Are the newer style gasification boilers less troublesome?

Don't you have a conventional? What model is it again?

 

No. Mine is a gasification boiler. Portage and Main Optimizer 350? Forget the number but it was the smallest one when I bought it 11 years ago. Load it and forget it

 

That was a brand I heard good things about, I also heard they went out of business

 

Still around...owned by Polar now though I think...
Portage & Main Outdoor Boilers - Ultimizer wood, coal models, auto-feed coal/pellet burners, automated wood chip burning systems , EPA approved gasification boilers

 

Mine has been very good to me. Just checked them out online. Web page is still active

 

Just went online and checked. Mine is the 250

 

The P&M dealer around here used to have a big display at the county fair every year. This is logging country and that means chipping also. A couple of years he brought a small chip silo with conveyors and augers that fed one of the P&M boilers.
Pretty cool idea, at the time you could buy a tractor trailer load for about $500.

 

Maintenance is probably the incorrect word for most folks. I've been doing lukem method of loading ( working awesome BTW ), that requires you to move the coals from one side to another, throw a split over the nozzle, and stack your wood in the boiler. I've never run a conventional, but my guess is you can just throw the wood in and be done. That's the 5 minutes of time I was referring to.

What would you consider checking the lower refractory everyday and shaking the turbulators ?

 

Other way around. As I understand it from one of their dealers P&M, bought out Polar.

 

The other thing nobody talks about with conventional boilers vs gassers is ash handling. Conventional boilers generate a lot of ash you have to shovel out. My gasser generates very little...just need to rake/clean out the secondary burn chamber once a month (or less). I fill a ash/coal bucket once a month.

 

Just getting pros and cons, I’ve shoveled plenty of ashes with the aqua therm when I was growing up, along with the 20 chords of wood I cut with my 026 dad bought me new at 14.

 

I read Lukems post about loading the stove as well but when I tried to move the coals from one side of the firebox to the other a lot of them fell through the nozzle which I thought probably wasn’t a good thing. So what am I missing/ doing wrong? Thanks guys.

 

First thing you do is expose the nozzle, then put a fresh split right over the top of it to keep things from falling through. Rake the coals from the left to the right, place a fresh split on the left, rake all the coals from right to left, place another fresh split, level everything out and load the rest.

Raking stuff left to right keeps the ashes from building up, and a fresh split on the left and right helps keep creosote from building up in the corners (in my experience).

 

I don't have to do any of that. Honestly, I just toss the wood in and forget it. I rake coals maybe once a week just to burn them down. I rake ashes out of the lower refractory maybe once every 10 days or so but have gone over 2 weeks. I have no turbulators to shake.

 

Thank you Lukem. I never said I was the sharpest tool in the shed!

 

Don't feel bad. I've yet to master that too.

My typical routine is. Move as many coals away from the nozzle as I can ( some will fall into the nozzle ), throw a split over the nozzle. Open the bottom door, take the plug out and make sure I haven't plugged the nozzle up too bad. If it's plugged, clean out the lower refractory. Then follow lukem's loading method from there. I burn a ton of ash so I end up with lots of coals. When it was cold during Christmas I was burning oak and I noticed it doesn't coal like ash does.

If I'm in a hurry, I'll just take my poker and move the ashes around on the sides and not mess with raking them away from the nozzle. This seems to work well also. For me at least, stacking my wood like a triangle seems to have helped out immensely with my bridging issues. The gotcha is, I don't think it does as good of a job getting the fine ash down the nozzle though.

 

I don't. I thought about it, but I would need a fairly large one to keep the boiler PLC, both boiler pumps, the indoor CP, indoor pumps, etc all powered for any meaningful amount of time. Juice wasn't worth the squeeze.

 

Usually too clapped out to bother with where I work.