I'm not sure it does heat better, but it may be cheaper and/or easier to work with in manufacture, plus be much more resilient (less prone to warping or cracking). I was surprised that the Ideal Steel is actually "stainless steel" I wonder of that is actually the case, as I hadn't seen that before but knew it was steel. Anyone got the facts on that?
Great article, Firecracker. The wood chip burning is a fantastic idea. In my part of NY so many trees are chipped that it is astounding. They are considered garbage, and the tree companies will give you all you want rather than storing or paying to dispose of them. There are piles of them that steam and cook all winter long that can be seen. Some a few stories high by hundreds of feet long. They can't make it all into usable mulch, so a furnace using chips would be a good idea for heating schools and commercial buildings. Heating oil right now is $3.50 a gallon. That's about the lowest it's been all year. Once it gets cold, then it'll shoot up again. If you use 1000 gallons a year, you are talking serious money. The northeast is held hostage by the price of oil. Not only do we pay high taxes, but heating our homes has become prohibitive for many seniors and those on low or fixed incomes. Even if you are forced to buy wood, you can cut your heating bills by more than 3/4. There are plenty better things to do with an extra $300 or so in the bank every month of the year. Keeping the money local, as well as in this country is another thing I liked in the article. By $80 out of every $100 staying close to home, you know that is good for the local economy. In these tough times, it is good to be able to keep our neighbors employed. Well, we can now add wood chips to the list of ways to burn wood. Innovation and technology are great. Especially so when they rediscover the traditional ways of doing things.
My BIL has the largest wholesale greenhouse in NH. Multiple football field sized greenhouses in NH. The biggest raw material expense into this business outside of sheer BS&T is energy to keep those greenhouses warm. He has one of these woodchip boilers. He was one of the first businesses in NH to do this. The unit is so large it is it's own building, and required Federal permits and inspections for approval. The technology at the time was still new enough that even the people responsble for the inspections weren't sure what to look for. He gets free woodchips from local contractors looking to dispose of them, and he feeds a conveyor belt built into the floor of an 18 wheeler trailer which they feed with a front end loader. It heats their greenhouses at ~80'F 24X7. But it's work keeping the whole gig going. They'ld be out of business if it weren't for this huge cost savings as none of the oil dealers will talk "lock-in" pricing with big buyers anymore. They also tried coal and that wasn't working either.
