1970s, the one everyone was installing was the H.S. Tarm, manufactured in Denmark. The company almost went out of business, and the brand name was acquired by an American manufacturer that shortened the name to just Tarm. They are very high quality boilers -- but the price is a little scary.
Ray,
We heat our 30 x 48 1941 cape with a (Tarm) BioHeat USA Solo Plus 30 100,000 btu wood gasification boiler. The house has the original insulation, but thats a topic for another thread! We purchased it five years ago at the spike in oil prices and were looking at over $4,000 in oil that year. Purchase price was $7,800 and installation was $3,500. We kept our old Weil Mc-Lain oil fired boiler as backup and heat our domestic hot water with a combination solar and a copper coil through the wood boiler.
To date, we use an average of 4 1/2 cord of firewood and $500 oil per year. We did not purchase the storage since we use so little wood, but are contemplating adding it as we age and moving wood piles around the yard becomes more tedious.
The Solo Plus 30 is highly recommended. Very little smoke and ash, no creosote outside the burn chamber, and only load it 2-3 times a day. In the late spring and early fall, the oil boiler kicks in on cold mornings.
Good luck!
Sorry to be late to the party here. I have a ~200K BTU AHS woodgun which we use to drive radiant heat. It is an amazing machine. It actually cycles on and off like an oil or gas boiler and can restart up to a couple of hours due to its basically air tight load chamber. You absolutely do not want to open the feed door on a hot boiler unless the draft is running! I fill it 1x per day generally in cold weather. The combustion is so efficient that the stack output is cool enough so that you can put your hand on the stove pipe when it is running. Cleaning the combustion paths is a bit of a pain, but they are easily accessible as long as you have adequate room around the boiler. I would recommend getting a stainless steel fire-path no matter what brand is used. Ash cleanup is pretty easy (other than cleaning the firepath on occasion) as the ash gets carried out of the boiler with the exhaust and is separated in an ash separator which has an ash drawer which I empty about once a week.