I have never seen these before. Stumbled across a listing for a conversion on CL. Newport Laars Oil/Wood Pellet Furnace Conversion Interesting conversion, I guess. If it works. Where does the ash end up?
First of all, that's a boiler. I wonder about the heat output and how it's calculated....seems a bit small for houses in a cooler climate. And given the cost of oil, its simply cheaper right now to burn oil.......
Yes Also it seems to take a lot of pellets to heat a forced hot water system. I have a residential PB105 that I clean once a year but it consumes about 10 tons per year of pellets. Also from my experience the Harman pellet boiler is the very best and very well designed to burn pellets and heat water with it's enormous heat exchangers and very large hopper but never seem to have caught on and there is not many around. Converting something that is not totally designed to burn wood pellets may not be as easy to clean and maintain or be as efficient extracting the pellet heat.
Was looking at pellet boiler before getting the P61. Would have loved it but short basement and no place to put a bulk feeder kind of shot that down. State would have paid for 1/3 of price (assuming "approved", then got the paperwork correct), but I just couldn't figure a way to do it with my house.
A pellet boiler also heats DHW too which is nice but in our area the electric rates are fairly low and the ECO Smart instant hot water panel is inexpensive. So I just put in a 125 amp sub panel next to the Super-Stor so an EcoSmart 18 would be easy to pop in. Luckily the tap water mineral content is very low. See my neighbor's install. ECO Smart ECO-18 Instant & Efficient Electric Hot Water System Installation pics-Good & Efficient??? | Firewood Hoarders Club Adding an array of solar panels could then give free hot water. See New panel pic below:
A friend of mine has a buddy with a boiler conversion in NH. From what he states its a pellet hog and a tight 1600 sqft ranch house. used almost 10 tons last season and almost 8 the season before. He's used 6 so far this season. Its also doing all his hot water IIRC. His previous worst season with oil was 875 gallons. Approx 11.6 tons using the 1.5 gallons per bag rate(not sure how accurate that is??).. Not sure that worked in his favor with the price of oil this season. $249/ton compared to $1.80 a gallon.......... Tough for me to by in as I haven't used 5 tons even last season with a bigger shack thats kind of loose compared to his. Granted my climate is milder, But its not 5 tons worth milder. Nor would I expect to use that much tonnage to heat the hot water. Anyway, Here a couple a pics of his install!!
Seems many have dumped their pellet furnace's....... Sad they didn't catch on, Specially the ones that can be sistered to an existing oil/gas/propane unit.
