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IWB burn time??

Started by kramer56, June 16, 2013, 09:41:12 AM

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kramer56

I am building new house this summer and am up in the air about iwb vs owb. We have decided on radiant floor heating and we have basically unlimited wood supply on our land and have thought I decided on owb, but I have talked about installing a boiler inside the garage instead the very pricey owb. The thing I need to consider is the burn time during work days. I know the owb have a longer burn time. Can anyone share some burning times for their indoor gasser boiler???
Please and thank you.

beenthere

Which indoor gasser boiler are you thinking about, or referring to ??

I have been running an indoor wood "boiler" since '83 and have had no problem with it heating the house as the primary heat (gas boiler backup when gone for more than 24 hours). It has a 9 gallon water jacket and maintains 2800 sq ft (1400 each of two levels). Easily kept up between work hours of 6 am - 5:30 pm. Don't think I'd have found the time to clean and maintain a "gasser" and still worked. ;)

Have been told that cannot buy a similar unit for indoors, as it requires steam certification now (rediculous because it is no different system than an ordinary domestic hot water heater except for lower psi relief valve on the boiler).


 
south central Wisconsin
It may be that my sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others

leonz

Quote from: kramer56 on June 16, 2013, 09:41:12 AM
I am building new house this summer and am up in the air about iwb vs owb. We have decided on radiant floor heating and we have basically unlimited wood supply on our land and have thought I decided on owb, but I have talked about installing a boiler inside the garage instead the very pricey owb. The thing I need to consider is the burn time during work days. I know the owb have a longer burn time. Can anyone share some burning times for their indoor gasser boiler???
Please and thank you.



An outdoor boiler will waste heat energy in the smoke because it shuts down and smokes. A smaller wood and coal boiler like the Harmon SF 360 with 42 gallons of water will burn hot and clean because it burns more efficiently with both wood and coal.

You can always add 490 gallons of water for storage by purchasing an insulated pressure tested tank from New Horizons at the same time and have 532 gallons of hot water for heating and the boiler will burn more efficiently because it will be burning hot to heat the 532 gallons of water.



The idea is to have a continuous burn to maintain the boiler at high efficiency.

You could purchase and install a Garn boiler in your garage and burn a very small amount of wood to heat your home and garage too but it will depend entirely on your budget.

IN either case the use of storage with a Garn or a Harmon with a New Horizons storage tank reduces your dependency on fossil fuels.


In my fathers example he has a Harmon wood pellet stoker and he has been averaging about $1,000 or less on propane on his new home annualy as he uses his waste heat in a coil to heat his domestic hot water in a buderous boiler and DHW tank and coil.


 

In my case;

My problem is an old house/one room school house that is over 100 years old and hard to heat because it has baseboard heat BOO HISS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have a locally built 32 year old wood and coal boiler filled half filled with firebrick to create both thermal mass and a heat sink at the same time by heating up a mass of full firebrick that is a 12 by 12 by 36 mass which rests on a 12 by 12 inch piece of channel iron which rests on the angle irons that are welded to the sides of the boiler to hold the coal grate frame in place.


It has been a good addition for me for the last three plus years because it keeps  the firebox hot and I have little to no smoke. I wish i had done it thirty years ago.


I plan on replacing it with a a Harmon SF360 because it has 42 gallons of water but I will be puttling the channel iron and fire brick in the new boiler for the same reason.

As far as heating your home you can install steam radiators/converted for hot water heat much more cost efficetively than radiant floor heat.

As long as you place the radiators on the interior walls you will have much less heat
loss.

You will spend much less money on a Harmon SF360 and salvaged and cleaned converted radiators for your new home which are certified for low pressure steam
or hort water use. You can also add a radiator to the garage  too and only open it when you want to heat the garage. 

ideally you can simply throw the cordwood in the garage by the Harmon and  let it dry and have a supply of wood at arms length at all times and it will not take long to have hot water for heating and you can always add hot water storage later. 8) 

kramer56

My house will have about r24 or more of insulation in the walls and r60 in the ceilings. My basement will be ICF 6" walls and using baseboard sections down there. the main floor is 1650 sq ft and basement the same. I will burning this unit all year even in summer for DHW as well. I kinda like the idea of the boiler inside the garage now but the burn time is the only catch I have by not knowing what they can get. Sure I can add a huge storage tank but then Im using more wood all the time than really need to due to heating 500 gallons extra water right? I guess will need to see some of the set ups people have and see how much space things are taking up. Links and pics are very helpful too

beenthere

All the planning will be fine, but in the end it will depend a whole lot on the wood you make, your schedule of drying the wood, the species, the size of the pieces, the moisture content, your time, etc., etc., 
south central Wisconsin
It may be that my sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others

kramer56

Yes i understand all that. I am looking for the projected manufacture times using dry hardwoods (hard maple, soft maple, cherry, elm, ironwood, beech,ash, etc. 

