Shutting down the central heating

You may also want to check whether or not class A is necessary inside an existing chimney, I was only required to insulate mine. Oblong piping may be another option if making room is an issue. And a suggestion on having another stove pipe company bid on the work with the situation you have might help.

 

Ive only got the wood stove for now we do have some space heaters for the really cold nights and if needed it wouldnt take much to hook the electric baseboard up again but as soon as I get a heat pump put in those are gone forever.

 

After your comment, I did some searching ,keyboards and other devices just don't have a cents symbol.
I found a Shortcut technique that works on my laptop, It works on Desktops and most Laptops running MS Windows. You press Alt and, while holding it, type a code (0162) on Number Pad while it's turned on.
¢ ¢
I didn't find a way to do it on my android phone or tablet.

 

@HDRock man it must have bothered you more than me. It just seems like you don't see it used anymore anywhere.

 

Can't run the oil burner on the same chimney as the stove? It's allowed in Maine, Mass too I think?

More insurance companies I've come across won't do wood heat as a primary heat source. I know I had to list my boiler as primary and woodstove is more or less considered a "fireplace".
Their thinking is that pipes could freeze I would guess?

 

My insurance co had a questionnaire I had to fill out on the stove install. One of the questions was if I had a primary heat source, they did not consider the woodstove a primary on the questionnaire. The stove vendor did the install and they ran two separate flues in my only chimney, the BI passed it and the ins co was ok with it. I have a paper trail just in case

 

For the situation at hand, one shouldn't confuse putting two appliances in one chimney and putting two appliances in one flue. The former can be done, the latter can not. I remember seeing this photo when I got my home inspection which caused me to think a bit.

While the clay flue tile need to be separated by brick, i think (and do your own research first) that two stainless liners can be run side by side in the same chimney. That said, there are options if the space is confined. The first would be to use non-conventionally shaped stainless flue liner as seen in the pics below.


Another option if the chimney has a clay liner is to break the liner out prior to inserting the two round stainless flue liners. I'm sure there are other options but these are the two I know of..

 

Lots of good information here, thanks for taking the time to share. In VT you can vent an oil boiler and a wood stove in the same chimney, without separate flues. At least that's what a guy from the local oil co. told me last week when I was discussing options. No codes enforcement/building inspectors in our town. From the research I've done that can lead to some dangerous situations though, and we have four young kids in the house I need to keep safe. I don't want to have a repeat of the chimney fire the former owners experienced with this very one.

My ideal setup would be gassifier boiler in the barn hooked up to the central heating (keeping the wood stoves for the radiant heat too - love that), but that would take a lot of two cents from you guys to add up to that kind of money.

 

I know you mentioned that two appliances could run in a single flue with out individual flues for each. That is definitely a recipe for disaster. Please don't think of entertaining that idea. With all the suggestions you rec'd you should be able to find a safe solution.

 

Must have not worded my other post well. I definitely would not run the oil boiler and a wood stove off the same flue. I was very surprised when a guy from the local oil co., who installs DV propane and therefore should have a basic grounding in this kind of thing, suggested I do so. Just because VT allows it doesn't mean it's a good idea.

 

Have you considered going to a gasification Boiler?
In the 70s we heated both our DHW and house with an oil boiler at roughly 1,500 gallons per year! Furnace oil at that time was $0.28 cents per gallon but the oil crisis of the early 70's sent the price skyrocketing to $0.60 cents per gallon.
Our oil boiler.


Our first wood boiler was a Furnace Works pictured below and I did just about everything possible backwards and wrong with the installation with regards to efficiency. Biggest mistake with regards to efficiency was to plumb the wood in series with the oil for DHW. This meant keeping 300 lbs of cast iron of the oil boiler at 180 degrees for that DHW. Experimenting further down the road proved that keeping that cast-iron warm required 300,000 BTUs of heat per day - a lot of heat going up the chimney! With a tank-less coil installed for DHW and the boiler plumbed in parallel, efficiency was greatly improved but this still was a very inefficient wood burner at 22 cords in the first year year! Our two daughters nicknamed this boiler the "PIG"!


