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[hondaracer2oo4]

So I thought I would do a season end review of my G200. I started running on October 12, the day Richard dropped off the boiler. I shut down for the season around the 20th of April.

Total burned for the year was +\-  8 cords. I was normally doing between 12-14 cords with the hardy h4 depending on the severity of the winter. My wood is a mix of maple, oak, beech and white birch. It was cut spring of 2015 and split in June 2015. My moisture ranged anywhere from 20% with the maple and birch to around 30% for the oak. The drier the better. This year I have 3.5 cords c/s/s left over which will have a full year and a half before they are burned. That stuff should really run nice. The rest of the wood has been cut split. I have 7 cords in pallet racks stacked and drying out in my windy sunny field for this summer. I have another 4 cords plus cut split and piled until I get more pallet racks.  I am hoping to only burn half of my wood this winter and get more wood this summer to continue to get ahead with drying wood. I think I can easily get under 7 cords with less than 20% moisture.

Running the G200. It is very forgiving. I never had to relight the boiler. I did have times when I didn't put enough in and came back to just ash in the bottom. Stirring the ash up brought coals up to the surface. I then put some kindling on that then larger stuff. It always started back up. It would take about an hour to get a good bed of coals back to start the gassing process. When I didn't screw up and come back to nothing left I found that simply throwing the wood on top of the coals/unburned wood without breaking up the coals was best. If I broke up the coals and didn't have enough smaller wood on the bottom of the load the coals would burn up fast without getting the new load going well. This would cause a slow burn that didn't gas well until the new load really started producing new coals. So I just left the coal bed alone and loaded the new load right on.

My cycle times from160-180 would last anywhere from about 38 mins to 1 hour and 20 min depending on what part of the burn load I was in. Mid load is the shortest. The beginning and end are the longest.

I never added any water to the boiler all year. Filled it once at the beginning and I probably lost 2-5 gallons over the season.

I cleaned out the ashes from the upper burn chamber twice but just to bring the ashes down to about 3 inche depth. I pulled the ashes out of the reaction chamber about every 2 weeks. I would get about 1-2 inches of ash down there. I found it was very difficult to remove the the ash that was behind the refractory horseshoe pieces at the back right below the heat exchanger tubes. The area above the heat exchange tubes where the flue gasses end up before they go up the stack was cleaned out only twice. Once mid season and second at the end of the year. Both times only about a half inch of ash was up there.

I did a thorough clean out for the year vacuuming all the ash out of the boiler. I also wire brushed all of the welds in the chamber above the heat exchangers. In the upper burn chamber(wood load area) I also wire brushed the welds that weren't coverered in creosote and around the door frame etc. I removed all of the air curtains which wasn't that easy because of creosote in the channel piece at the top. The curtains didn't want to slide up so I really had to work them a lot until they would go up enough to clear the bottom channel. I had some creosote on the wall behind the curtains, this fell right off with no effort but I was surprised how much it added up to on the bottom of the firebox when I finished. The creosote that is on the top of the firebox and on the back of the firebox where there is water on the other side would be near impossible to remove. I did have to chip off big chunks of creosote/ash where the creosote on the back wall had dripped down to the ash on the bottom. Where the creosote hit the ash it was extremely hard and chunky, it took about 30 mins with a screwdriver and hammer to remove it all. I removed the primary/secondary air wheel and motor assembly and cleaned in there. Little to no creosote was in there. I removed the short section of flue pipe and cleaned up there which I would suggest everyone do. There is a lip around where the fan connects to the flue that is about an inch deep and was full of ash that was hard and wet from rain water not having anywhere to go. I cleaned that and wire brushed it.

Overall after the end of season cleaning the stainless all looks brand new. Really nice to see.

My refractory nozzle has a few cracks through it. Nothing that would be a problem but the nozzle sections would not come out in a single piece if they needed to be removed. The left side of the nozzle is more worn than the right. I think I will get three seasons out of the nozzles if the wear continues at the same rate. Maybe a nozzle plate would save the nozzle? I think that is something that is worth talking about.

Overall extremely happy with the unit. It just plain works without being temperamental or finicky. My wife ran it without issue. Wood stacking in the boiler does matter. I made sure the bottom was completely covered with wood then stack the wood in a tight manner right over the nozzle.

On another note I am building a garage and had to move the boiler. I had made homemade lines with the spray foam in trench method. I never had a noticeable drop in temp from the supply to return lines but I had noticed that I was melting snow further and further away from the boiler over where the lines ran. At the end if the season I was melting about 10 feet away from the boiler. When I pulled the lines I found that the closed cell foam actually had water inside. You could break off a piece of foam and squeeze it producing water from the foam. Some sections of the foam where dry while others seemed to have a significant amount of water in it. I have bought logstor pipe leftover from one of the forum members and plan to use that to feed the house and the new garage next year. I think this will cut down a little on wood usage as well. I believe that the foam in trench method would work without issue in a dry area. My area is pretty damp and has high water. My lines were in the ground for 4 seasons.

[slimjim]

Thanks Honda, I found about the same results, a lot more wood but a MUCH larger heat load!

[mlappin]

Found the same observations hold true wit the G400 as well, don’t over stir the coal bed, if at all. Never had it go completely out, at worst took the maul and made some smaller stuff. Was actually more forgiving than my old conventional, lost track of how much I actually burnt as we’d take the Polaris Ranger out in the woods and cut up pole trees as well. I liked to clean it out twice a week believing that the less ash and the more metal exposed the better the heat transfer in the lower chamber.

The only thing I plan on doing different is burning 24” pieces instead of 16-17”. The shorter ones I stack in 2 deep with the ends meeting in the middle, then the middle tends to burn out first which can lead to a void right over the nozzle sometimes, I’d like to go 30” pieces but the max length on the processor is 2 foot.

[hondaracer2oo4]

Updated

[BIG AL]

After much disapointment from the wife I shut my g-200 down on 5/23. Over all with season 1 in the books I am very happy, with similar experiences to everyone else. I have been pretty diligent about keeping the creasote scraped off where I can reach and the bottom chamber clean of ash every couple weekends and no problems noted. I'm going to get to cleaning it out for the season soon and I'll update if I find any issues. Thanks everybody who has been so helpful in getting us up and running and getting through the first season with the new boiler.

[hondaracer2oo4]

One thing I would like to see is having the access door above to heat exchanger tubes again like the pre 2015 models. I know you can access them by removing the whole roof but that's not practical like the old one with the door. I would like to be able to brush the tubes.

[mlappin]

I’m not sure how much you’d actually get out of em. When I vacuumed the top out on mine after I shut down the tubes looked pretty clean, not like they’d been brushed of course, but a lot cleaner than I expected.

[slimjim]

Honda, when I come down we could pull the roof and turbulator's, perhaps we could video tape the process? I'm interested in seeing how yours looks as well, with the amount of 30- 40% moisture content wood I put through it at shows! I would be willing to bet that there is still no real buildup in the tubes.

[hondaracer2oo4]

Sure, I would be willing to do that. I think that should be part of the year end cleaning anyway. I just wish they had not got rid of that access port. I can only feel down the heat exchangers a little bit with my finger but it doesn't feel like there is much on the tubes, just a thin film. Never the less I would like to run a wire wheel up and down to clean them off.