leonz

Quote from: kramer56 on June 16, 2013, 02:51:15 PM
My house will have about r24 or more of insulation in the walls and r60 in the ceilings. My basement will be ICF 6" walls and using baseboard sections down there. the main floor is 1650 sq ft and basement the same. I will burning this unit all year even in summer for DHW as well. I kinda like the idea of the boiler inside the garage now but the burn time is the only catch I have by not knowing what they can get. Sure I can add a huge storage tank but then Im using more wood all the time than really need to due to heating 500 gallons extra water right? I guess will need to see some of the set ups people have and see how much space things are taking up. Links and pics are very helpful too


With all due respect I would like you to read more
about the laws of thermal dynamics B4 you make a
huge mistake.

By reading about the laws of thermal dynamics and as
result conservation in thermal dynamics you will
understand more readiliy what occurs and what is needed
to maintain the same thermal mass with less energy/wood/coal/wood pellets.

Once you get that 500 gallons up to a temperature of 160-170
degrees and let say it drops 20 degrees down to 150 degrees
it will take very little heat energy to bring it back up those
20 degrees to 170 degrees Fahrenheit






There is no reason you cannot put a pellet burner in
the garage as long as you purchase the $15 per foot pex pipe.



As it is now my father uses so little fuel with his pellet
burning stove that on a bad day he burns a 40 pound bag
of wood pellets with his super insulated house which has no need
for heat in the basement anyway because of the precast
foundation and insulation in the basement walls and basement
ceiling as well.

He has been burning 2 pallets of pellets a year to heat his
home so..................


No you will not be burning more wood in fact you
will be burning less becuase you are batch burning
and losing much, much less heat energy from smoke/idling.

You can install a "Harmon made" firebox reducer to enable you
to burn wood during the summer months heating the same tank of
water for thermal mass too.

The other thing is burning a mix of of coal and wood burning in Harmon
will last you all day too.

kramer56

I just think by reading that if i set it up right it will cost less than an OWB, and burn less wood, might I be right on this?

beenthere

QuoteI am looking for the projected manufacture times using dry hardwoods

kramer56
Good luck with that.
I'd think there are still too many variables to predict a "time" with any kind of accuracy.
During EPA evaluations at third party tests they are likely conducted with very exacting specimens of wood sticks of precise size, moisture content, a single wood etc. to control all or as many of the variables as possible. Gives some answers for the EPA to pass a stove, but I think you will find the tests are vastly different from reality of loading a stove with wood to burn all day. Extrapolating from the tests would be very difficult.

I could very well be wrong, and that such time informations are lying around, but wish you well finding it.
south central Wisconsin
It may be that my sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others

WmFritz

Welcome to the Forestry Forum and congratulations on your new home.

Burn times will vary from home to home due to different heat losses and also boiler setups. Most of the indoor gasification boiler manufacturers recommend some storage, although you can run your boiler without it. As Leonz said, a continuous burn is more efficient. You will use less wood with storage. Your chimney will also stay cleaner.

Think of a water storage tank as a battery. After the boiler satisfies the thermostats call for heat, the excess energy is sent to storage. Once the firebox charge has burned down to coals, the storage tank takes over the heat load for a while. The beauty of radiant heat is the lower temperatures, typically 100°- 130°,  work very well with storage. And 500 gallons is not a large tank. More of a minimum size. You will also do very well with storage for heating your DHW in the summer. Even with a 500 gallon tank, you may only need one fire every 4-7 days, depending on your household. No stove sitting there idling every day.

Getting back to your question though. I can give you a pretty much worst case scenario. My son decided he wanted to rent a house from us last Fall. It's 1500 sq. ft ranch with a full basement. It is poorly insulated with aluminium sash windows surrounded by open farm fields near the Saginaw Bay. I told him the heating bill would break him. With the amount of slabs and scrap I had from my mill,  we decided to heat it with an IWB.