Creosote and high wood consumption in my mind required a change. Our second boiler pictured below was a cast -iron sectional down-drafting triple pass and small in output by wood boiler standards at 75,000 BTUs per hour. It was a creosote producing monster that reduced yearly wood consumption to 14/16 cords per year. The reason a boiler like this produces large amounts of creosote inside itself and in the chimney is that unlike a conventional woodstove where the firebox walls are nice warm steel, the firebox walls of the boiler are surrounded by water, creating a low temperature fire which is very inefficient, resulting in unburned resins and tars that stick to the inside of the boiler and flue passages but burn very hot when they ignite in the form of a chimney fire!
The next phase in the evolution of our wood boiler experiment was to add 1,260 gallons of storage. The theory for the storage was to make the boiler work harder to reduce the creosote build up in the boiler and chimney. In the late 70's, early 80's the principal for boiler return water protection was not really understood or at least I did not understand it. Return water protection keeps the water in the boiler ideally at 140 degrees or higher lessening the build up of creosote. With storage added to our system return water to the boiler could be as low as 90 degrees making the creosote problem even worse. A flue brush pushed through the chimney would become a ball of tar impossible to clean so the only way to keep the chimney clean was self started weekly chimney fires. Scary!
The big and unexpected advantage from heat storage was a big drop in wood consumption from 14/16 cords per year down to 10 cords per year and these are the real 128 cubic feet cords.



In 1982 I discovered wood gasification in the form of a Jetstream Boiler! True wood burning happiness with average yearly consumption of 4 1/2 cords over the last 30+ years.


Never need to clean the chimney. This picture was taken after burning 2 1/2 cords of wood.

This is my favorite picture. At 120,00 BTUs, not even a hint of smoke!
If you are at all interested I would be happy to do another post giving a cross section of various wood gasification systems, one of which is certified for a horizontal flue and not requiring a conventional chimney.
Hope you don't feel like I've hit you with a 2 x 4.

Allan

PDF below from the Jetsteam manual on how gasification and storage work in together.

 

Great effort Camp! Nice looking post, very informative and well said.
Your glasses in the roof pic, they look 'foggy'

 

It was minus 5 C when the picture was taken so just a hint of moisture in the flue gases !
But not a recommended way to smoke test!

 

I knew there was a reason for that CRISIS. All I could remember is that someone said we were running out of oil ! They were right - THE CHEAP STUFF!

 

Hi Allan!

I can take a hit or two from something solid to the head - sometimes helps to bring things into focus. Thank you very much for letting me and others benefit from your years of experience, and I'd be very glad to see another post profiling various wood gasifiers. I've been trying to learn as much as I can about them, because I'd like to get one put in once we can afford it. We have a perfect spot for it in our attached barn just waiting for it!

I've read elsewhere that you're typically talking about 10-12 thousand to purchase and install. Is that in the ballpark do you think? We have an existing chimney that would need to be relined. I would need to hire someone to do the work, as I know squat about everything one needs to know to do the install myself. Still years out on the purchase, but it's good to have a goal.

Have enjoyed your photos from your living room of sunrises and sunsets. You live in a beautiful part of the world. A gal I work with will just be getting back from two weeks in Washington state and BC, and from what I've seen of her pics so far, she's having a ball with her family.
Funny where these threads can end up going. I especially enjoyed the give and take about the cents sign.

Sean

 

Assuming I'm going to have the typical rookie's first year experience, with less than perfect wood and learning how to burn two new stoves. Looks like you made a nice choice with the Drolet - 65,000 BTU is sweet! I'm keeping my fingers crossed for us and for a milder winter!

 

The most important consideration with any gasification system is that they like dry wood - 15% to 20 %. You lose efficiency when the moisture gets higher. The Cadillac of the wood gasification boiler is the Garn; simplistic in design, operation, construction, efficient in operation, well made in America with a production history back to 1983, and with good parts support for even their early models. The U tube video is of the larger Garn but the principal is the same for all models.



The PDF is for the Garn Junior.

The Garn Junior would be comparable in price to most Gasifier/storage tank combinations using used propane tanks; two 500 gallon or one 1,000 gallon tank for heat storage. With the boiler in the barn setup, one of the big costs often overlooked is the moisture resistant insulated underground Pex to the house.

The other end but more affordable would be a smaller Eko boiler with storage in the basement.

http://www.newhorizonstore.com/Products/88-eko-gasification-boiler.aspx

Storage can be used propane tanks.

http://www.americansolartechnics.com/

This is another type of storage, called soft storage and can come complete with heat exchanger coils in place; an important consideration if you have to hire someone. Between the boiler manual and Tom, the owner of this company, you would have complete instructions for a installer to follow.
Boilers with separate storage tank setups: the boiler can be in the barn and storage can be in the basement in the house. For convenience of firing in this setup, the boiler should be sized so that one charge of wood can heat the storage from 140/150 degrees to 195 degrees on one charge of wood.

In the Jetstream manual, there are complete plans for building your own soft tank but use the upgraded liner that Tom sells.

http://www.smokelessheat.com/
This is another good line of boilers.

Lambda controlled boilers think for themselves as they adjust primary and secondary air as the boiler heats up and cools down for maximum combustion efficiency. IMO if you are going to spend the money for a Lambda controlled boiler, your money would be better spent on the Garn Junior.

I'm starting to get a little punchy so will quit for the night and will add some more Sunday.