So I am trying to decide witch outdoor woodboiler to buy . My three dealers that are close are central boiler edge, Wood Doctor and Portage and Main. CB the least expensive , PM the most expensive about a $4000 difference. I want a gasification boiler that meets the new codes. My house is only a small ranch that is 24 x 40 with a walk in basement.
What kind of heat do you have now? A walk out basement begs for a wood furnace...efficiency much higher...cost much lower. $2-4k gets a good furnace...$5k gets you the Cadillac of wood gasification heating...KUUMA - Furnaces & Sauna Stoves
I have forced hot water system. I do have a walk in basement but it has a small apt for my daughter,hopefully someday it will become a man cave. Witch means having to haul wood through the apt. The biggest thing is to keep the mess outside, I do have a wood stove in the celler right now that I use in the winter. Outside would also be right next to my wood shed.
I upgraded this past January from an older Central Boiler to a new HeatMaster SS G200. I would not wish Central Boiler on anyone, in my own experience they will not stand behind their products. HeatMaster has had some dealer issues here in the northeast but their product is solid and I am very pleased with it. I would take a look at Polar wood boilers as well, there is a dealer in Lyman Maine, who used to be the HeatMaster dealer but now does Polar. Portage and Main also has a good reputation but their product was a bit too expensive for me.
I had a long talk on the phone the other night with the polar dealer, he seems to be a straight up guy. All the dealers except one seem to be very knowledgeable . Polar was about 1000 less than P+M.
That guy is good stuff, nothing fancy but a good guy. He's at the Fryeburg fair each year and used to sell P&M.
Are any of the newer owb's pressurized systems? When I was looking (before my indoor gasser) all the owb's just ran "open" or non pressurized that I had always been told by "boiler guy's" is a huge negative in the longevity of any boiler regardless of the fuel source.
AHS has one, its a woodgun in a special enclosure, a little bit pricey when compared to the other outdoor boilers out there.
The Heatmaster SS I have, is an open system. It's all stainless steel though, not swiss cheese and silly putty like my old Central Boiler. I think it should last at least a couple of decades, and by then I won't care anymore.
That's what I ended up with and back then they were all "indoor" units. One thing I had never considered and learned is how much heat comes off these units that when in your living space or garage provides a huge amount of heat that outdoors would have been just wasted. Our WG is in a highly insulated, dedicated room with a large door directly to the outside for the wood handling. Just a door away is our washer & dryer. That room pretty much stays at 100* when in use and therefore is where we dry our clothes all winter long. We were able to build around the indoor boiler idea to our advantage & I understand hauling wood in & through your basement, but the "free" heat should be a consideration. It might just be too much in DE but it allows normal in house attire to consist of tee shirts and shorts all winter long "up" here . Gasifier runs a WG also.
Yea the more I looked into the boiler route the more I kind of realized that most are to big for my situation with out using storage and the cost. I need to keep resale in mind due to my job, so I am most likely going to go with a furnace or maybe a bk. But I am more than happy to share my research with others. I really liked the looks heatmaster, polar and ahs outdoor units, p&m also has a new version out that looks the same, and for the most part they all appear to be using similar technology as far as building them but the niceties and little things are all different but appealing for each unit. Ahs is completely different than the others and is new to the outdoor world but there boilers are proven if any if that makes sense.
With all these outside boilers you are going to have a problem because you are going to have a very small load , the boiler is going to idle a lot and the firing cycles will be very short, not enough to burn the accumulated creosote in the flame tubes . It is going to be a lot more money but a Garn Junior in a small out building would be a better choice .
Good boilers are expensive, and it is tough to justify them going strictly by the dollar IMO. I looked at buying one about 10 years ago and settled on the AHS as the most well designed, thorough wood burning solution. A truly nice system in my opinion. I also got a local reference who has one and he was very happy with his, many years down the road. But in the end, to use one efficiently, I believe a large volume of heat storage is needed in the form of a well insulated water tank. The tank does not have to be pressurized, a simple heat- exchanger will take care of that, and I was planning on making a sort of enclosed 'pool' outside, constructed out of rigid insulation and lined with what amounts to a plastic bag. Adding that to the cost of the boiler itself, and the labor and materials cost of installation and I came to the conclusion that I would not live long enough to break even, never mind get ahead. Brian
Just for something else to think about for anyone coming along to this thread for info - anybody considering an OWB should also maybe consider putting an indoor boiler, in an outbuilding where some heat could be used. Like a shop. Or big man cave. Along with the entire winters wood. And maybe some storage - but that could go in the house if there's room. Which doesn't have to be expensive - used LP tanks work. And it doesn't have to be a gasifying boiler. A decent 'old school' boiler that has tubes for heat exchanging can do very well when tied to storage - it burns wide open until the wood is all gone & storage is all hot, so no chance for smoldering and building big creosote although some cleaning will still be needed. Lots of ways to skin it.
I did some engineering work for a guy that installed an indoor wood boiler - think it might have been an EKO - and he took a portion of his basement and superinsulated it with about 12" of rigid and spray foam. Then slid in two recycled 1000-gallon propane tanks, all cleaned out and tied together, circulator pumps attached and a thermostat, and used that for hot water storage. Basically a giant foam cooler, completely enclosed. The tanks were in a closed loop so he still used a heat exchanger, but he said that when he got the system up and running, he could go for a couple of days between burns. Only downside is that each time he ran the unit, he would have to restart the fire from scratch.
That really is a great way to go- having sufficient storage to first absorb all the heat the boiler can put out in one firing. The second criteria is that it is a real plus if the water storage is sufficient to provide all heating needs for 24 hours so that the boiler only needs one firing per day, assuming again that the firebox is large enough to hold sufficient fuel for one day's energy needs (heat, hot water). The thing that gets in the way is how much heat can be recovered from the water. Circulating hot water that is at 150F and below is often not enough to heat a house on a very cold, windy day, and water below 140F is usually just not hot enough to heat average homes during long stretches of winters, at least winters in the northern US. Water can be used for DHW down to about 115F given a decent heat exchanger but that will not work for heating. So if 150F is the lowest usable temp. and the upper temp. is set at 200F, then the available temperature change is only 50 F, which is not that much. The tendency is to think of 200F water as being much, much hotter than room temp., which it is, but 100F water just will not produce enough heat from normal baseboard heating units. I think the propane tanks being 'bare' but insulating a vault to hold them is a great idea and probably reasonable in price. I had a plan to basically build a small in- ground pool, lined with plastic and insulated with thick, rigid foam insulation, and cap it off with the same thing that basically floated on the surface of the water so no 'structure' would be needed. If the area was fenced off, no one could walk or drive over it so it should be safe enough. At the time, I was looking at an AHS 140 'wood gun' boiler, which had a pretty big firebox and would have easily met the 24 hour requirements for my needs. As I remember, the boiler was around $8K, with the water storage, heat exchangers, various pumps and controls being on top of that of course. Just too expensive for me to make it work over the life of the boiler, or at least that is the how it struck me. I think it works better for people with much larger heating needs such as larger out- buildings, heated pools, and similar. Hell, one could run PEX tubing under the driveway and MELT the snow away using wood and just have that as a tag- along to the complete heating system. Brian
Anyone ever seen a underground storage set up, like a pressurized LP tank in a well insulated concrete or block highly insulated vault? I just don't have the space and 1000 gal would be my goal. I'm thinking something like a pre cast septic tank with a lid and an access hatch. Think small bomb shelter