BIOMASS 60 INSTALL

I installed a fan on my Wood Gun gasification boiler that was made by same manufacturing company. I would not be without a hood/fan with the boiler in the house. Before I had it I had to wait until the fire was almost completely burned down in order to reload. Or place a fan in the window to suck the smoke out of the room when I had to reload with a hot fire going. Much better with the hood. I still try to time it so that I am reloading when the fire is almost gone. Just works well that way when you are loading dry Ash and Pine into the boiler.

 

Not the greatest video but you get the idea...

 

Mike, can you tell me please what the chimney diameter and the vent off the boiler?

 

The boiler has a 6" flue. And I have it connected to a 6" class A chimney (exterior)

 

Its a great video!

 

What a great thread. Thank you for all the great information.

 

I've had this Modine hanging in my garage since I built it -- didn't want to pay for the oil to heat the garage. But the wood boiler has been working great and I have plenty of wood, so I made the final connections and as of last month I've had a heated garage

I'm now heating a ~3500 square foot house + a 650 square feet of garage and keeping the 2100 square foot daylight basement in the mid 60's.

 

Saaaafrigginweeeet!

 

Mike - that system looks like the ticket, I have a couple of questions as i am thinking of doing something similar here. Did you consider a garn? and what advantages or disadvantages do you think the biomass brings to the table? I have HW baseboard heat, would I need to add radiant to the rooms as well to get use of this type of system? I am burning about 2000 gal oil each year now. Thanks Al

 

I'm no expert, but I think the Garns work better with heat emitters that can use lower temperatures. I have baseboard throughout my house and you need nice hot temps for them. They work great. My Gassification boiler, and Mike's for that matter, put out temps generally in the 170-190 range depending on your settings.

 

I had thought about the Garn but it would have been considerably more expensive. I wasn't crazy about having to use a heat exchanger since it is unpressurized. And since it won't fit in my basement I would have had the added costs of underground lines and outbuilding.

I decided that I wanted an indoor gasser so I could have it in my basement. To me it is the most efficient way to go (no standby or piping losses) With the piping scheme I used I can have 180+ water going to the baseboards 20 minutes after starting a fire. The rest goes to storage. I've found with standard baseboard designed for constant 180 supply temps that my house will stay warm with supply temps down to 125 and single digits outside. I do have one zone that will start to cool off though. But when I installed it originally I only put 24' of baseboard (the heat loss called for 35') because the room has a wood stove which I no longer use.

I picked the biomass for a few reasons. The price was right, and unlike many of the imports it was designed for the North American market and is supported by a well established distributor. It's made of boiler plate steel. It has a true 6" flue which saved me the cost of having to put in a 8" chimney. Lots of people (and salesmen) will tell you it's ok to reduce the flue to fit your chimney... But that would have been a code violation and I didn't want to play games by not getting it permitted.

It also seemed well designed with adjustable doors and roller locks so you can get a tight seal against the silicon door seals. It has well designed clean outs and access for the air adjustment. And in the end it is not overly complicated. The controller is the one proprietary part and if it broke I could easily duplicate its function with a aquastat and a relay or two...All it does is turn the fans and a pump on or off based on temp. Everything else can be fixed, patched or replaced locally if necessary.

The build and weld quality is top notch... Should have seen some of the various sales guy faces at the county fairs when I asked to see what their pressure vessel looked like under the sheet metal Wife thought I was crazy but the quality of the workmanship in hidden areas say's a lot.

Whatever you do if you are considering a gasser get enough wood cut split and stacked ASAP

 

I concur about the garn. I would only consider if my emmitters were low temp radiant. If you need hot water you have to heat up the whole thing before you get it. Other systems with storage seperate from boiler can pump out hot water even when the storage is cold.

 

Ok - cool. I wasn't sure if after awhile i would be unsatisfied and need to add radiant. glad to know it might will work well with my current hot water baseboard, I think i like the cost of the biomass as well

 

I wouldn't worry about putting in radiant... Even with the garn. You could start with the baseboard you have and worse case just T off the loop and add a flat panel radiator where the temps don't keep up.

 

Whats total cost on something like this? I've been wanting to do this for a while.

 

Yay!
Lotta variables. Most quality installs i would guess run $10-15k depending on what you are doing and how much if it yourself. I was $12.5. Theres more plumbing to it than just the boiler. What ideas do you have? Lets start with that.

 

Similar setup to what is posted here. 3000 sq ft and baseboard heating throughout and looking to add some radiant for when I redo the bathrooms. I have the space so thinking 600-1000 gal of storage just wondering how many fires a day I would have to light with each. Most of the work will be done by me. Thanks!!

 

I mean of all the installs I have seen and read this seems to be the most straight forward hooking directly into my non pressurized baseboards or am I wrong?

 

Research primary/secondary loops. There is a couple ways to tie in and use the current setup as backup. Try and do a heat loss calc to figure out btus/hr at design temp. Could use data from current boiler to get close, but this will be high. My oil burner would run almost nonstop on the coldest days so i used its 95kbtu/hr to work off of. 1000gals storage would be minimum unless house is really well insulated. I have a vedolux37 and need to run three loads per day wen temps go below 10*, 2500sqft 2x6 construction on top of mountain. It has a small firebox, figure 60-70 pounds per load. Half of the winter i load twice per day. Summer i get almost a week using just DHW. All baseboard water i have seen is pressurized and its a great match for storage made from decommissioned propane tanks. Figure to be able to use supply temps down to 140* mostly. Expansion tanks will run $500e per 500gals of storage. I was burning over 1000 gallons of oil per year before the boiler. Last year was six cords winter plus one more for summer DHW.