I went with an EKO 25 which is rated at 85,000 btu's plumbed into a w/a hx in the forced air furnace. No storage...  yet. We will have some next winter, along with some underfloor radiant tubing. On the coldest days, he needed to fill the firebox three times a day. The firebox is fairly small on the 25 and tried to steer him toward the driest Ash but, I would find all kinds of junk in his wood pile including basswood and wet oak.  He kept the tstat at 74° and the blower on the f/a furnace ran a lot due to the heat loss. The house was warm (too warm for me), the garage was now heated from the boiler and the natural gas bill dropped to almost nothing with only the DHW tank using gas. 500 gallons of storage would get him to 12 hours between loading and 1000 would get him to one burn a day. Some radiant tubing under the floor would even out the temperature swings too.

It's not much help in you case without a heat loss calculation to compare to. I will say I'm very happy with the decision we made on our IWB. We just need to add some storage to make it even more efficient.

~Bill

2012 Homebuilt Bandmill
1959 Detroit built Ferguson TO35

leonz

Thank you william and been there,

A heat loss calculation would be at the top of the list;

About fire wood and testing, I remember an
article in the Northern Logger written many years
ago about one fellow that sells firewood and one of
his clients was the vermont stove works.

The pisser of the whole thing was he has a steam
kiln to dry the firewood they would test burn in thier
stoves so it takes a lot of work to manage testing and
to do it right.

If he could afford a Garn and install it in his garage he would
be very well ahead of the game for sure as they use even less wood.
The owner testimonials they have at their home page are very convincing
just as the design of the Garn is as well.  8)

WmFritz

From what I remember reading about the Garns, I think the smallest model has 1500 gallons of storage built in. Very simple design and very efficient.
~Bill

2012 Homebuilt Bandmill
1959 Detroit built Ferguson TO35

kramer56

So I take it the Garns is very expensive?  I am not opposed to a bigger storage tank either. Just to give some numbers from around my area,  a Central boiler eclassic 1450 will run me about $10000 or so without that nice expensive thermopex, which is about $13/ft.  That is just for the boiler nothing else. Now I know you guys out there have allot less in your IWB and heating more efficient inside away from the cold days. Our cold up is here in NY can be -30F and that might be for weeks or more. So I am thinking pull in garage get out of truck walk over fill stove that is heating my garage too then go in start dinner lol. That would avoid getting out of warm truck then go right into cold to load OWB correct?  My heat loss calculation is going to very low according to our engineer. I might do ICF to the roof. I just need to decide if it the right application for me to do now so I can add 10ft to my garage lenth before we build it. Would I need a plate exchanger from storage tank in garage to heat the pressurized system inside the house or how would i do that to get the heat there?

leonz

Quote from: kramer56 on June 17, 2013, 05:12:27 AM
So I take it the Garns is very expensive?
I am not opposed to a bigger storage tank either.
Just to give some numbers from around my area,
a Central boiler eclassic 1450 will run me about $10,000
or so without that nice expensive thermopex, which is about $13/ft. 

That is just for the boiler nothing else.

Now I know you guys out there have allot less in your IWB and
heating more efficient inside away from the cold days.

Our cold up is here in NY can be -30F and that might be for weeks or more.

So I am thinking pull in garage get out of truck walk over fill stove that is
heating my garage too then go in start dinner lol.

That would avoid getting out of warm truck then go right into cold to load
OWB correct? 

My heat loss calculation is going to very low according to our engineer.

I might do ICF to the roof. I just need to decide if it the right application for
me to do now so I can add 10ft to my garage lenth before we build it.

Would I need a plate exchanger from storage tank in garage to heat the pressurized
system inside the house or how would I do that to get the heat there?


The Garn prices are advertised on thier web site and the Harmon prices are on thier home page when they are offering seasonal sales and that would also depend on the local Harmon Dealer as well and their seasonal sales.




1. I am in the Finger Lakes region and I know we
    can get below zero down here too.

2. As long as the garage is big enough you will have
    no issues-you should have an exhaust fan for the
    exhaust fumes from the truck or simply crack the
    overhead door open and leave the walk in door
    open for a couple extra minutes to remove the fumes.


PS if you think its big enough add to it again for wood, cars
and tractor storage!!!!!

A two car garage two cars deep will not allow for much wood
storage with a Garn and the Garn boiler will be too close to a
vehicle-saying that, a Harmon SF360 and a New Horizons tank
will not need a lot of room except for additional New Horizons storage tank(s).


3. You will need a plate heat exchanger to heat the hydronic system
    in the house as the Garn is an open system.


a. The Harmons can be operated as open or closed systems and also
    in steam service.

b. You must treat the water if the Garn boiler is used or if the Harmon
    is used in an open to air system. 

You will need a plate heat exchanger for your home heating system for both
the heat load and the domestic hot water if you use an open to air heating system.

