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Topics - OnceBurned

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Wood Doctor / Wood Doctor 5000 Rusted Out Water Jacket
« on: December 16, 2013, 01:15:17 PM »
In 2009, I researched wood furnaces and Wood Doctor stood out as a top manufacturer, even boasting a 30 year warranty and ¼“ boiler plate steel. That sounded too good to be true, and it was.

In early 2010 I purchased and set up a Wood Doctor 5000 Gasification furnace including $1000 worth of propylene glycol to prevent rust.  I was dismayed to find the furnace leaking water into the ash box that  fall; I couldn't figure out where the leak was. Although the Wood Doctor was not doing an adequate job of supplying heat to my house, I continued to use the furnace, adding water and propylene glycol as needed, until spring 2013. Creosote continued to build up in the firebox despite the fact that I was very careful about using dry, seasoned wood which had been stored under a roof. After less that 3 years of use, the firebox was rusted out in numerous places - in the fall of 2013, when I inspected the inside of the firebox I found rusted-out holes where water was seeping in.

The problems are multiple, beginning with the ¼” boiler plate steel they claimed to have used but which measures with a digital calibrator as  0.11” in thickness – or less that 1/8”. If this isn't bad enough, the firebricks were mortared in place and the mortar between this thin metal and the bricks had loosened enough to allow ash to get between the thin metal jacket and the brick.  Although I cleaned out the ash at the end of each heating season, I had not removed these mortared-in-place firebricks; this seems to be the cause of the massive firebox failure.

After spending nearly $14,000 on this Wood Doctor, I am left with scrap metal. I would have been money ahead if Arthur Turple had not delivered the furnace – that way I wouldn't have paid out money for the installation materials and labor.

I am so upset with the Wood Doctor that I just do not trust any type of wood furnace that has a boiler because of leakage. Perhaps there are some good ones, but Wood Doctor was not one of them. - Paul

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