BIOMASS 60 INSTALL

It was getting pretty cold so that's how I pretty much left things for the first year -- no storage


Here is the schematic I mostly followed. Allows you to connect a wood boiler in parallel to a typical existing setup without major plumbing changes.

 

And the pay off


You load the wood in the upper chamber.



And all the smoke goes through the nozzle into the lower chamber. When it passes through the nozzle the smoke is reignited, burning at temps up to 2100 degrees.



End result is no visible smoke out the chimney and flue temps in the 300-350 range.

 

In all it took me 6 months from the time I ordered the boiler to first fire. I probably could have done it all in a week or so but I only worked on it an hour or two when I had a little free time. I also scoured CL, ebay and every small internet store front to find deals on all the components that I needed so I was often waiting on a small part before I could move forward.

 

The second flue in the pics is for my oil burner. I have a third flue for a wood stove in my family room which I used to burn 24/7. But the mess and temp extremes in the house got old.

The wood boiler has been everything I had hoped for... not many things seem to be as good as advertised, but a wood gasser with storage is hard to beat. I can load it when convenient and it keeps the house an even 72 throughout. And it is very efficient. I burn mostly pine with some birch, soft maple and the odd piece of oak. 75% is 'pine' -- hemlock, spruce, fir etc. Almost all of which is dropped off free by a tree guy. On average one cord of wood is off setting 150 gallons of oil. Hard to say exactly because I keep the house a lot warmer now.

 

i think its about a cord = about 175 gallons of oil with a gasser. i agree that it is hard to say since we allow the thermostat to be higher now. i figured its almost $20 worth of oil every time i fill the firebox!

 

If I was using only hardwood I'd probably be right at 175 gallons per cord. Every time that I fill up the boiler with oak I'm amazed at how much more heat I get compared to pine.

 

very true. mostly oak, ash, and black birch here. im sorry.

 

I have plenty of hardwood I could cut. But it's just easier time wise at this point to burn the junkwood that I get dropped off for free.

 

After burning with it for about a year the nozzle began to look a little worn. It's considered a wear item, but it was wearing faster then I liked... This is what it looked like after about 10 cord



I cleaned it off and bout some cheap fire bricks to make an overlay.



Also ordered a couple spare nozzles for future use.



The bricks have held up pretty well.
This pic was at about 7-8 cord. I've burned another cord since then and the erosion has been getting worse on the overlay -- will need to replace them soon, but cheaper then replacing the whole nozzle; $6-7 vs $75.

 

Nice work Mike. Cool thread. Happy burning.

 

What every wood boiler should have:



1000 gallons of water storage -- I went the first year without storage; never would go without again.

 

I had to make a few changes to the piping

 

I decided to put the tanks at the far end of the house to keep the floor as open as possible. Ended up with about 60' feet of piping each way -- used 1.5" pipe to keep the friction losses as low as possible.

 

The 'Brain' of the system. It uses a few off the shelf components -- relays, zone valve, aquastat and a circulator etc. It 'decides' how and where to get heat from and where to send it based on the temps of the boiler, storage and house.

For the end user you simply put wood in the boiler, light it and hit a start button.

Once you hit start the system then will either send hot water from the wood boiler to the house primary loop or to storage. Or both at the same time -- the house takes what it needs and the excess goes to storage. Once the wood fire is out the house zones will take water directly from storage. If the fire is out and storage fall below a set temp (110 works for me) then the oil boiler will automatically come on and heat the house. Once the oil boiler comes on the enitre wood boiler/storage side of the system is bypassed.

 

Nice set up Mike. Are they on line yet? What do you plan to insulate them with?

 

Yeah the tanks have been online about a year now. Insulated them with a combination of fiberglass and cellulose insulation.

 

Nice. I have 400 gallons. I would like to have two more 400 gallon tanks, or 3 - 220 gallon tanks to add to my system. Maybe in the future.

 

Fabulous thread.
I've been looking and this is very useful.
Do you get much smoke?
This is the first unit I've seen that apparently has both forced and induced fans. I worked on construction of a couple of power plants and they called them balanced draft. Probably not the same.

 

You can't open the door when the fire is roaring without getting some smoke. But once the fire has burned down some you can open the door and reload without smoke. (while the fire is burning)

Part of the problem with opening the door while the fire is roaring is that the front fan does kick off until the door is opened about 30 degrees. So the front fan is pressurizing the fire box causing smoke to come out until the door is open far enough. I have thought about adding a manual switch to turn off the front fan to see if it makes a difference but haven't felt the need yet. With storage loading times become much more flexible so you can operate the boiler without any smoke in the basement.


When I first had the boiler I tried running with only one fan at a time. Interestingly once the fire is going only the rear fan is needed to maintain gasification. But if the rear fan is off it will not gasify very well and there is a ton of smoke when reloading.

I'll see if I can make a video of a 'hot' reload.