If you desire to have a domestic coil in the Garn or the Harmon you will
need to run a second set of $13 per foot Pex tubing-this is the lesser of
two evils rather than dealing with heat exchangers in my opinion as it
is one less potential water leak.

The biggest consideration for either an open to air system or a
pressurised hydronic heating system is the total head required to
pump the water to heat the home.

A closed system would be better for the New Horizons storage tank if used
to limit oxidation and corrosion.


Just be sure to think about this as something that is thirty years down
the road and what you want to deal with AT THAT AGE.

I would have put the VAN WERT COAL STOKER BOILER in thirty one years ago
saying all that.

FFLM

Based on your R values your heat load is going to be low.  Your house should heat with ease, tell more about the house construction/insulation. 
208 Jack, 372's and F450 Stroker

Richard PM

There are some good points here on this thread and some outright blatant advertisements as well as eliminations of fact. Thanks for considering wood as your primary heat source! I have said this before, if you wish to put any solid fuel burning device in a garage where fuel of any sort is stored ( lawnmower, chainsaw, car, tractor,snowblower) etc you had better check with local code enforcement, and insurance provider because if you have a fire and both have not signed off don't hold your breath for the insurance settlement. No solid fuel burning device is approved for use in a building that stores fuel. The only way to use one in a garage is to draw all combustion air from outside the building with no direct access from the boiler to the garage. I bought and installed my OWB based on that fact alone but there are many other considerations that need to taken into account. I really don't understand why some here think that they should spend their time bashing OWB's when they obviously know very little about them. Steam radiators cannot be converted to hydronics as there is no way to eliminate the air in the top of the tank, the cast iron rad must be designed for hydronics.

beenthere

Richard
I don't see anyone 'bashing' OWB but I do see those who look for an alternative to going outside to put wood in them, and having to do the regular maintenance outside.

I have enjoyed burning wood to heat my home for over 35 years, and can fairly easily bring wood in to the wood burner (outside once a week for the 5 minutes it takes to bring another pallet of wood into the garage). If an OWB (and have given it a lot of thought), I would switch to gas.

I have great respect for those who do everything outside and admire their will power.  8)
south central Wisconsin
It may be that my sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others

kramer56

I do so much appreciate the info I do find here. I have owned and loved a classic cl40 owb for about 11 years and loved it. We sold our house and in the middle of getting it ready i had to sell that and put in a high efficiency buderus propane boiler to sell it. Now I am just weighing my options for heat in our new house and I have 146 acres of woods so yes the source will be hardwood. There is no opposition to owb but i am trying to gather info on IWB to se the differences between the set ups. I do know so far the newer gasser owb are very expensive in ny and yeah thats a code now so instead of paying $10-13k for an owb boiler then more on another propane boiler for the bank and then have to go outside to fill it I was looking into the costs and effiecencies of the iwb set ups with a storage tank. I do know that my last owb classic CL40 was a wood hog and I only heated a house with it.
So keep the info on the setups coming.
Thanks guys

Hilltop366

Adding solar hot water to the system to reduce summer usage of boiler might be something worth looking at.


leonz

Quote from: Richard @ PM on June 20, 2013, 09:00:58 AM
There are some good points here on this thread and some outright blatant advertisements as well as eliminations of fact. Thanks for considering wood as your primary heat source! I have said this before, if you wish to put any solid fuel burning device in a garage where fuel of any sort is stored ( lawnmower, chainsaw, car, tractor,snowblower) etc you had better check with local code enforcement, and insurance provider because if you have a fire and both have not signed off don't hold your breath for the insurance settlement. No solid fuel burning device is approved for use in a building that stores fuel. The only way to use one in a garage is to draw all combustion air from outside the building with no direct access from the boiler to the garage. I bought and installed my OWB based on that fact alone but there are many other considerations that need to taken into account. I really don't understand why some here think that they should spend their time bashing OWB's when they obviously know very little about them. Steam radiators cannot be converted to hydronics as there is no way to eliminate the air in the top of the tank, the cast iron rad must be designed for hydronics.




SO if ones having fire resistant storage lockers with time rated fusible links are not legal either for storing fuel and oils indoors???????????????????????


About radiators thats funny, my fathers business establishment has steam radiators converted to hydronic heat by simply adding both an air scoop at the hydronic boiler and air bleeders in the system and changing the plumbed pipe ports to the ends rather than the bottom ports to eliminate an airlocked radiator.


