BIOMASS 60 INSTALL

Here are few pics of my boiler install, more to come.

Fed ex Freight delivered it to my garage, took two attempts as I refused delivery of the first one. They had beat it up pretty good.


I bolted some 4x4 skids under the pallet and dragged it around to my daylight basement entrance. The tractor could only lift the 1800 pound boiler about 6 inches. Didn't seem very stable. So I through a chain around and did did a little damage to the lawn.

 

Keep the pictures and descriptions coming! Finally something that I can understand.

 

Had to move a few pipes overhead so I would have clearance and not need a heat shield.

 

And then I framed a room for the boiler about 8x15. Sheetrocked the entire room with fire rated 5/8". Also installed a Class A chimney. Pretty basic install but the only place I could put it was on the exterior.

 

Mike, Don't stop there!!! Very interested as I may go with something like this and have a similar rise on the chimney. Is there any reason you decided to go through the eave instead of around it? what's the clearance from the pipe to the siding? Doesn't look like you have gutters up there. What do you have for storage? I know I could search the history on another site, but figure you wouldn't mind posting it here. Thanks.

 

I'll keep posting pics as I find them, trying to keep them in order.

The clearance for the pipe is two inches. I had just enough room to go through the eaves and maintain the 2 inches.

I have 2 500 gallon former underground propane tanks for storage. I ran the boiler without storage for a year. To minimize the boiler cycling I let the house cool off between burns which worked OK but didn't like the temp swings. Now that I have storage I would never go without it again. The convenience of being able to load the boiler whenever you want is worth it. And being able to maintain an even temp is great.

 

Some closeups of the boiler.

The fire tubes. The round piece is the bypass damper. In normal operation the flue gasses come up through the 2" tubes/


Access to the primary and secondary air settings. Not something you adjust once it is fine tune to your chimney and wood type/moisture


The primary air adjustment


The secondary air adhustment


The blower fan

 

The Blower Fan.
Does it feed both primary & secondary air , or just secondary air ?
Does the boiler also have a Draft Inducer fan ?

 

Well Seasoned you are entering the world of the SERIOUS WOOD BURNERS !!!

 

It feeds both. This pic shows the 'door' that the fan is mounted on. The blower fan is mounted on the other side. All the air for the boiler goes through the little red flapper in the center and then through either the primary or secondary inlets. There is also a rear mounted 'negative draft' fan that pulls air through the the same flapper.


When you open the door to load fire wood the front blower shuts off and the rear draft inducer stays on to prevent smoke from coming out the boiler.

 

Here is the existing boiler. In order to tie into the existing typical set up I had to make three changes.

The supply from the wood boiler is the black pipe on the top/ left I added the T in the supply header before the first circulator.


In order to create a primary loop I added the vertical pipe on the right. It connects the supply and return headers for the zone circs.


Finally I added this T for the return to the wood boiler.
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The supply and return pipes enter the wood boiler room on the right in this pic

 

I really like the idea of the constant operation of the separate draft inducer for keeping the smoke out of the room when loading.
What is the maximum length of wood that can be burnt?

 

The draft inducer is nice for reloading. But the downside is there is fan blades exposed to the flue gasses, so it is wear item that will need to be replaced eventually. The boiler will take a 30" stick but I cut everything to 24" to fit my woodsplitter.

 

Some of the wood boiler piping

 

Here is the rear draft fan. Interestingly the boiler will work fine with the front fan off but will not run well without the rear fan.

 

In case of a power outage during a full burn I installed a heat dump to keep the boiler from overheating. There is N/O zone valve that is closed when power is applied. When power goes out automatically opens. When the valve opens hot water will thermosiphon through the sections of finned copper on the ceiling.


The green and black valve is dump valve.


You can see here that all the heat dump piping is pitched a 1/4" per foot facilitate good flow. I don't think I would go through the trouble of putting in the pitch if I did it again. It would probably flow just fine if it was all plumb and level.

 

Neat thread. Great pics.