i had the option to put the boiler outside or in the barn 120' away from house or rearrange the basement a bit to accommodate it there. GOALS: get off the oil! went through 1000 gallons the first 12 months living in new house. have a system easy to operate with simple controls that I could diagnose and repair myself automatically turn over to oil backup reload no more than twice a day for most of the coldest days of winter. easy to clean. EXTRAS: not have a fire going full time DHW in summer keep wood mess out of house use local boiler dealer serious contenders were portage and main, woodgun and varms. easy to diagnose and repair ruled out higher end models with computers or even digital displays. i ruled out the P&M because where i would have to store my wood on property would be behind barn. i would want outdoor unit next to wood supply so i might as well put the unit in the barn. P&M are expensive but the best OWB i have seen. Vedolux pros: controls: fan timer, stack temp probe to shutoff fan at end of burn, overheat probe to shutoff fan. all off the shelf electronics behind the panel. easy peasy. one full load yields half millions BTUs. not constant fire. cost effective. insulated well. cons: NEEDS storage. (those that have run both ways look at this as a pro...) requires pricey loading unit. small firebox WG pros: easy controls. more industrial. no need to relight fires. big firebox. cons: big, heavy, expensive. gives off a good deal of heat. harder to do DHW in summer without storage. I was able to get a deal on a show model vedo37 with loading unit so I went with it in the barn. if i was set on putting the boiler in the house i probably would have went for the WG. it would give off heat to the living space and save room not needing storage. wouldn't bother with DHW in summer then. IMO a WG with storage omits the whole selling point of the WG and you would be better off with a different boiler. vedo with storage ended up pricing the same as a WG. some specs: 2x 500gallon used propane tanks. 120' run to barn with 1-1/4" oxygen barrier pex. 6" all around insulation there with 1-2" in boiler room and 5-6" on tanks. lk810 loading unit and bumble bee circulator to house. 6" class A chimney x-300 temp monitor i don't know what it is like to heat with wood if you dont have storage, but storage is a breeze to work with. put wood in, light, walk away. i know that once the bottom of my tanks is up to 140* then it takes one more load of wood (3.2? cubic feet to reach full charge). stratification is awesome. i sized the storage such that in the cold of winter if high of the day is in the teens then i should need two loads per day. i park truck in barn after work and pull it out in the morning so this should only add 5-10 minutes to my routine. it is really that quick and easy. a reload before bed should be needed if in the single digits. my only complaint is that i wish that the firebox and door were 50% or so bigger. payback period should be 3.5 years. i hoped to use about 6 cord a year including 1 for summer DHW. bitter 2013/14 used 6 cords for just the winter (woulda been over 1200 gallons of oil, plus we were warmer!). days below 10* or 15* with a breeze required a third load before bed. house is 2400 square feet not including basement, 2x6 construction with lots of windows and catherdral ceilings throughout, on top of mountain getting hit with cold air blowing across the delaware valley all winter. pics to follow...
coming home and cleaning tanks. these are decomissioned 500 gallon propane tanks. there was some rust scale that needed to be vacuumed out.
chimney set. boiler placed. plumbed. top of tank plumbing with wye strainer, air eliminator, and valve before turning to PEX. those diffusers go into the tops of the tanks so water doesnt shoot straight down through the tanks. 1/2" line will come off of bottom of air eliminator and run to expansion tanks in boiler room.
spay foamed. somewhere i have pics of foam in trench. expansion tanks hooked up. new lights put up in boiler room.
first fire! 0766 is secondary chamber after flame goes down through nozzle and into the channel. the flame then comes forward after getting hit with more air, wraps around to the back, and goes up through the heat exchanger tubes. its will be over 2000* in the channel and ~400* before going into the chimney. 1335 is the primary burn chamber where wood is load. flame and gasses get sucked down into the nozzle in the center. pic is nearing the end of the burn. then theres the pump curve for my system. the pump that cycles water from storage to house is variable speed and is set to maintain a return temp back to storage of 130*. where the system curve crosses the four speed curves is what my flow and gpm actually is, or very close to it. after it clears the lines, the pump generally runs on speed 1.
this is a screenshot of what i see on my laptop from the x-300 temp monitor. stratification is fantastic with these tall tanks!
what else? grass re-grew in the backyard. kept house 10* warmer last year so the wife is happy. and we all know about keeping SWMBO happy. this whole project was a year of researching and designing before i even bought anything and it is paying off nicely. i budgeted $11.5k and i think i came close to $12.5k when all was said and done. this included renting backhoe, building materials, spray foam, and lots of fittings. lighting a new fire each time you load is no big deal at all with induction fan. each load of hardwood puts out almost half a million btus to storage. black birch is my favorite wood to burn. dries fast and lots of btus, it just doesnt coal up which idc about since i am sending all heat to storage tanks anyway. and OH BOY you should see it with a load of BL!
You can knock me over with a feather. What an awesome installation, very professionally done! And to capture the elusive BLUE flame with your camera - remarkable. For the rest of my friends here on Hoarders, if you want an efficient and clean wood burning system in the house and environmentally, book time to go and see this system next winter and you will quickly become believers in Gasification and heat Storage!
Do you have a plumbing diagram you could share? How does the "automatically turn over to oil backup" work? (yeah, older thread and all that) Thanks!
I will have to dig for a plumbing diagram. Aint much too it. Wants to keep things simple and easy. Basically there is connections at top and bottom of tanks going to and from boiler. And a second set of connections goes to and from house and ties in to house loop with close tees. Yeah, didnt get around to the automatic thing yet... So the temperature controler has three switches that are activated by set point temps that can be chosen for differnt temp sensors on the storage tanks. I will use one to control a relay to turn the oil burner on and off. Supply temp falls to 130*, oil burner kicks on. Right now it has to be plugged in manually.