There is no reason one could not install a solid fuel boiler next to a garage in a lean to by simply cinder block or concrete by walling it off and adding a fire resistant ceiling OR-

If the code enforcement folks are not willing to tolerate an indoor boiler room separated by simple wall which has a fire resistant sheet rock and insulation in the walls and ceiling they can use cinderblock or brick for the walls and a fire resistant sheet rock ceiling with a fire resistant steel door to access the boiler and or a garage door to bring wood and coal into the boiler.


Treating the installation like an indoor incinerator will solve that worry and this has been done for many years. This type of install is also common for industrial pressure washer installations where the pressure washers exhaust is plumbed through the roof and the washer is all walled off with cinder block and a steel door as well.

Using a dryer vent in reverse in an exterior wall is easy to do.

An attached block or concrete lean to with a sliding barn door using an upper and lower track also would cost less to build for sure. The water storage could be installed in the interior  of the garage with no issues other than plumbing the tanks and an air vent or two.


As many have said, one needs to think of water storage like a battery that provides energy and it is also recharged as well by the hot water exiting the boiler and being piped to the storage. A large storage mass permits you simply burn a small very hot hard fire cleanly with no idling which is simply lost energy that could have been used to make hot water.


Richard PM

First what you converted to water is not a steam rad but a hydronic rad that was converted to steam, steam rads have no ports in the top of the rad and no pipe connecting the sections on the top, hydronic rads can be converted to steam but steam rads cannot be converted to water. Again Leon we are talking about two different animals here and not being completely honest about installation, yes you could put in an inside or outside boiler room but nobody mentioned (until I did ) about the need to not draw combustion air from any place that fuel is stored,(garage) Typically if an indoor boiler is properly installed in a boiler room or outbuilding, the costs associated with that installation are very close to the costs of an OWB installed, Safety from fire hazards is greatly improved with an OWB, steam explosion hazard from an OWB is non existant as all of todays EPA approved OWB's are non pressurized and in a power outage the worst that can happen is you will boil the water to steam and it will vent out of the vent tube.Indoor boilers that are pressurized require relief valves that can and do fail, lastly any indoor boiler should have a non powered dump zone capable of dispersing 20% of the rated heat load without power. Thank you for burning wood

Mooseherder

A great thread and discussion that needs to be kept constructive.
Hopefully the tone of it will resemble what members of this forum are accustomed to.

leonz

Quote from: Richard @ PM on June 21, 2013, 11:30:02 AM
First what you converted to water is not a steam rad but a hydronic rad that was converted to steam, steam rads have no ports in the top of the rad and no pipe connecting the sections on the top, hydronic rads can be converted to steam but steam rads cannot be converted to water. Again Leon we are talking about two different animals here and not being completely honest about installation, yes you could put in an inside or outside boiler room but nobody mentioned (until I did ) about the need to not draw combustion air from any place that fuel is stored,(garage) Typically if an indoor boiler is properly installed in a boiler room or outbuilding, the costs associated with that installation are very close to the costs of an OWB installed, Safety from fire hazards is greatly improved with an OWB, steam explosion hazard from an OWB is non existant as all of todays EPA approved OWB's are non pressurized and in a power outage the worst that can happen is you will boil the water to steam and it will vent out of the vent tube.Indoor boilers that are pressurized require relief valves that can and do fail, lastly any indoor boiler should have a non powered dump zone capable of dispersing 20% of the rated heat load without power. Thank you for burning wood


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You should google converting steam radiators to hydronic heat and you will have links to youtube showing how its done. I in no way condone the use of cheater pipes to increase leverage- its a good way to get ones jaw or arm broken, besides that, thats what long handled pipe wrenches are for anyway!

Many installers do not think about adding an extenal combustion air source as the homes are very large and have air leakage which permits enough outside air to enter for combustion.

Looking at the Garn unit it makes the use of an external air set up or combustion manadatory and makes it very easy as it is part of the units design and the air inlet is very small as it is a forced draft combustion air unit. The use of cold air makes it more efficient because cold air is much more dense than warm air  and it limits the amount of warm air that is sucked into the combustion chamber from the living space. I can only imagine how much more efficient a Garn would be if it injected pure oxygen into the combustion air stream.  Thinking along that line a Xorbox oxygen generator would do wonders for a biomass boiler for sure.



Richard PM

WOW now you really have me confused! First we were talking about combustion air coming from heated garage space where cold gasoline or fuel is stored now we are talking about in the home, different applications. Real steam rads have no way for air to be bled from the tops of the sections as they are not connected by nipples of any sort at the top, hydronic rads are connected top and bottom, therefore hydronic rads can be used for steam but not the other way around. Where in the world did you get cheater bars from?

Richard PM

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